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 GM.N Cadillac luxury brand saw a 20 percent decline in U.S. sales last year.

Rivals also fared poorly. Daimler's (DAIGn.DE) luxury brand Mercedes-Benz U.S. sales declined 11 percent, BMW (BMWG.DE) sales were down 15 percent, Porsche was down 25 percent and Toyota Motor Corp's (7203.T) Lexus sales fell 21 percent.