• by Karl Greenberg , May 7, 2008

Anything to move the metal. As gasoline edges up, Chrysler is offering two years worth of gasoline to people who lease new vehicles. And some vehicles are carrying record incentives, particularly if they are SUVs nearing the end of their cycle.

Suzuki has announced that it will also offer free gas. Its new nationwide sales promotion dangles 0% financing and three months of free gasoline on retail purchases of all new 2007 and 2008 vehicles. The Suzuki "Free Gas for Summer" sales program, which launched this week, runs through June 30.

Said Gary Akin, president of sales at the Brea, Calif. company, "Suzuki recognizes the economic impact resulting from soaring gas prices and thought this promotion was a great way to entice eager car buyers."

American Suzuki Financial Services will offer qualified customers 0% APR financing for up to 60 months and a Visa debit card that can be used for fuel purchases. The amount on each card is based on a three-month summer driving taking into account the car or SUV's estimated highway mpg rate.

Edmunds.com reports that April incentives were actually down versus the month last year. "It's a little contra," says Jesse Toprak, head of industry analysis at the automotive research and shopping Web property. "We thought we would see an upward trend." He says the firm is seeing an industry average last month of $2,343, versus $2,410 in April last year.

Toprak explains that some exceptionally high incentive numbers on SUVs are being balanced by shrinking incentives on small sippers like Honda Fit and Chevy Aveo. "Pretty much, you have two extremes: vehicles not selling well are seeing record incentive spend and smaller crossovers and cars are seeing their incentives drop as they gain market share."

He adds that Big Three incentive levels are not as high as they have been in the past, to which Toprak credits their more reasoned approach. "They got smart in the last couple of years; they became better at optimizing incentive strategy so they are not blindly putting money on everything they sell." That latter strategic approach to incentives was the practice after 9/11, when GM launched its "Keep America Rolling" promotion offering zero percent interest on a wide range of vehicles, and Ford and Chrysler followed suit.

"We won't see that again; now they know that when you do that you wind up under-incentivizing some cars and over-incentivizing others. Now they are better at optimizing incentives."

Chevrolet's sub-compact Aveo last month had $920 dollars in incentives, on average, or 6% of the car's sticker price, per Edmunds. But Chevy's Tahoe SUV carried $5,686 on the hood, about 13% of the truck's sticker price.

Toprak says the most extreme examples of tactical incentives are at Honda, which, per Toprak, offered $7,174 worth of incentives on its Pilot SUV ( a new version of which comes out this fall) and only $104 dollars on the Fit sub-compact. "Compacts will stay stagnant but we'll see higher levels of incentives on everything else."

That will be true at least until August, when 2009 models will roll out, carrying lower incentives. "But between now and July, they will increase."