Ford: We're No. 2 in Sales

Auto sales picked up in June, particularly at Ford, which showed a single digit decline in retail sales and said that in some key areas of the country, it saw no decline at all.

Ford said its retail sales fell just 8%, while its overall sales including fleet fell 11%. In about a third of 22 U.S. sales regions, "We had higher retail sales than a year ago," said sales analyst George Pipas, on the Ford sales call.

The strongest sales were in a central U.S. region including Dallas, Houston, Memphis and Kansas City, Pipas said. But sales in the west, particularly Los Angeles and Phoenix, were down 20% to 30%.GM also said its weakest sales division was the West Coast, particularly California.

GM reported a 29% year-over-year retail sales decline, while Chrysler reported a 16% decline. Overall, GM's sales decline was 34%, while Chrysler's was 42%, but both companies reported sharp reductions in fleet sales, a result of sharply reduced June production. Chrysler fleet sales fell 95%, while GM fleet sales fell 49%.

LaNeve also noted that sales softened in the last week of June, as people awaited a decision by Congress on the Cash for Clunkers program, now slated to take effect July 24.

"It certainly put some people on the sidelines in the last week of the month," he said. The industry's annual sales rate would have reached a pace of 10.2 million to 10.5 million were it not for the slowdown, which reduced the rate to about 10 million, he said.