Analysts say Chrysler October sales will drop 38 percent

When numbers are reported on Monday, Chrysler’s October sales will be down 38 percent. That’s the average of predictions from Jesse Toprak of Edmunds.com, Deutsche Bank’s Rod Lache and Brian Johnson of Barclays Capital, industry analysts polled by Bloomberg News. Lache was the most optimistic, calling for a 35 percent drop while Toprak forecast a gloomy 40.4 deficit with a volume of about 90,000 sales.

If the analysts are correct, Chrysler will drop back to fifth place behind GM, Toyota, Ford and Honda.

Bad as Chrysler’s numbers are, all of the analysts polled think GM will do worse. The consensus is a plunge of 43 percent. Now the employee pricing program has ended and GMAC has made it more difficult to get financing, volume is seen declining from 307,400 last October to around 183,000 by the time this month ends.

Ford is seen doing the best of the Detroit automakers, holding on to third place with an estimated 124,000 sales, a decline of 35 percent.

Toyota will hang on to second place with 167,000 sales, a drop of 18.7 percent and the best performance of the Big Six automakers. Honda is forecast to come up 20.3 percent shy of its October 2007 numbers with 95,000 sales and Nissan will take the biggest drop among the big Japanese automakers with a 31.9 percent shortfall and 60,000 sales.

October is expected to be another grim month, with sales missing the million-unit mark by an even wider margin than they did in September. Jesse Toprak looks for 872,000 cars and trucks to be sold or leased in October. That would make it the slowest month for U.S. auto sales since January 1992. October would also mark the twelfth month of declining sales, a trend that has not been equaled in 17 years.