• by Karl Greenberg , October 4, 2007

Blame gasoline prices and the entrenched housing slump for a reported 2.9% drop in auto sales last month. Still, several automakers reported sales increases anyway.

Automakers benefited from new vehicles in segments that are resistant to fuel costs: premium and small cars and crossovers. European luxury makes scored well last month, particularly with cars and crossovers.

BMW reported a 7% increase in sales last month, selling 24,932 vehicles. Mercedes-Benz posted a 13% increase in sales in September versus the month last year, delivering 22,459 vehicles. Sales of Audi vehicles increased by a fraction last month. Lexus set a record for its cars last month but saw truck sales drop 9.5%.

Ford's Land Rover unit, whose U.S. sales are up 8% year-to-date, posted a 21% gain last month on the strength of its new LR2 crossover SUV. Todd Turner, president of L.A.-based automotive consultancy Car Concepts, says LR2 is likely taking sales from the company's year-old LR3 SUV, for which sales are waning.

General Motors has reportedly posted a 0.3% sales gain, while Toyota again saw sales slip overall by about 0.6% from the company's best-ever September last year. Although sales slipped for the third month for Toyota, the company was the second-highest seller in the U.S. last month.

Though Toyota divisional sales were down nearly a percentage point, sales of Camry reached a September record of 40,438, a 9.9% increase versus the month last year. Last month was also the best-ever September for the company's Prius car, whose sales were up 23.8% over September 2006.

Turner says Toyota's three-month slip in year-over-year sales may reflect, in part, the company's sell-down of Corollas and Matrix vehicles. "Corollas represent a big portion of volume, and they are in the process of selling that down as new versions of Matrix and Corolla come to market shortly," he says.

General Motors has added incentives on pickups and SUVs this month, according to Bloomberg news. The company will offer $1,000 rebates on Chevy Silverado, GMC Envoy and 0% financing offers on some of its SUVs and pickups.

Among other automakers, Nissan enjoyed an 11% gain in sales last month, with Nissan division up 12.1% and the company's Infiniti division up 2.7%. Nissan reported that sales of the Altima sedan (including the hybrid) totaled 24,587 units delivered last month. The company, at month's end, began selling the new Rogue crossover, delivering 832 of the vehicles in the final days of the month.

Kia also posted best-ever September sales--barely--besting last September by about 1% and delivering 24,087 vehicles during the month, led by compacts and crossovers like the Sportage, which was redesigned last year. Sibling Hyundai, which has just lost its chief marketer in the U.S., Steve Wilhite, and launched its first national effort by a new agency, experienced flat sales last month, and, having sold 358,407 vehicles year-to-date, is 1% off last year's sales over the first nine months.

Both Honda and Mazda enjoyed big sales gains last month. Honda sales climbed 13.8% on the strength of the 2008 Accord. Mazda saw increases last month with its new three-row crossover, the XC-9, and the CX-7 version of the vehicle. The company, partly owned by Ford, also garnered strong sales again for its Mazda3 compact, of which the company sold 10,629 units--a 58.1% leap in sales of the vehicle versus last September. Overall Mazda sales are up 23.9% versus September 2006. Year-to-date, sales are up 9.3% for the Irvine, Calif.-based company, in which Ford has about a 33% stake.

Turner says that Mazda's sales boost last month reflects both the fact that the CX crossovers "offer something unique in the marketplace" in terms of their high-concept design, and the fact that the company had issues in September 2006.

"They lost a bunch of cars last year because of a lost shipment and also had a recall of the CX7 last year, which reduced sales," he says. The company lost a chunk of 4,700 Canadian and U.S.-bound vehicles last year when a cargo ship listed off Alaska.

While sales of Ford's crossovers Edge and Lincoln MKX jumped 96% last month, the company's overall sales dropped 21%, partly because sales to daily rental fleets were off 62%.

Retail sales were down 15% for the company last month. The company is not yet getting a foothold with its new Taurus car and crossover, per Turner. He notes that the company sold around 3,500 of the new cars last month. "That's half of what they sold of the [Taurus predecessor] Five Hundred last September," he says.