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Auto dealers are working to put a strong finish on a banner year.

Area dealers are heavily advertising their end-of-year clearance sales, trying to sell as many of their remaining new cars and trucks as possible to boost their overall sales totals for the year.

“You’re always having a big push to finish out a strong year,” said Dan Nagel, general manager of White Allen Honda in Dayton.

And what a year it has been, particularly during December. New car and truck sales are on track to reach 12.7 million vehicles, making 2011 the best year for auto sales since 2008, according to industry data collector TrueCar.com.

New vehicle sales for December in the U.S. (including fleets) are expected to exceed 1.23 million cars and trucks, up 8.1 percent from December 2010.

That’s also up 24.4 percent from last month on an unadjusted basis, according to TrueCar.com.

Good numbers are expected in 2012 as well with nearly 14 million vehicles projected to be sold next year, said Jesse Toprak, TrueCar’s vice president of industry trends.

“It has been an excellent year,” said Terry Tobey, owner of two area Chrysler dealerships, Key in Xenia and New Carlisle Chrysler Jeep Dodge. “New car (sales) were up about 36 percent. Used (vehicle sales) were up about 22 percent.”

Jeff Schmitt, owner of Schmitt Auto Group and its six Dayton-area stores, said his group saw sales rise 25 percent compared to 2010.

“It was our best year ever — by a wide margin,” Schmitt said.

Automakers are hailing the trend: Ford Motor Co. said Friday its U.S. sales for the week topped 2 million for the first time since 2007. Earlier this month, General Motors Co. reported that its total year-to-date sales were up 19.7 percent compared to 2010.

Tobey points to several factors for the year-end success: Dealers are seeing demand that has been “pent up.”

Some business owners are augmenting fleets in the last week of the year to take advantage of tax breaks.

New car prices often rise after the end of the year, and January can be a tough time to shop for a car given the cold and snow it brings.

Tim Doran, executive vice president of the Ohio Auto Dealers Association, which manages the Dayton Area Auto Dealers Association, rejects the idea that inventory taxes or model depreciation inspire dealers to offer end-of-year sales, although he acknowledges, “Obviously, they like to clear out the (older) models.”

“The real issue is that the manufacturers’ incentives (to dealers) are probably greater at this time of year than probably at any time of the year,” Doran said.

Toprak agreed that dealers want to take advantage of manufacturer incentives that reward them for hitting quotas. But incentives to consumers play less of a role these days. This year, Edmunds Auto Observer reported that automakers were keeping incentives at their lowest levels since 2005.

While 2011’s sale numbers aren’t as high as in the mid-2000s, Toprak doesn’t mind that. He said 2006 levels were “artificially inflated,” and domestic automakers were making too many cars five years ago, fueled by easy credit and a lust to hit unreasonably high goals.

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