In the midst of tumbling U.S. car sales and a constantly growing inventory of vehicles, GM seems to have no choice other than to significantly cut output by shutting down 13 of its North American assembly plants for multiple weeks from May through to July. GM's plan is to reduce production by approximately 190,000 vehicles to help reduce U.S. dealer inventory levels from 767,000 vehicles at the end of March to a level of approximately 525,000 vehicles by the end of July.The American automaker said that the multiple shutdowns will not impact factories that are in the process of launching new products, including the all-new Chevrolet Camaro built at Oshawa, Ontario, Canada and the Buick LaCrosse launching soon at the Fairfax, Kan. assembly plant.
"We're taking aggressive steps to accelerate our inventory initiatives that have worked well since the first of the year. While sales have been performing at or close to our plan estimates, and dealer inventories have been reduced accordingly, we want to more closely align inventories with even more conservative market assumptions," said Troy Clarke, GM North America president. "By reducing our inventories even more aggressively we reduce pressure on GM and our dealers, and set ourselves up well for a clean 2010 model year start-up."
