General Motors Corp. said on Dec. 15 that new U.S. vehicle sales across the industry in December are on pace to match November's results.

"It feels a heck of a lot like November at this point," said Paul Ballew, GM's head of industry analysis, according to a Reuters report. But Ballew added that forecasting sales for December is difficult to do because many car and truck sales are conducted in the last week of the month.

Last month, U.S. light vehicle sales hit a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 16.8 million units, above the average rate of just more than 16.5 million so far this year.

According to Reuters, Ballew said that the strengthening U.S. economy will help boost light-vehicle sales next year to an annual rate of about 16.9 million cars and trucks, but the industry won't grow its way out of its troubles, including high incentive costs.

"Pricing is going to be difficult in this industry, it doesn't mean that it's something that's going lead us in the road to perdition," Ballew reportedly said.

Ballew said that U.S. new-vehicle sales are growing at an average rate of 200,000 annually, and light-vehicle sales will surpass the record 17.4 million hit in 2000 by 2006 or 2007, according to Reuters.

"We believe we'll be close to 19 million (total) units by the end of the decade," Ballew said, including annual sales of about 300,000 to 400,000 medium- and heavy-duty trucks in his estimate.