At Ford, Beating Honda Is Job One : Sales: The U.S. auto maker may be knocking $2,600 off its Taurus to overtake the top-selling Accord by Dec. 31.

What’s it worth to be No. 1?

To Ford Motor Co., whose Taurus sedan has a chance this year to unseat the Honda Accord as the top-selling car in the United States, a lot. As much as $2,600 a car, by some estimates.

Ford declines to put a dollar value on the car crown--which the Accord has worn for the last three years--much less divulge how much it’s spending to try to steal it.

“Let’s just say it’s important to us,” says Ford’s Los Angeles regional sales manager, Rick Baker. “Let’s just say this is the best time ever to buy a Ford Taurus.”

It’s not that money is no object, especially in a year when the nation’s No. 2 auto maker is expected to lose $7 billion. But for the next week, Ford has told its dealers to do whatever it takes to push more Tauruses out the door. And if the reward itself is not enough to rev up its sales force, the auto maker is hoping hard cash will do the trick.

“There are incentives for sales management, incentives for salesmen, incentives for the stores, incentives for the customers,” says John Koelmel, sales manager at Prestige Ford in San Gabriel. “We get the feeling they want to win.”

Koelmel was a little disappointed after losing November’s dealership contest, in which the two dozen dealers who exceeded designated Taurus sales objectives by the most got a Ford-paid shopping spree to San Francisco. But he would feel better if Prestige won this month’s top prize of $4,000.

The auto maker, which set sales objectives nearly double what some stores usually sell for the December contest, helps its dealers remember where they stand with almost-daily updates in the mail.

Nor is Ford reticent about the central role cash is playing in its last-ditch appeal to consumers. Despite recent vows to wean itself from costly rebates and other forms of discounts, Ford this month began offering business customers $1,000 off the Taurus, which ranges in price from $15,491 to $26,500. Other customers get $800 off, on top of the $500 to $750 rebate the Taurus has carried for most of the year.

Analysts say the promotions may be costing Ford up to $2,600 a car.

To Honda, winning the best-selling car title for the fourth year in a row may not hold quite the allure that it does to its American rival. There is the delicate question of how such news would play in Washington in a year when the U.S. auto industry is hemorrhaging red ink.

Nor is Honda itself in good financial shape, with the economic slowdowns in Japan and the United States carving into its profit. And the Accord, in the last year of its four-year design cycle, is competing against the Taurus’ new 1992 design, a handicap that has made Honda hesitate spending heavily on retaining its No. 1 status.

Still, the Japanese car maker is not about to give up without a fight. Under a recently extended program, Accord customers can lease the sedan for as little as $199 a month for five years. Honda is giving dealers $500 back for every Accord they sell, and sponsoring a first-ever sales contest for its salespeople, who get to spin a wheel to win $50 to $1,000 for each Accord sales bill they turn in. Four-door Accords range from $14,100 to $22,000.

Honda, which does not sell Accords in large volumes to rental fleets, is at somewhat of a disadvantage in a race where its competitor owns most of Hertz Rental Car, and may be able to inflate its sales with large fleet orders.

“It’s a good title to have,” Honda spokesman Bob Butorac says a bit wistfully. “We certainly have used it in our advertising. But we’re not going to try to force sales to achieve it.”

Ford has pledged to cut back on its sales to rental agencies, and insists that the bulk of its 10.2% improvement in domestic car sales so far this year is because of individual sales to consumers. And the company bristles at the suggestion that the cut-throat race may not yield the truest reflection of which car is the most popular with the American consumer.

“December close-out races like this are part of the car business,” says Ron Gregoire, owner of Cerritos Ford, who has been fielding cross-shoppers all month from Norm Reeves Honda two stores down. “And we’re going to win fair and square.”

The biggest race in the business used to be between Ford and Chevrolet for the best-selling pickup truck. And if last year’s pickup contest is any model, Honda may be in trouble. Chevy led by nearly 4,500 trucks with one month to go, but Ford managed to zoom ahead with heavily discounted sales to win by 8,000.

But this year, the industry’s eyes are on the car race, which has the added significance of measuring the extent of Detroit’s comeback in a year when the Big Three U.S. auto makers have begun to take market share away from their Japanese rivals in the reversal of a decade-long trend.

Moreover, if the Taurus manages to edge out the Accord, Ford will be able to claim the coveted title for both top-selling car and truck, a situation neither its foreign nor domestic competitors are looking forward to.

The score as of Dec. 10: Accord, 366,660; Taurus 358,056. Last year, Honda won by nearly 100,000 cars.

The week after Christmas has never been a hot sales period for the auto industry. But Ford and Honda dealers will duke it out as best they can right up until New Year’s Day.

What happens after that?

Says Ford’s Baker: “It’s not the end of the world if we lose. We’ll just try again next year.”