Auto execs: Sales are stabilizing

CHICAGO (AP) — Auto industry executives are seeing signs that the nation’s automobile industry is beginning to stabilize, after months of free-falling sales that have threatened the viability of some of the sector’s biggest players.

Jim Farley, Ford Motor Co.’s global marketing chief, said Wednesday that seasonally adjusted retail sales demand has held steady for the past four months. Meanwhile, the country’s used-car market has come “roaring back” since January.

“That shows me that credit’s available,” Farley said after a Ford presentation at the Chicago Auto Show. “When we’re seeing the kind of growth in the used-car market that we’ve seen in the last six weeks, that is a really important milestone for the bottoming out of the industry.”

General Motors Corp.’s Ed Peper was even more upbeat.

“I think we’re at rock bottom,” the North American vice president for Chevrolet said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I would say we’re at the bottom and stabilizing. I think it gets a little bit better each month for the rest of the year.”

But on the heels of another calamitous month for the sector — U.S. new-car and -truck sales fell 37 percent in January, hurt especially by poor sales to fleet buyers such as rental car companies — the industry’s fortunes are tenuous as best.

Still, auto industry analyst Erich Merkle said he thinks the industry may have reached finally reached a tentative plateau, particularly if labor markets can stabilize.

“We’re really at that crucial inflection point right now,” he said. “And with all the money right now that’s being pumped into the system ... I think that we’ll start to see some revival in our economy and we’ll start to see sales on a sequential basis exceed that of the first quarter.”