Mary Byrne considers herself fortunate. She’s got only seven big Titan pickup trucks in inventory at Nissan of Fife.

Those pickups, which get 12 miles to the gallon around town, now carry a $5,000 rebate. But Byrne, Nissan of Fife’s owner, isn’t counting on a rush of customers lured by the incentive.

“You could double that incentive to $10,000 and still not get much traffic,” she said. “The days of the big pickup as a family car are over.”

Certainly, things could be worse, she said.

“I was on a conference call today along with a Nissan dealer in Texas. He’s got 256 pickups on his lot. If I had that many, I’d just walk out into the middle lane of I-5, and I wouldn’t be trying to dodge the cars.”

The change in the market for big pickups and sport utility vehicles is indicative of a major shift in the auto industry both nationwide and in the South Sound.

The mix of steeply higher gas prices, the general economic slowdown and tightening credit standards have created a kind of economic tidal wave that’s swept over the auto industry from manufacturers to dealers.

Sales are down dramatically, and the mix of purchases has shifted swiftly from big SUVs and pickups to frugal sedans.

“Even four or five months ago, the pundits weren’t predicting these kinds of changes,” said Graham Tash, president of Tacoma’s Titus-Will Toyota. “What we’ve seen is really seismic,” he said.

Look at the facts:

In June auto sales figures fell off a cliff – down 18.3 percent nationwide. In Washington, new-auto registrations in April and May, the latest months for which figures are available, dropped by 23.1 percent.

Every major auto company in the U.S. save one, Honda, saw sales drop nationwide last month. In the Evergreen State, all the major companies reported auto registration declines in the April-May period.

Domestic brands were down 29.7 percent; Japanese brands, 18.6 percent; European brands, 20.6 percent; and Korean brands, 24.6 percent, according to figures from the Washington State Auto Dealers Association.

And for the first time in years, cars outsold light trucks both in Washington and across the nation.

From January through May 2008, light truck sales were 47.5 percent of sales in Washington versus 51.4 percent of sales in the same period last year.

Pierce County dealers say they’re weathering the storm, but they expect the transition won’t be pleasant.

A SWIFT MARKET SHIFT

The fairly swift market shift from big road-hogging SUVs to thrifty compacts has left dealer inventories out of sync: a surplus of trucks, a shortage of fuel-efficient cars.

“Last year, the mix of trucks and cars we had in stock was balanced pretty evenly,” said Brandon Slettevold, sales manager at Tacoma’s Bruce Titus Chevrolet. “This year we’ve got three cars in stock and about 50 trucks.” The dealership can still find cars for customers, but they may have to wait.

Byrne, who stands to become the first female president of the Washington State Auto Dealers Association next May, said the situation is exacerbated by the model year changeover.

Most manufacturers are shutting down their plants to transition to the 2009 models, so getting more of the high-demand fuel-efficient cars isn’t a possibility until the model year changeover.

Some manufacturers are sliding that new model introduction back several weeks to give dealers a chance to clear their lots of surplus trucks.

Ford, whose F-150 pickup has been a perennial best-seller, has delayed the introduction of a new version of that truck by more than a month. Sales of Ford’s F-series trucks were down 40.5 percent nationwide in June.

But even sedan sales are down for many dealers, reflecting not so much the high cost of refueling but the troubling state of the economy.

“If it was just gas prices, then some of our smaller cars would be flying off the lot, but we’ve still got a good stock of those too,” said Rob Campbell, general sales manager at Puyallup’s Cornforth Campbell Motors.

Tighter financing standards have influence on who can buy a new car. And leasing is becoming more difficult because of the swift changes in the residual values of cars and trucks in recent months. Wells Fargo Bank just last week announced it was dropping out of the car leasing business because of the volatility of the market.

Even dealerships specializing in more fuel-efficient foreign models report sales declines year-over-year.

In Washington, for the first five months of 2008 ending with May 31, new Kia registrations were down 27.7 percent, Mitsubishi registrations were off 42.6 percent, Honda registrations fell 13 percent, and even Toyota registrations fell by 3.3 percent.

But among a narrow group of cars in demand for their frugal ways, supplies are tight.

Dealers say that customers looking for particularly hot-selling economy models may have to pay list price or more and wait for their new car.

Cars such as the Toyota Corolla, the Honda Civic and the Chevrolet Cobalt are all particularly in demand. Toyota sold 15.6 percent more Corollas last month than in June ’07. Civic sales jumped 9.5 percent, and Cobalt sales were 21.6 percent above last June’s mark nationwide.

In Washington, Mini was the outstanding performer with a 47.8 percent registration increase for the first half of the year.

At Honda of Fife, general manager Tim Bryant said business has been good in part because Honda never entered the market for big V-8 pickups or sport utility vehicles.

Honda’s most fuel-efficient cars, the Fit, the Civic and Civic hybrid, and the smaller CR-V sport utility vehicle, have moved briskly.

“They seem to move just about as quickly as we get them in,” said Bryant.

BIG TRUCK-BUYING INCENTIVES

But while those wanting to find frugal vehicles may encounter short supplies and hard bargaining, buyers who want a truck can find some exceptional deals.

Big Chevy Suburbans and Tahoes and Ford pickups offer multi-thousand-dollar rebates or zero percent financing.

Some customers are buying trucks. “We’ve sold three diesel trucks, four Suburbans last month and we’ve already sent two out the door this month,” said Bruce Titus’ Slettevold.

Campbell said some customers still need big trucks either because they’ve got a big family, they own a business where they need a truck, or they’ve got a boat or trailer to haul.

What he isn’t seeing, however, is smaller families buying big, four-door pickups as substitutes for the family cars. Those people are buying sedans or crossover-type vehicles such as the GMC Acadia or Buick Envoy, he said.

And used pickups and SUVs are going for a song.

That’s a problem for customers who bring in SUVs and pickups and expect to get Blue Book amounts on their trades, said Slettevold.

“People bringing in their SUVs expecting to get $20,000 for their big trucks are going to be disappointed,” he said. “When those trucks are selling at auction for $12,000, no dealer will give them more than that.”

Byrne said car owners often have an emotional attachment to their vehicles, so when dealers offer them dramatically lower trade-in prices, they’re often personally offended.

“It’s a matter of educating them,” she said. “We have a program that shows them the values in the blue books and the actual data from the auto auctions.”

For some would-be buyers who’ll otherwise take a big hit on their trades, it often makes sense to just keep their trucks and drive them less even if fill-ups cost $100, said Tash.

And while hybrids offer attractive mileage, dealers advise buyers to carefully pencil out the costs before committing. Higher acquisition costs can lengthen the payback periods by years even with $4.35-a-gallon gas.

Hybrids typically get their best mileage compared with conventional vehicles in city traffic, so if you’re doing a lot of highway commuting, a less expensive conventionally powered economy car could yield comparable mileage at a smaller upfront cost.

WEATHERING THE STORM

Most auto dealers will weather the current storm, Byrne predicted. Only about 10 of the 340 or so dealers in Washington have gone out of business in the last year, and some of those were bought out by manufacturers who wanted to consolidate their product lines, she said.

“Dealers are a very resilient bunch,” she said.

At Puyallup’s Cornforth-Campbell Motors, Campbell says he’s not worried.

His family has been in the auto business for 70 years, and they’ve seen depressed sales a dozen times in those seven decades.

“We were talking about it the other day, the gas crises of the ’70s, the recessions and 9/11. We’ve seen it before. And we know that after this uncertainty ends, our customers will come back to us. Until then, we’re going to take good care of them and their cars. And they’ll someday return the favor by buying another car from us.”

Campbell’s philosophical take on the current crisis was mirrored by other South Sound car dealers.

“We don’t depend just on new car sales alone,” said Titus-Will’s Tash. “We’ve got used car sales, service and the collision business.”

But customers eventually will need new vehicles, and when they do, the industry will rebound, he predicted.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663

blogs.thenewstribune.com

America’s Top 10 Fuel Misers

Car and combined city-highway EPA mileage

1. Toyota Prius, 46 mpg

2. Honda Civic Hybrid, 42 mpg

3. Smart Fortwo, 36 mpg

4. Nissan Altima Hybrid, 34 mpg

5. Toyota Camry Hybrid, 34 mpg

6. Volkswagen Jetta TDI, 34 mpg

7. Ford Escape Hybrid, 32 mpg

8. Toyota Yaris, 32 mpg

9. Mini Cooper, 32 mpg

10. Honda Fit, 31 mpg Washington new-auto registrations

Winners

Mini +47.8%

Buick +10.3%

Mercedes +7.8%

Subaru +2.1%

Nissan +1.2%

Losers

Hummer -76.0%

Porsche -66.7%

Audi -52.8%

Mitsubishi -42.6%

Cadillac -38.6%