REFILE-AUTOSHOW-Luxury car makers see light in US mkt late '09

(Refiled to fix typo in 14th paragraph)
By Claudia Parsons and Poornima Gupta
NEW YORK, April 8 (Reuters) - Luxury car makers see light
at the end of the tunnel by the last quarter of 2009 in the
U.S. auto market, and some are seeing bright spots already,
executives at the New York Auto Show said on Wednesday.
"There's a certain amount of angst out there with
everything that's going on in the economy, but still there's a
lot of people out there who are interested in rewarding
themselves," Mick Pallardy, Porsche vice president for the
eastern United States, told Reuters.
"It's challenging but we see bright spots out there. We
definitely see things percolating back, we see a bit of pent up
demand and some spring market activity," he said.
Luxury car manufacturers prospered in the last decade as
easy credit prompted U.S. consumers to go on a buying spree
that many in the industry thought would last for years.
That ended painfully last year with the global credit
crunch that has plunged the U.S. economy into recession and
created a backlash against lavish and conspicuous spending.
General Motors Corp's Cadillac luxury brand saw a 20
percent decline in U.S. sales last year.
Rivals also fared poorly. Daimler's luxury brand
Mercedes-Benz U.S. sales declined 11 percent, BMW
sales were down 15 percent, Porsche was down 25 percent and
Toyota Motor Corp's <7203.T> Lexus sales fell 21 percent.
BMW North America Chief Executive Jim O'Donnell forecast
credit markets would ease towards the end of the year, helping
the auto market.
U.S. automakers reported sales approaching a 9.9 million
vehicle annualized rate in March, a bump up from rates seen in
the first two months of the year, but still far below the 15.1
million rate a year earlier. The sales rate during the first
quarter was 9.5 million units.
"I think there's maybe a little bit too much pessimism,"
O'Donnell told Reuters. "I don't see the market falling below
10 million."
"I think it will pick up in the final quarter, maybe from
September onwards I think we'll start to see year on year
increases," he said.
He said buyers of luxury cars were hurting like everybody
else, "but I think there's some of them are just holding back a
little bit, they don't want to be seen to be doing too much
when maybe some of their employees are suffering."
He said there had been an upturn in used cars, with sales
of certified pre-owned BMWs topping 100,000 in 2008, a rise of
more than 16 percent. Pre-owned sales are also up 18 percent so
far this year in the United States, BMW said.
Audi head of marketing Peter Schwarzenbauer said the German
high end car maker was doing better than its competitors in the
premium segment by raising spending on marketing, such as a
high-profile ad during the Super Bowl, and would stick to that
strategy rather than launching incentive schemes.
Audi, a Volkswagen unit, sold 90,400 cars
worldwide in March, a 10.7 percent fall year-on-year. Its U.S.
sales were down 16.2 percent in March.
"On a world-wide basis, we have so many stimulus programs
in place that they must show a certain effect," Schwarzenbauer
told reporters. "Our assumption is that especially here in the
United States, the fourth quarter is probably the first time we
are going to see the light at the end of the tunnel."
He said a U.S. recovery in late 2009 should help lead the
rest of the world out of the downturn in 2010.
(Editing by Bernard Orr)
((New York Equities Desk; tel: +1 646 223 6000))
((For more news about General Motors Corp click here: [GM.N]))
Keywords: AUTOSHOW/LUXURY

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