Hurricane Sandy dents GM vehicles sales in northeast

General Motors Co's vehicle sales in the northeast United States will be hurt by Hurricane Sandy, while the company's Maryland transmission plant was closed on Tuesday, the No. 1 U.S. automaker said.

GM did not provide an estimate on how badly sales would be impacted, and said it is still assessing the storm's impact on its dealer network in the affected areas.

The Detroit automaker said it is not seeing significant delays in its supply base, but its plant in Baltimore, which closed at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) on Monday, canceled production on Tuesday. However, the plant is scheduled to resume work on Wednesday.

Ford Motor Co said it has seen no impact on manufacturing and its plants are operating normally, including a stamping plant in Buffalo, New York. A spokesman said the automaker doesn't anticipate any issues, but continues to monitor how suppliers are affected.

A second Ford spokesman said it was reasonable to assume that sales would be affected by the storm, but the company had no way to measure the size the impact at this time.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)