According to Reuters, U.S. sales of new cars and trucks are likely to come in at a stronger-than-expected total in December, mostly because of spending on incentives by General Motors, a senior Ford Motor Co. official.

"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.

Reuters also reported that GM has acted first in Detroit's price war for most of 2002, offering interest-free or low-interest loans and other discounts to help bolster sales amid U.S. economic recovery.

According to Reuters, Ford and the Chrysler group have matched GM's pricing moves, for the most part. But O'Connor, who noted that GM is determined to achieve a second consecutive year of market share improvement this year for the first time since 1976, told reporters that Ford 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, reported Reuters.

Reuters said that Paul Ballew, GM's chief of industry analysis and sales, said all automakers had been aggressively discounting this year to 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 Day, Reuters reported.

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, according to Reuters.