KING COUNTY, Wash. -- New auto sales numbers paint a grim picture. Chrysler's year-to-year sales are down 47 percent while General Motors sales are down 41 percent. Ford has seen a 31-percent drop and Honda 32 percent.

It's a struggle for local car dealerships to stay afloat. They need to move the inventory off their lots. One local dealer even described our economy as a blood bath.

"You can't sugar coat it;it is tough," said Mark Scarff of Bowen Scarff Ford in Kent.

It's so tough that several local dealerships have already gone out of business. Bowen Scarff Ford bought the inventory of one such shops, a Lincoln mercury dealer. But now the Ford dealer is also struggling.

"We cut our employee count by about ten percent," Scarff said.

Scarff said the company also cut and restructured some of the employee benefits.

It's a similar story at Burien Chevrolet.

"Unfortunately we've had to lay a few people off at this dealership. That's something that makes us sick to our stomach to have to do that, but we have to survive to be here to serve the community," said Bobby Lynn.

Dealerships say their money's on the line already, so they need to move what's sitting on the lot now.

"We're selling the cars here at employee pricing doing what we can to let the consumers know, you know, we're in this; they're in this with us. I mean, that's how we look at it. We're just a family-owned store," Lynn said.

"When's the best time to buy? It really is now with the rebates," Scarff said.

Some rebates offer up to ten thousand dollars.

And there's also attractive financing as long buyers can really afford to shop.

"The people that deserve loans should get them and the ones that don't, they should save up a little more and put themselves in a position to deserve the loan," Lynn said.

That's key in any economy. Lynn said he's always believed the glass is half full, not half empty. And these days, he said he needs to remind his sales team of that daily.

"I've never been through one of these. I'm 40 years old. I know that the economy's done this before but not in my time anything quite like this. But people who have been through this tell me that it changes, and it's going to come right back up. It's going to take hard work and we'll get there, and I believe in that.

"We're not going to be judged by how many times we get knocked down; we're going to be judged by how many times we get up," Lynn said.

The trickle-down effect that dealers feel from the automakers, however, is still trickling all the way into the community.
Many local dealerships support their local kids' teams and community, and those groups may now feel the pinch as well.