GM Set to Increase Q2 Production by 45%

GM intends on increasing vehicle production in the second financial quarter, from 380k to 550k. I know: it’s a major WTF moment. There is no evidence whatsoever that the U.S. new car market is headed for recovery. If anything, the opposite is true, what with home foreclosures and unemployment rising like steam from a New York City manhole. Not to mention the headline of The Detroit News story wherein this information resides: “GM Dealers Balk at Ordering New Vehicles.” The article reports that GM’s orphaned HUMMER, Saturn and Saab dealers aren’t ordering any more vehicles (duh), and current inventory levels at the other stores are, to use the old Bentley power output description, “adequate.” No wonder GM spokesman Chris Lee said “that [production] number could be adjusted.” Still, you’d kind of hope GM PR could do better than that, what with more than a decade of spinning bad news into gold (for the executives anyway). And so they do . . .

“Vehicles that are being requested by dealers or customers are the ones where production would be increased,” GM spokeswoman Susan Garontakos said. “If you’ve got a lot of Saturn vehicles, you can bet we’re not producing those vehicles. There is not a ramping up of production of vehicles that we’re not selling. It wouldn’t make sense.”

So what GM products are selling in sufficient quantities to justify a 45% production increase? Well, none really. Watching the DetN struggle to make the case for their hometown hero’s production plans is plenty painful.

Chevrolet Malibu retail sales were up 33 percent compared with a year earlier. At the end of February, GM had a 90-day supply of Malibus, down from 143 in January, but up from 39 days a year ago, according to Ward’s Automotive Reports. A two-month supply is considered a healthy inventory level, Bragman said.

One bright spot last month was GM’s crossovers. The Detroit automaker sold 6,400 of its new Chevrolet Traverse, a 23 percent increase from January, and Chevrolet’s sales of its crossovers—HHR, Equinox and Traverse—were up 7 percent from last year.