March 2 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, weathering the worst U.S. auto-sales market since the early 1980s’ recession, may find it hard to close enough plants to repay federal loans until demand rebounds.

“Absent volume recovery, it is difficult to see how GM -- or any U.S. automaker -- could cut enough cost in the next year or two to truly be seen as viable,” Christopher Ceraso, a Credit Suisse analyst, wrote in a Feb. 27 report.

February sales plunged 50 percent at Chrysler in January from a year earlier, 45 percent at GM, and 42 percent at Ford Motor Co., based on the average estimates of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Toyota Motor Corp. may report a 37 percent drop, Honda Motor Co. could slip 32 percent, and Nissan Motor Co. may fall 34 percent, according to three analysts.

Sales at levels not seen in almost 27 years make it more challenging for GM and Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler to become profitable and pay back $17.4 billion in U.S. loans. President Barack Obama’s auto task force may approve as much as $21.6 billion more aid for the two automakers and support for the thousands of companies that make auto parts.

Automakers may report tomorrow new vehicles sold at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 9.5 million units, according to the average estimate of 27 analysts and economists surveyed by Bloomberg. That rate would be the lowest since June 1982, when the U.S. had less than three-fourths as many licensed drivers.

Annual U.S. light vehicle sales averaged more than 16 million this decade.

‘Wake-Up Call’

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said GM’s plight is “a wake-up call to America” that signals the need to increase energy independence and overhaul the nation’s health-care system.

“It’s an example, in my view, of what the president’s saying for this country: We have a day of reckoning,” Emanuel said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “That is the challenge we face as a country.”

GM needs government help worldwide to get through the worst automotive market since the end of World War II, Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Geneva. The automaker said it was in aid talks with governments around the world when it presented a progress report to the U.S. government Feb. 17.

Falling sales are forcing GM to undergo changes it has needed for years, such as reviewing the future of its Hummer, Saab, and Saturn brands, Lutz said.

Lasting Low Demand

Automaker restructuring may be vital for a market in which U.S. buyers may purchase about 8 million to 9 million vehicles a year over the next five years, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce World Markets division wrote in a report today.

The U.S. market may not recover to levels seen earlier this decade and would force roughly half of the U.S.’s 51 light- vehicle assembly plants to close and 200,000 people to lose their jobs, said the Toronto-based bank.

Ford, the lone major U.S. automaker to forgo federal aid, said it can continue to do so as long as sales don’t fall below 9 million light vehicles this year. The annual rate may have dipped to that level in February, Ford’s analyst George Pipas told reporters Feb. 27 in Dearborn, Michigan, where the automaker is based.

“Consumer confidence had started to claw back to pre- Lehman Brothers levels, but now it’s slipped back,” he said, referring to the Sept. 15 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which became a symbol of the financial meltdown that began with assets tied to risky home mortgages.

The Conference Board said Feb. 24 its measure of consumer confidence plunged to the lowest level in 42 years of record- keeping. U.S. employers probably shed 650,000 jobs last month, the most since 1949, according to the median estimates in a Bloomberg survey before the Labor Department’s March 6 report.

Sales Keep Falling

February would mark the 15th month of declining U.S. sales for cars, pickups, sport-utility vehicles and minivans. Sales of 685,000 vehicles in February, as predicted by automotive Web site Edmunds.com, would be a 41 percent drop from January 2008.

“We may not be at the bottom yet,” said Jeff Schuster, global forecasting chief for consulting firm J.D. Power & Associates. “If you have more folks without jobs the stock market is down, the overall economy is sluggish, home values are down, and these factors tend to compound each other exponentially.”

It’s the Economy

Analysts have cited the 15-month-old recession when cutting auto-sales forecasts. J.D. Power trimmed its 2009 light-vehicle outlook 9 percent to 10.4 million Feb. 26 on “decaying” gross domestic product growth rates, rising unemployment, and tight credit.

Ford fell 12 cents, or 6 percent, to $1.88 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and has slipped 71 percent in the past 12 months. GM dropped 24 cents, or 11 percent, to $2.01 and has declined 91 percent in the past year. Toyota’s American depositary receipts fell $2.48, or 3.9 percent, to $60.66.

The following table provides estimates for car and light- truck sales in the U.S. Estimates for companies are percentage changes from February 2008. Forecasts for the seasonally adjusted annual rate, or SAAR, are in millions of vehicles.

The SAAR average is based on forecasts from 10 analysts and a survey of 17 economists. The estimates are based on daily selling rates. February had 24 selling days, one fewer than in 2008.

Analyst                    GM       Ford      Chrysler     SAAR

Patrick Archambault        -42%     -37%      -45%          9.3
     (Goldman Sachs)
Christopher Hopson         -43%     -42%      -49%          9.4
     (IHS Global Insight)
Brian Johnson              -44%     -48%      -55%          8.9
     (Barclays Capital)
Richard Kwas               -38%     -41%      -46%          9.5
     (Wachovia)
Rod Lache                   N/A      N/A       N/A          9.3
     (Deutsche Bank AG)
Erich Merkle               -50%     -41%      -51%          9.2
     (Independent auto analyst)
Itay Michaeli               N/A      N/A       N/A          9.6
     (Citigroup)
John Sousanis              -49%     -42%      -54%          9.1
     (Ward’s Automotive)
Jesse Toprak               -46%     -48%      -53%          9.3
     (Edmunds.com)
Jeff Schuster               N/A      N/A       N/A          9.1
     (J.D. Power)

AVERAGE:                   -45%     -43%      -50%          9.3

Bloomberg Economists                                        9.6
     (Average of 17 estimates)

TOTAL AVERAGE:                                              9.5
     (Average of 17 economists and 10 analysts)

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Ortolani in Southfield, Michigan, at aortolani1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 2, 2009 16:34 EST