DETROIT — Ford Motor Co.’s June sales dropped 28 percent as high gas prices and a sluggish economy drove consumers away from trucks.
Total vehicle sales dropped to 174,091, Dearborn, Michigan- based Ford said today in a statement. Ford is the first major automaker to report June sales, and its decline was in line with analysts’ forecasts.
Ford said sales of its F-Series large pickup, which accounts for about a quarter of total sales, plunged 41 percent. Along with General Motors Corp., Ford plans cuts to its pickup and sport-utility vehicle output this year as buyers flock to more fuel-efficient cars.
The change in consumer behavior “sure looks like it’s going to be lasting,” Gerald Meyers, a professor at the University of Michigan and a former chief executive officer of American Motors Corp., said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.
GM, Chrysler GM’s sales decreased 21 percent and Chrysler’s 25 percent, according to a survey of five of the analysts. U.S. auto sales are on a pace to plunge to 14.5 million units for 2008, the lowest in 15 years, according to Deutsche Bank. The annual industry average this decade has been 16.8 million.
Inventories of compact cars and gasoline-electric hybrids are “going down at a rate we’ve never really seen before, and automakers are caught a bit unprepared,” Jesse Toprak, an analyst in Santa Monica, California, said in an interview.
