Consumers frightened by the prospect of losing their jobs stayed away from auto showrooms again in January and sent U.S. car and truck sales falling 37 percent, a familiar refrain for the struggling industry but an unwelcome start to a critical year for U.S. carmakers.

Devastated by an economy in which few people have the spare cash to buy a car or can obtain the financing to do it, Chrysler's domestic sales for January were less than half what they were a year earlier.

Sales fell 49 percent at General Motors and 40 percent at Ford. Toyota and Nissan's sales each fell at least 30 percent.

"How many ways can you say disaster?" asked Aaron Bragman, an auto industry analyst with the consulting firm IHS Global Insight in Troy, Mich. "That's across the board. It's not unique to one company."

With January's drop, the industry's sales have declined for 15 straight months when compared with the same month in the previous year. There hasn't been a year-over-year increase since October 2007, when light vehicle sales rose a paltry 1 percent, according to Autodata Corp. and Ward's AutoInfoBank.

The industry's sales of 656,976 vehicles, compared with just over a million in January 2008, translates to a seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 9.57 million, according to Autodata. That's the worst performance since June 1982, when the nation was mired in a recession.

Huge declines in low-profit fleet sales to rental car companies made January an exceptionally bad month, even though automakers said they were encouraged that retail sales appeared to be stabilizing after four straight months with an industrywide sales plunge of at least 30 percent.