DETROIT, Dec 18 (Reuters) - U.S. sales of new cars and trucks are likely to come in at a stronger-than-expected total in December, thanks largely to blowout spending on incentives by General Motors Corp. , a senior Ford Motor Co. official said on Wednesday.
"I think the industry will surprise some of the early expectations by quite a bit," said James O'Connor, Ford's head of marketing and sales for North America.
"I think General Motors has hyped it with about three or four different levels of incentives," O'Connor said of the monthly sales rate.
"It's a good time for consumers to buy," he added, saying incremental spending on incentives by GM was driving the sales rate higher after a sharp slowdown in October and November.
GM has fired first in Detroit's price war for most of the last year, offering interest-free or low-interest loans and other deep discounts to help bolster sales amid the wobbly U.S. economic recovery.
Ford and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit have matched GM's pricing moves, for the most part. But O'Connor, who noted that GM is bent on achieving a second consecutive year of market share improvement this year for the first time since 1976, told reporters the world's No. 2 automaker was no longer prepared to follow its larger rival step-by-step.
"They're passionate about getting that done at any cost," said O'Connor, referring to GM's market share goal and his own estimate that GM had increased its incentives spending by "hundreds of millions of dollars" in December over November.
"We're trying to remain relatively competitive but our incentives are substantially less," he said.
As an example of GM's discounting, O'Connor said the company had a total of about $5,000 to offer in discounts to buyers of the compact Chevrolet Cavalier. That compares to a total of just $1,500 in incentives on Ford's compact Focus, O'Connor said.
A GM spokeswoman disputed those figures and Paul Ballew, GM's chief of industry analysis and sales, said all automakers had been aggressively discounting this year to help bolster sales.
"We've said all along that we're playing this game to win," Ballew told Reuters. "We're playing this game to win over a longer period of time. We're not just trying to win in the month of December," he said.
"To assume that we're just throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into the market needlessly, it's incorrect."
O'Connor and Ballew both cautioned that it was too early to give a firm read on December sales, since a large amount of deals in the month are done between Christmas and New Year's.
But Ballew noted that many estimates are still cautious after the industry's recent slowdown.
"I wouldn't describe it to be a great month but it will be a solid month," Ballew said.
O'Connor said Ford expected the U.S. market share of its Ford, Lincoln and Mercury brands to hold "relatively stable" next year. GM's domestic brands had 28.1 percent of the U.S. market through November, while Ford held 20.3 percent.