Sales Booster: Free Gas With Your SUV Purchase

May 2, 2006 — -- As gas prices rise and SUV sales fall, some automakers have offered incentives to get people shopping.

In Sacramento today, Ford advertised $4,000 dollars in discounts and a $6,000 gas card for anyone purchasing a Ford Expedition. These days that's about 75 tanks of gas. Expedition sales are down 33 percent from last year.

"The more we discount, the more it affects the bottom line. But we're motivated to move the vehicles," said Rod Collins, sales manager at Future Ford.

Sometimes that means selling at a loss.

General Motors is in a similar bind, offering buyers of the Chevy Suburban a $5,000 cash rebate plus $2,000 in dealer discounts. Even so, drivers filling up at one Sacramento gas station told us they'd still stay away from the big vehicles, saying they're "gas hogs."

For American automakers, April's dismal sales were another reminder of how deep a hole they are now in -- more than half of the vehicles that roll off Detroit's assembly lines are gas-guzzling SUVs, minivans and light trucks, which are increasingly hard to sell.

"It just takes one trip to the gasoline station when you realize you have to fork over $70 or $80 to fill up your SUV that you think twice about what it is you want to have in your driveway," said Dale Jewett of Automotive News.

At Ford, where sales of most models were down in April, the company's strategy today was to emphasize the 115 percent jump in sales of fuel-efficient hybrids. While that's a record number, hybrids still account for just 3,400 of the 262,000 vehicles Ford sold last month.

"In the short term, I think a spike in their hybrid sales is not going to help them return to profitability," Jewett said.

While April sales were down at GM and Ford, they were up at Toyota and Honda. Japanese vehicles, on average, are more fuel efficient than American vehicles.