New Cars Arrive, Courting Few Buyers

The prolonged slump in vehicle sales has barely slowed car companies from blitzing the market with new models.

But with industry sales expected to fall below last year’s depressed levels, automakers will be challenged to attract attention from consumers who are staying away from showrooms in increasing numbers.

General Motors, whose United States sales fell 22 percent last year, made the most news Sunday, by introducing a sedan and two crossover vehicles at the opening on Sunday of the Detroit auto show. The company also said it would add two more models to its Chevrolet lineup — a minicar and a seven-passenger crossover — in 2011.

G.M. executives said the models had been in development long before the overall market slid 18 percent last year, and the company hit such dire straits that it needed to seek financial help from the federal government.

“These cars are paid for, their development is behind them, and the manufacturing investment is done,” said Robert Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman for product development.

He said he hoped the new Buick Lacrosse sedan and the two crossovers, the Chevrolet Equinoxand Cadillac SRX, would sell without incentives and lift G.M.’s sagging revenues.

“Some people say a bad market and a poor economic environment is an unfortunate time to launch new product,” Mr. Lutz said. “I think it’s an extremely good time to launch new product because that’s when you need the added revenue.”

Automakers and analysts believe that industry sales in 2009 will drop significantly below the 13.2 million vehicles sold last year, possibly to as low as 10.5 million units.

Under those conditions, new models will be hard-pressed to draw anywhere near the level of interest they typically receive when they first hit the market.

Developing a new model usually takes three to four years, meaning G.M.’s offerings started being developed when American consumers were buying about 16 million vehicles a year.

“The problem is you can’t turn product development on and turn it off depending on the market conditions,” said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.

In G.M.’s case, the company will probably cut back on new models as it downsizes to meet conditions attached to its $13.4 billion loan package from the government.

“The nature of auto companies is to overproduce, but that is definitely going to change with the new financial reality,” Mr. Cole said. “I don’t think we will see these bad habits come back.”

The Ford Motor Company showed off two new models Sunday, the Taurus sedan and Fusion hybrid, as well as a 540-horsepower version of the Mustang.

But with the market shrinking, Ford is playing down expectations somewhat for the Taurus.

The Taurus was the best-selling American car in the early 1990s, but it gradually lost its appeal and became an also-ran in the full-size sedan segment behind the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.

The new version, Ford executives said, will find a smaller niche in the market.

“We’re not expecting to ever do the 400,000 units we did at its peak,” said Mark Fields, president of Ford’s Americas division.

Other models that were introduced in Detroit included hybrids from Honda and Toyota’s Lexus division, as well as concept cars from German automakers.

The automaker with the least to show was Chrysler, which was coming off a year when its sales had declined 30 percent.

Chrysler recently received a $4 billion loan from the government in order to stay solvent until March. The company’s chief executive, Robert L. Nardelli, said Sunday that Chrysler was counting on more federal aid to complete its reorganization process.

While it showed a few prospective electric vehicles on Sunday, Chrysler had no new models ready for the market.

But Mr. Nardelli said new car introductions would resume in 2010, and pledged that Chrysler would still be in business by then.

One of Chrysler’s vice chairmen, James Press, said the automaker did not think the lack of new models would hurt its sales in 2009. “We feel we haven’t extracted the potential of our current product line,” he said.