U.S. retail auto sales fall nearly 38 percent in February

DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. industrywide retail light-vehicle sales declined nearly 38 percent in the first 22 days of February, according J.D.Power and Associates, an influential industry tracking service.

Total sales for are expected to come in at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 9.1 million units.

The forecasting firm also said it now expects U.S. light vehicle sales to drop to a 27-year low of 10.4 million vehicles this year, compared with its earlier forecast of 11.4 million units.

The new forecast is in the range of the outlook provided by many analysts and some automakers.

"We believe we are nearing the bottom of this cycle," said Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates. "Our expectation is for February or March to be the low point, but a high degree of uncertainty and risk remains for the second half of 2009."

U.S. auto sales fell 18 percent to about 13.2 million vehicles in 2008 from the prior year, reflecting the downturn in the economy and most automakers expect sales to decline from there in 2009. The rate has hovered just above 10 million on an annualized basis in the last couple of months.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta, editing by Dave Zimmerman)