CAR SALES ON REBOUND

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 16, 1993                   TAG: 9304160223
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Short
CAR SALES ON REBOUND
Robust car and light-truck sales in the first 10 days of April suggest the consumer isn't the tapped-out miser the Commerce Department's March retail sales report made him out to be, economists said.
"The message is that the weakness we saw in retail sales earlier this week was exaggerated by bad weather," said James O'Sullivan, an economist at J.P. Morgan and Co.
With Ford Motor Co. providing the final set of figures Thursday, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of U.S.-made cars in the April 1-10 selling period stood at 6.5 million units, higher than the 6.2 million economists had been expecting. In the final 10 days of March, car sales reached a 6.6 million-unit annual rate. The final selling period of a month traditionally is the strongest.
In addition, and perhaps more importantly, sales of light trucks, which include the popular minivans, surged to a 5.0 million-unit annual sales pace on a seasonally adjusted basis. Light truck sales were at a 4.8 million-unit pace in the final March period.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB