Jan. 20--Despite doomsday auto sales forecasts for 2009, promising signs continue to emerge about early January sales in the United States and their potential for growth.

Pent-up demand for new vehicles grew to 820,000 new cars and trucks last year, as consumers continued to wait out the dismal economic environment before making a new purchase, according to a report released Monday by CNW Marketing Research.

That's nearly four times as high as pent-up demand was in 2007, CNW said, and the research firm predicted that "the bulk of those postponements are slated to return to market in 2009."

Meanwhile, Cars.com, a consumer automotive Web site, is reporting an uptick in traffic that could signal that consumers who were taking a wait-and-see approach to car buying because of the economy might now be coming back to market.

"I am having a much better start in January than I thought I would have," said Carl Galeana, owner of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Saturn and Kia dealerships. "I may have a better January than December."

Bob Maxey, owner of Bob Maxey Lincoln Mercury and Bob Maxey Ford in Detroit, also said sales in January started off better than they did in December.

During the Detroit auto show previews last week, executives from Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. surprised reporters when they said sales during the first two weeks of January were improving compared with sales in November and December.

For the year, most analysts are still predicting that industry sales will be even worse than last year.

In 2008, automotive sales fell 18% to 13.2 million vehicles, the lowest industrywide sales level in the United States since 1992.

The biggest decline came during the last four months of the year, when consumer confidence and available credit plummeted in the wake of a national economic crisis. Total industry sales in December, for example, dropped 35.6% to 894,805 cars and trucks.

Last week, General Motors Corp. cut its 2009 industrywide U.S. sales forecast to 10.5 million vehicles, citing continued uncertainty about when the market for new cars might recover.

Previously, GM said it expected industrywide sales of about 12 million for the year, with 10.5 million seen as a worst-case scenario for the industry.

Ford executives continue to be more upbeat than their domestic rivals.

"We expect to see a recovery start sometime in the second half" of the year, Lewis Booth, Ford's executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in an interview with the Free Press last week. There also is hope within the automotive industry that the positive momentum created by today's presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, as well as the second stimulus package that he is pushing for, will lead to improved auto sales.

"We think the new administration is going to put a high priority on stimulating the economy," Donald Esmond, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota's U.S. division, said last week.

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, isn't buying into the optimism, however.

He predicts automotive sales in the U.S. will fall to 11.5 million. That would be a 12.9% decline from 2008 and another year far below the 16-million mark to which the industry had grown accustomed to selling each year.

McAlinden estimates that the economic meltdown of 2008 has wiped out $6 trillion in household wealth. Obama's stimulus package, McAlinden said, "will not be of great use for those who are selling cars."

Contact BRENT SNAVELY at 313-222-6512 or bsnavely@freepress.com.

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