"Chrysler clearly did not react soon enough to falling prices," said John Casesa, an automobile analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York.

"Ford's been selling at capacity for several years now," said Mr. Hammond, the automobile analyst.

"It looks like they have bought their customers by giving them lower prices," said Rolf Woller, an automobile analyst at Hypovereinsbank in Munich.

"They were in a pretty bad way," said Stephen Reitman, automobile analyst with Phillips & Drew in London.

Many automobile analysts have argued for more than a year now that BMW's strategy with Rover is misguided.

"It takes years to restructure a company," said Seiji Sugiura, an automobile analyst with Nomura Securities.

Paul Kleinaitis, an automobile analyst for Duff & Phelps Inc. in Chicago, said he had expected somewhat higher sales.

Japanese officials and automobile analysts say European protectionism is causing Japanese manufacturers to reconsider their plans.

"Zetsche has learned that it is sometimes easier to let people think through the issues," said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a leading German automobile analyst.

Mazda is "kind of pulling in its horns for a while," said Ben Moyer, automobile analyst at Merrill Lynch Japan.