Car Sales in O.C. Down 11% in 1991 : Economy: Domestic dealers increase market share nearly 10 points but imports still outsold them. Auto show runs daily through Sunday.

If the car dealers at the Orange County International Auto Show look a little glum this week, be understanding: Business was off 11% last year, after tumbling 7% the year before.

Nationally, car sales dipped 12% in 1991, so local car dealers did about the same as their colleagues elsewhere.

But the county’s domestic car dealers scored something of a victory by increasing their share of the local market by nearly 10 points in 1991, according to figures provided by the R.L. Polk & Co. market research firm. The data is based on manufacturers’ sales records for cars sold at dealerships in Orange County from January through November 1991.

It was a performance that would make Lee Iacocca, Chrysler Corp.’s flag-waving chairman, proud.

Although imports still outsold domestics in Orange County, the margin shrank to only 55% to 45%, a big change from the 65%-to-35% import edge in 1990.

The import-domestic battle has inflamed tempers in Detroit, Washington and Tokyo as car makers and lawmakers hurl charges of protectionism, inferior workmanship and jingoism back and forth across the Pacific.

But at the auto show, which runs daily through Sunday at Anaheim Stadium, Toyota is rubbing shoulders with Ford, while such cars as the joint Japanese-American Geo Prizm are on display. And Rick Evans, owner of Huntington Beach Jeep-Eagle and president of the 95-member Motor Car Dealers Assn. of Orange County, said that as far as most new car dealers are concerned, that’s the way things should be.

“I guess from one aspect I benefit as a domestic dealer when import sales fall,” he said, “but some of my cars are really Japanese (the Eagle Talon is built in the United States by Mitsubishi), and there are a lot of dealers who have domestic lots and import lots. The whole thing is really a manufacturers’ issue, not a dealers’ issue.”

The issue most new car dealers grapple with daily, Evans said, “is the economy. As car sales fall, our markets as individual dealers shrink, and it is affecting all of us.”

Car dealerships in Orange County employ more than 6,000 people and are a major source of tax revenue for many cities, Evans said. The car dealers association sponsors the annual auto show as its major public outreach program, he said.

And despite attendance that is dampened by the rain and the recession--down from a record 201,000 in 1989 to an anticipated 170,000 this year--the show “has tremendous benefits for dealers and the public,” he said.

“The show allows people who are thinking about buying a new car to comparison-shop in an atmosphere where all the new cars can been seen and there is no sales pressure.”

In all, 33 manufacturers are showing about 500 models at the show.

JAPANESE MODELS

Honda and Toyota finished 1st and 2nd in O.C. Sales in 1991. D8