UPDATE 2-Mexico August auto output down 4.7 pct vs yr-ago

(Adds quote from AMIA head)

MEXICO CITY, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Mexican auto production fell 4.7 percent in August from the same month in 2007 as demand faltered in the U.S. car market, industry group AMIA said on Tuesday.

Mexico's exports were down 14.7 percent from August 2007 of last year, AMIA said in a statement on its website. Mexico produced 204,854 vehicles during the month, down from 215,004 in August 2007.

Most of Mexico's auto production is exported to the United States, where auto sales dropped 15.5 percent in August.

Sales inside Mexico also fell 2.8 percent in August from the same month last year.

Mexico's economy has been slowing under the weight of a downturn in the U.S. economy. The Mexican government on Monday lowered its forecast for economic growth in 2008 to 2.4 percent from 2.8 percent previously.

"We have been coping with the situation; however it has caught up with us, and it caught up with us this month in a brutal way," AMIA head Eduardo Solis told a news conference.

"We are going to finish the year with positive, but weaker, results," he told reporters.

Last year, Mexican production increased by 2.2 percent to 2,022,241 cars and exports were up 5 percent from a year earlier. The Mexican economy expanded 3.2 percent in 2007.

Solis said new car sales in Mexico fell because consumers were increasingly importing used vehicles with lower prices from the United States. (Reporting by Luis Rojas Mena and Jason Lange, editing by Richard Chang)