ESCONDIDO -- A once-in-a-career slowdown has hit the auto industry, but salesmen at the Escondido Auto Park just north of West Valley Parkway seem to be taking it in stride.

I took a stride of my own through the dealerships on Tuesday afternoon after a dealers association reported that car sales in San Diego County fell by 33 percent this summer after three years of steady, but slower declines. I wanted to see what those figures meant for some of the people whose lives depend on them.

Customer traffic on Auto Parkway was fairly light, even for a weekday.

At North County GMC Jeep, a salesman in his mid-20s said the market's downturn had been a shock mainly to sales people who had been in the business for more than five years.

Many of them had gotten used to earning $10,000 or more a month and typically had to support families, he said. In contrast, a younger rep who brings home just $3,000 monthly is satisfied because he had never earned more in the past, he said.

Salespeople who work for commissions feel economic ups and downs more sharply than workers in other industries, sales manager Mark Hoye noted.

He recalled one customer whose mortgage brokerage was earning $2 million a month just a couple of years ago. The customer bought a luxury vehicle but ended up losing it because he missed payments when his own income dried up.

Hoye said the market shriveled in August and September, mainly, he said, because of the sudden disappearance of several companies that previously had made auto loans. That shows how important it is to save money in fat times, Hoye said, particularly for people whose incomes can vary drastically from one month to the next.

"You've got to roll with the punches," he said.

Jason Rider started working at the dealership earlier this month. He said one of his friends had called him crazy for getting into the car business this year. But he was optimistic, and he said he was confident it would be better than the construction industry, which he had recently left.

I was a little surprised that most of the salesmen seemed so resilient. But it makes sense: Sales requires a certain sort of persistent optimism. I've seen that in my father, who makes his living on commission in life insurance, annuities and estate planning.

My roommate is similarly optimistic, but even he abandoned auto sales two years ago for a job with an industrial distributor. He now sells a variety of machinery to a variety of manufacturers. When one customer is slow, another one is picking up the slack, a sharp contrast to the business of selling just one or two car brands.

And results vary widely from one brand to the next. An industry report earlier this week showed statewide Chrysler sales down 40 percent, Saab sales down 50 percent and Hummer sales down 60 percent. Sales of Hondas, Jaguars and Mercedes were down by less than 10 percent.

Volkswagens are off by about 2 percent.

A sales manager at Classic Volkswagen said that's partly because of the lending dynamic. Finance companies have been more willing to lend on Volkswagens partly because they tend to hold their value for longer than domestic models, he said. When a driver misses payments on a VW, the finance company usually can repossess it and auction it off for close to the unpaid balance, he said.

Still, the manager said the overall lull makes now a good time to spend the day at an offsite training session. The regular salespeople were absent from the dealership on Tuesday.

As he spoke, a customer in his early 30s emerged from the dealership's finance office. He had short, spiky blond hair and a Bluetooth device was clipped to his left ear. He seemed to be in a pretty good mood, maybe because he was getting a new car.

Salesmen at most of the dealerships said financing has been their biggest problem of all since midsummer. Of the 13 automotive lenders that Classic Volkswagen was using last year, only three remain, though those are able to finance most of the deals that the dealership sends to them, the sales manager said.

Citi Financial and North Island Federal Credit Union have cut back auto loans sharply, he said; salesmen at several dealerships noted that North Carolina-based Wachovia and several others no longer exist.

At Heller Ford, all three salesmen on duty were with potential customers. But there was no doubt that fewer people are buying cars than were buying a year or two ago, a sales manager said.

"It hurts," he told me, "and that's all I'm going to say."

Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (760) 740-5444 or cbagley@nctimes.com. Bagley blogs about local economic trends at www.nctimes.com/blogs/minding_your_business.