Washington  - The lowest auto demand in the United States since 1993, soaring fuel prices and a weak economy have impacted General Motors, Toyota and Chrysler, which Friday reported a drop in July sales.

Troubled US car giant General Motors reported a 27 per cent decline in July US sales, as well as a massive second-quarter loss of 15.5 billion dollars, or 27.33 dollars per share.

Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC), a well known Global automobile giant, will soon be introducing its newly designed compact car in the Indian market, for which it laid the foundation stone for a Rs 14,00 crore new factory near Bangalore on Thursday. The top company officials reported that the compact new car is expected to hit the Indian roads by the mid-2010 and is currently being developed by Toyota engineers with inputs from Indian engineers.

The Karnataka Chief Minister, B S Yeddyurappa laid the foundation stone at Bidadi, in the presence of Akira Okabe, Senior Managing Director, TMC, Ryoichi Sasaki, Chairman, Vikram Kirloskar, Vice Chairman and Hiroshi Nakagawa, managing director, Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt Ltd.

India’s giant car maker Maruti Suzuki India has posted marginal growth of 1.09% in its monthly sales of vehicles for July 2008.

Maruti sold 58,543 vehicles in July 2008, as compared to 57,909 vehicles sold during the corresponding period of the last year (July 2007).

In July 2008, the A3 segment, where Maruti Suzuki achieved leadership position during the last year, continued to show healthier growth, the A2 segment sales held ground regardless of the adverse macro economic situation.

Munich - Shares in the world's leading luxury carmaker BMW AG dropped nearly 10 per cent Friday after the German-based group said it was cutting its earnings forecast for the year in the face of a slowing world economy, increasing raw material costs and a weak outlook for US sales.

"We now expect that the pretax return on sales for the year to be at least 4 per cent," BMW chief Norbert Reithofer said releasing the carmaker's latest figures. BMW had previously expected its 2008 pretax profit to top its 2007 level.

Tokyo - Nissan Motor Co said Friday that its net profit fell 42.8 per cent to 52.8 billion yen (505 million dollars) in its first quarter from the same quarter a year before, mainly because of the rise in the yen.

Operating profit also plunged 46.1 per cent in the April-to-June quarter to 79.9 billion yen.

Japan's third-largest automaker saw its sales fall 4.1 per cent to 2.35 trillion yen.

Nissan's global sales were up 6.9 per cent for the quarter to 936,000 units.