Tiie Washington Post
DETROIT, Jan. 3ÛÓThe nationÛªs major auto makers today reported a IS.8 percent drop in sales for mid-December, the period just prior to the latest round of cut-rate incentive offers.</br></br>The period covered in the latest report, Dec. 11 to 20, was before General Motors Corp. touched off the new round of sales incentives on Dec. 26 to move its bulging inventories of more than 1 million unsold vehicles, ÐÊ</br></br>Domestic auto makers had limited incentives in place on selected models during the middle of the month, but they did little to rekindle showroom activity as buyers seemed to wait for lower interest rate offers to come along.</br></br>The seven companies, GM, Ford Motor Cb., Chrysler Corp., Honda Motor Corp., American Motors Corp., Volkswagen of America and Nissan Motor Manufacturing USA, reported combined sales of 165,132 cars in the United States during the period compared with 196,209 nnits in-theyear-ago period.</br></br>Today^Ford also extended its discounSSaloan program to cover two additional models. The company announced that it will offer 7.9 percent, financing on new 1985 and 1986 Ford Escort and Mercury Lynx models equipped with manual transmissions and delivered to retail customers from dealer stocks by Feb. 22.