General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co.’s December sales in America each fell 13% on lower demand for pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles, capping the industry’s first annual decline since 2003. Toyota Motor Corp.’s sales for the month rose 12%.

GM finished with its seventh straight yearly slide, and its shares fell 4.1%. In December, sales of cars and trucks totaled 341,327 for GM, 233,621 for Ford, and 228,322 for Toyota. DaimlerChrysler AG today reported a 1% decline from a year earlier, while Nissan Motor Co.’s sales rose 0.6% and Honda Motor Co.’s fell 0.8%.

“It’s a weak market for trucks and sport-utilities and that’s affecting all the U.S.companies,” the director of automotive forecasting for Edmunds.com in Santa Monica, California, Jesse Toprak, said. “More buyers are moving to smaller cars.”

The December sales left GM with its lowest annual total since 1970 and Ford with its sixth yearly decline in a row. High fuel prices and a weaker housing market damped demand for light trucks, such as pickups and SUVs, the majority of sales for American-based automakers. Toyota, benefiting from more fuel-efficient models and a better reputation for quality, posted its 11th consecutive yearly increase.

American sales of cars and light trucks fell 3.6% last month to 1.43 million from 1.48 million a year earlier, according to Woodcliff, New Jersey-based Autodata Corp. Full-year sales dropped 2.6% to 16.56 million from 16.99 million, for the lowest total since 1998.

Toyota raised its market share in America to 15.4% last year from 13.3% a year earlier, Autodata said. That led Asian companies to a gain of almost 3 percentage points to 39.4%. The share held by GM, Ford, and Chrysler’s American brands dropped to 53.7% from 56.9%.