Automotive News has some pretty sobering articles on its front page this week - under the overall headline, "The Great Collapse."

In terms of sales, which have been down all year, it said the dreadful September numbers - Nissan down 37 percent, Ford off 36 percent, Chrysler down 33 percent, Toyota off 32 percent, Honda down 24 percent and General Motors off 26 percent - "could be the start of a really bad stretch."

September was the first month in 15 years that sales failed to reach one million vehicles, according to Autodata. Automotive News cites some analysts predicting sales this year at the 13 million level, down dramatically from the 16.2 million vehicles sold last year. U.S. sales peaked in 2000 with 17.4 vehicles sold.

Interestingly, the authoritive industry newsletter said the market for luxury cars seemed to be particularly affected by the credit crunch.

In addition to the bleak projections for this year's sales, the Automotive News cited leading industry officials, including Ford CEO Alan Mulally and GM COO Fritz Henderson, as saying that sales won't recover until 2010.

"Once you get pent-up demand, you can get a nice (recovery)," Bob Schnorbus, industry analyst with J.D. Power and Associates, told Automotive News. "But that's going to be awfully hard to do over the next year because of the problem of getting credit to customers."

- Peter C.T. Elsworth