Pace of new vehicle sales slip again in April.

(From Agence France Presse)

American consumers bought 1.4 million new vehicles last month, off 6.2 percent from April 2003, as generous incentives failed to offset softening consumer confidence.

Detroit's Big Three took the brunt of the slowdown: sales for the domestic automakers were off a combined 8.6 percent, according to the New Jersey analysis company Autodata Corp.

General Motors Corp. and the Ford Motor Company could at least take comfort in the fact that they had a better sales mix, with the turnover of more profitable trucks outpacing cars.

The world's number one automaker, GM, for example, saw its truck sales edge up 2.5 percent over a year ago, while car sales plunged almost 22 percent.

Over at Ford, which is still grinding its way through a painful restructuring, the rate of decline in car sales was twice that of trucks.

The recent spike in oil prices related to the Iraq war didn't appear to put a dent in the popularity of the gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles last month, GM analyst Paul Ballew noted.