Strong Car Results Boost Vehicle Sales 12% in Late March : Automobiles: Sales appear to recover from the blizzard-depressed levels of mid-month.

Sales of domestically built cars and trucks rose 12% in late March, with passenger cars making their first solid contribution in two months, according to auto makers’ figures released Monday.

Car sales, which have lagged behind light trucks for much of the last year, were up 8% over the same period a year ago. Sales of minivans, sport utility trucks and pickups continued their momentum, rising 18.1% in the March 21-31 period.

“It was a nice uptick toward the end of March, but dealers still failed to make up all sales lost during the blizzard of ‘93,” said Tom Webb, chief economist of the National Automobile Dealers Assn. “Cautious consumers, realizing smaller than normal tax refunds, or possibly even payments due, suggest April’s gain will also be modest.”

Cars sold at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.6 million in late March, the highest since late January. Trucks sold at a projected annual rate of 4.8 million.

“Bottom line: The first quarter has not been what we were hoping for,” said Chris Cedergren, an auto industry analyst with AutoPacific Group in Thousand Oaks. “Sales are still very sluggish.”

For the month, including imports, combined car and truck sales rose 5.1%. Sales by the U.S. Big Three--General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Corp.--were up 9.9%, while Japanese import sales were down 5.2%.

The shining star of the Big Three was Chrysler, which reported its best March in five years and the highest truck sales for any month in the company’s history.

Its share of the truck market was stable at 23%.

“Our truck sales in March were, in a word, amazing,” said Theodor Cunningham, executive vice president for sales and marketing.

Chrysler gained 2.9 percentage points of market share in car sales in March over the same month last year, mostly because of its hot-selling trio of new mid-size cars: Dodge Intrepid, Chrysler Concorde and Eagle Vision.

Ford continued to post impressive sales in March.

Its car sales were up 7.3%, and trucks were up 13.8%.

Its 22.4% of the car market was up 1.9 percentage points over March, 1992.

The Ford Taurus continued to lead as the best-selling car in the United States at the end of the first quarter, though it trails last year’s sales by 7,390.

Ford’s F-series pickup truck, which consistently tops all vehicle sales charts, also led after the first three months of the year.

The F-series’ closest competitor, Chevrolet’s C-K pickup, trailed by 8,218.

Still, GM said its truck sales are up 16% so far this year. Its share of the truck market in March was 32.6% compared to 31.8% last March. Trucks have helped soften the blow of GM’s slide in car market share, which was 35.4% in March compared to 36.2% last March.

Only GM’s Saturn division and Pontiac divisions showed car sales increases during March, with Saturn up 19.8% and Pontiac up a scant 0.9%.

“We are generally pleased with our performance to date given our decision to reduce sales to daily rental fleets resulting in substantially fewer deliveries to that segment of the market,” said J. Michael Losh, vice president and group executive for sales for GM’s North American operations.

Cedergren said the seeming weakness in car sales can be traced in part to GM and Chrysler pulling back on these low-profit sales to rental companies.

The resulting flat car sales hide the slight improvement in sales to individuals.

“The retail demand probably is up 7% or 8%,” Cedergren said. “But we still would have expected sales to be a little higher than what they’ve been tracking at.”

In general, consumers don’t have the confidence to go out there and commit to four or five years of payments for a new car.”