Published: July 01, 2008 03:46 pm         

General Motors holds off Toyota as June sales fall

DETROIT — General Motors Corp. soundly beat Toyota Motor Corp. in June to retain its traditional U.S. sales lead, but GM sales still dropped 18.2 percent during a dismal month for most large automakers.

Toyota’s U.S. sales fell 21.4 percent, while Ford Motor Co. said it sales tumbled nearly 28 percent.

GM’s shares bounced nearly 6 percent higher in afternoon trading Tuesday after sinking to their lowest level in more than a half century during Monday’s session.

The nation’s biggest automaker on Tuesday reported selling 262,329 vehicles for the month, compared with Toyota’s 193,234. Some industry analysts had expected Toyota to beat GM in the U.S. for the first time, but both companies were hurt by a sluggish economy and poor sales of trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Toyota car sales fell 9.4 percent in June while its truck sales were off 38.8 percent.

GM’s car sales sank 21 percent in June, while its incentive-boosted truck sales were off 16 percent.

For the first half of the year, GM sales fell 16.3 percent compared with the year-ago period. Toyota sales were down 6.8 percent for the first six months of the year.