Car industry gloom descends on BMW and Nissan

By Christiaan Hetzner and Chang-Ran Kim

FRANKFURT/TOKYO (Reuters) - The clouds hanging over the global car industry cast dark shadows over two more makers on Friday as BMW issued a profit warning and Nissan Motor badly missed quarterly operating profit forecasts.

"Business conditions for the automobile industry deteriorated sharply again in the second quarter due to further ongoing steep rises in oil and raw material prices, the weakness of the U.S. dollar, the impact of the international financial crisis and a weaker U.S. economy," Germany's BMW (BMWG.DE) said.

The world's biggest premium carmaker will miss its 2008 targets after a 44 percent plunge in quarterly pretax profit to 602 million euros (474 million pounds), well below a Reuters poll estimate of 1.04 billion, bringing its margin to just 4.1 percent.

Nissan (7201.T), Japan's No.3 automaker, controlled by Renault SA (RENA.PA), posted a much worse-than-expected 46 percent drop in quarterly operating profit, but stuck to its annual forecasts, which call for its lowest operating profit in seven years.

GM (GM.N) later on Friday added to the gloom with a $15 billion (7.6 billion pounds) quarterly loss, the third-largest in its history, as North American sales dropped 20 percent.

A housing crisis pushed U.S. car sales to a 15-year low in June and decimated used vehicle prices, and the economic contagion is spreading to other markets, leading to a decline in Europe of nearly 8 percent last month.

Few have been spared, and those heavily dependent on the U.S. market have been suffering worst of all.

Ford (F.N) reported a record quarterly loss, and even the reliable outperformer Toyota (7203.T) has had to slash sales targets. Renault has slowly backed away from its 2009 profit forecast, Honda (7267.T) trimmed its expectations and Daimler (DAIGn.DE) abandoned its guidance entirely.