GM July sales drop 27 percent as buyers shun trucks

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. on Friday reported a 27 percent drop in U.S. sales in July as high gas prices, tight credit and a shift away from light trucks produced results for the month below Wall Street expectations.

Adjusting for the two extra selling days last month compared with the same month a year earlier, GM reported a sales decline of 32 percent.

Analysts had expected GM sales to decline on that adjusted basis of between 22 percent and 27 percent for July.

GM sales of light trucks in July dropped 40 percent while car sales fell 19 percent on an adjusted basis.

GM extended a range of sales incentives in the month, including zero-percent financing, but said competitors including Nissan Motor had been more aggressive in discounting light trucks in a slack market.

The weak sales results for GM came on the same day that GM posted a $15.5 billion loss for the second quarter.

GM said that its vehicle inventory had fallen to a three-year low in July at 747,000 vehicles in stock. That inventory level was down 21 percent from the same month a year earlier.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)