Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Ford Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co.'s U.S. sales of cars and trucks tumbled in September as tighter credit scared off consumers.
Sales at Ford, the second-largest U.S. automaker, fell 35 percent from a year earlier, the Dearborn, Michigan-based company said in a statement today.
Honda reported a 24 percent drop.
Industrywide sales probably will fall for the 11th month in a row, the longest slide in 17 years, as the financial crisis caused lenders to toughen loan standards and consumers curbed spending. Sales already had dropped 11 percent through August, in part because of high
gasoline prices.
Ford's decline ``is an indicator of the state of the industry, with the credit problem hitting all segments, all types of vehicles,'' said
Dennis Virag, president of Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
``People of all economic backgrounds are going to be impacted.''
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