True cost of July incentives is over $5 billion

Edmunds has crunched the numbers (and there's a lot of them) to bring us the True Cost of Incentives for the July sales month, and things add up to the rather impressive number of $5.3 billion. Domestic manufacturers spent about 80% of that on their way towards capturing 61% of the market share. One might expect incentive spending to drop as GM "adjusts" their sticker prices, which if successful will lead to a me-too response from Ford and Chrysler. But I'm curious to see just how many GM vehicles get the revised pricing. I checked out a nice 2006 Chevrolet 3500 crew-cab pickup at the local dealer last night, and it was wearing the same $48,000 price tag that I'd expect to see on an '05 model. That's a steep price for a truck nearing the end of its model run (an almost identical truck was a lot cheaper last month), and I can't imagine it'll be long before it's got a tag hanging from the rear-view mirror advertising $8-10K off the sticker price.