Ring in the new year? The party's over

Automakers put on a brave face at the world's biggest auto show on Sunday, with the sales outlook bleak for the coming year and fabled firms struggling for survival despite massive government aid.

"All I can tell you is that demand is a little more robust than we expected," Ford Motor Co. sales chief Jim Farley said of January sales at the North American International Auto Show. "I would say a little, not dramatically."

US auto sales fell 18 per cent last year from the prior year to about 13.2 million vehicles, battered by a spreading credit crunch, US recession and plummeting consumer confidence.

Most automakers expect sales to decline even more this year. Ford expects US auto sales at 12.5 million at best. GM officials said they could fall as low as 10.5 million.

"I have seen a better mood at funerals," said Mike Jackson, president of AutoNation, the largest US car dealer group.

That downbeat tone pervaded the cavernous Cobo Centre in the Motor City, where the only buzz inside the building was again "electric" this year - as in electric cars, gas-electric hybrids and the promise of other developing green technology.

General Motors Corp., Chrysler, Ford, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd all updated plans to offer all-electric or new hybrids in the next few years.

GM had garnered the limelight two years ago with the introduction of the Chevrolet Volt electric concept car, which on Sunday it again said it plans to have on sale by late 2010.

GM has said the electric car will have a 40-mile driving range on one battery charge. Toyota announced plans for a car with a 50-mile range on one charge and Ford said plans were in the works for one with a 100-mile range - perhaps by 2011.

If the mood was hopeful but downbeat inside, it was downright angry outside the hall and echoed the stormy days ahead as GM and Chrysler rush to meet terms of a government bailout by the end of March.

Detroit's Big 3 - GM, Chrysler and Ford - went hat in hand to Congress and the White House seeking emergency aid after the first two had warned of imminent bankruptcy.

The €10.8 billion federal bailout of GM and Chrysler announced last month included fresh demands aimed at the United Auto Workers union, including making UAW wages and benefits competitive with foreign carmakers' US plants and eliminating the jobs bank, which compensates idled workers.

A group of some 50 or more workers marched up and down outside the conference centre in chilly but sunny weather, chanting slogans such as "Bush says cut back, we say fight back" and holding signs including "No millionaire left behind" and "Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign."

"We have to maintain our wages, maintain our jobs and maintain our benefits," said Brian Moore, a safety trainer at GM's pick-up truck plant in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac. "That's supposed to be the American way."