Incentives offered by Toyota sent US industry sales soaring in early March

Toyota proving to be winner in March w/ incentives that it started on March 2

Trying to recoup ground lost in past 2 months from recalls / stop-sales orders on some models

Toyota's daily retail sales rate in 1st 8 days of March about 47% higher than last March

Chevrolet matched Toyota's no-interest financing; another winner in incentive war

Chevrolet's retail share 12.9% in early March, up from last March's 11.4%, Feb 11.3%

In 1st 8 days of March, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate of US sales climbed to 12.5M

Highest level since Sept 2008, excluding Aug 2009 during Cash for Clunkers

Incentives typically work best in early going; fizzle out as time wears on

The expected 11M+ sales rate vast improvement over 9.7M SAAR of last March

Incentives combined w/ reservoir of goodwill Toyota has built is minimizing damage

Win comes at price to Toyota; incentives spending will total $1.1B in added costs

"Generous incentives from Toyota and General Motors have stimulated this boom, but we anticipate that it will cool off, and that the month will end closer to 11 million or so." -- Ray Zhou, PhD, Senior Analyst, Edmunds.com