Ford falls to No. 4 automaker in U.S.

By Jeff Green and Alan Ohnsman
Bloomberg News
Posted February 2 2007

General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co.'s U.S. auto sales plunged in
January as the two U.S. automakers yielded market share while scaling
back on low-profit deliveries to rental-car companies.

Ford sales fell 19 percent, and GM dropped 17 percent, prompting a
deeper cut in GM's North American production. A 9.5 percent gain at
Toyota Motor Corp. and 3.2 percent increase at DaimlerChrysler AG pushed
Ford to No. 4 behind those automakers in the United States for the
second month ever; the first was in November.

"These companies are finally taking the medicine and cutting their sales
to rental-fleet companies," John Casesa, an analyst at Casesa Strategic
Advisors in New York, said in an interview. "These are low-margin sales.
Those cars go to Hertz and Avis, then come back and wind up as used
cars, undermining the selling of new cars."

The January results showed the price in sales and market share that the
biggest U.S. automakers may be willing to pay this year to sustain
profits. Last year, GM and Ford announced plans to close a combined 28
plants and other facilities in North America as they align their
production base with shrinking consumer demand.

Ford said that it sold 166,835 cars and trucks last month.
DaimlerChrysler reported 173,377 vehicles, and Toyota rose to 175,850,
for its 20th consecutive monthly gain. Toyota passed DaimlerChrysler to
become No. 3 in the United States last year, behind GM and Ford.

Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co., the second- and third-biggest
Japanese automakers behind Toyota, also reported sales gains for the
month. Honda was up 2.4 percent to 100,790 vehicles, without adjusting
for one additional selling day last month. Nissan gained 8.9 percent to
82,664.

Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's largest automaker, reported sales of
27,721 vehicles, down 8.2 percent from a year earlier. Steve Wilhite,
Hyundai's U.S. chief operating officer, said in a statement he was
"disappointed" with the January numbers, down in part on lower than
expected sales in California and in portions of the South.