DETROIT -- General Motors and Ford Motor Co. will drop several light trucks to make room for crossovers.

GM will kill the Chevrolet TrailBlazer and GMC Envoy mid-sized SUVs. Ford plans to drop the Mercury Monterey minivan this year, followed by its Ford Freestar twin at an unspecified date.

Sources inside and close to GM say the company will end production of the TrailBlazer and Envoy by 2010.

GM has canceled a scheduled restyling and re-engineering of the TrailBlazer and Envoy for 2009, sources say. The vehicles were introduced in 2001.

SUVs in a slump
The moves come as sales of mid-sized SUVs slump. U.S. sales of the TrailBlazer and Envoy peaked at a combined 418,381 units in 2004. That dropped to 352,012 units last year.

GM officials say they can counter falling sales of mid-sized SUVs with crossovers on the Lambda architecture, scheduled to go into production this fall. Chevrolet will get a crossover on Lambda for the 2010 model year. The initial Lambda-based vehicles will be the Saturn Outlook crossover, which will arrive at dealerships this year, followed by the GMC Acadia and Buick Enclave crossovers, scheduled for next year.

"We've been preparing for the erosion of mid-sized utilities," Paul Ballew, GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis, said in a meeting with reporters last week.

Ford, meanwhile, will halt production of the Monterey in August. The Freestar minivan is expected to exit the lineup at a later date.

The Monterey is being discontinued because of disappointing sales, Ford's U.S. sales chief Cisco Codina said in an interview last week.

"Overall, appeal and sales of the model has not been to our satisfaction," said Codina, group vice president of North American marketing, sales and service. "We have other plans for the future."
Minivan replacements
Ford is expected to introduce a car-based vehicle to replace its minivans in 2008, and there also will be a Lincoln version. The Ford version is based on the Fairlane concept built on the Mazda6-derived CD3 platform and shown at the 2005 Detroit auto show.

Sales of the Monterey have been dismal since it was introduced in 2003. Mercury marketers initially forecast annual sales of around 25,000 units, but only 8,166 units were sold last year.

Sales this year are even worse. Last year, Mercury sold 8,166 Montereys in the United States. During the first five months of 2006, U.S. sales of the Monterey were 1,811, down 49 percent.

Codina wouldn't comment on the future of the Freestar, saying no decision has been made. Another Ford insider said the Freestar is likely to be killed well before the Fairlane-based product debuts in 2008. The Freestar could be dropped before the traditional end of the 2007 model year.