#Coronavirus

Fall holiday discounts aside, the height of summer is typically a good time to head out and buy a car. The weather’s good, new models are rolling into dealers, and markdowns are appearing on older stock taking up precious space. Yet 2020 is anything but a normal year.

As the industry struggles to regain the volume it once enjoyed, threadbare inventories continue to plague automakers, though not everyone’s equal in this exercise.

Ford cautioned that some of its American assembly plants could be put on ice as early as next week, as shortages persist at a Mexican plant still not running at full capacity.

The potential engine shortages stemming from coronavirus fears at Ford’s Chihuahua Engine Plant and in the surrounding countryside would stymie production of key Ford products, including the new-for-2020 Super Duty line.

Fiat Chrysler’s Serbian assembly plant was the first European auto factory to shut down as a result of the growing coronavirus pandemic — a grim harbinger of things to come, and not just for Europe.

That temporary February shutdown stemmed from a parts shortage arising from the hard-hit Chinese manufacturing sector. A far more prolonged shutdown came in mid-March, for obvious reasons. Well, that’s all over, as a crucially important product is now back in production, ready to satiate the hunger of the American buying public.

This year is a bit different. If you plan on celebrating the birth of your nation by blowing up a small part of it (still one of my favorite Simpsons lines), you best be doing it with a mask on and socially distanced from anyone you don’t live with.

Despite new health measures incorporating physical distancing, barriers, and personal protective equipment, working on a factory floor is undoubtedly a tense experience for many these days. That certainly seems to be the case at Fiat Chrysler, which issued a warning to its hourly workers over the weekend.

As reported by Bloomberg, the warning comes after production stopped at two U.S. assembly plants amid workers’ fear of a lurking virus. Do that again, and expect a smaller paycheck, FCA replied.

In what might be the most blindingly obvious statement ever to be made in this august publication, the second quarter of 2020 was an absolute disaster for vehicle sales. Under the withering gaze of a global pandemic, the nation’s car dealers were awash in red ink — and the bitter tears of various dealer principals.

Demand and supply have cratered, producing a bewildering simultaneous mix of good deals in some segments as stores try to keep the lights on while shortages of a few key models hold the pricing line on others. Pile on the vanishing rental market you have an automotive industry the likes of which few have ever seen.

A while back, I penned a piece describing my mixed feelings about NASCAR running without fans during the pandemic.

Now, a few weeks on, I have a bit more clarity.

I was worried that even with NASCAR’s safety protocols in place, the coronavirus might spread among crew. I was also worried about contact between the safety crews and a driver after a crash that could lead to virus spread (this worry didn’t make the final edit).

Well, that’s it, then. Is the traditional auto show dead? The tombstone has yet to be erected, but Monday’s cancellation of the 2021 Geneva International Motor Show, coming on the heels of so many cancellations in 2020, certainly makes it feel as if, somewhere, an epitaph’s being chiseled on a monument.

The planned 2020 Geneva event was the first international trade show cancelled this year (at the 11th hour, it should be noted) as the coronavirus spread north from a Northern Italy hot spot, heralding a slew of cancellations to follow. New York, a month later, then Detroit in June. China and Germany.

And now Geneva again.

Your mileage will vary, automakers. As consumer confidence increases to some degree — a phenomenon partially dependent on what the novel coronavirus is doing in various regions — auto sales are expected to follow.

Forecasters now claim U.S. auto sales will see a marked uptick in June that pales next to the jump seen in May.

Without getting into the thick, tangled weeds of various coronavirus-related controversies, let it be known that, in some states, the streets and highways have returned to traffic levels seen before “lockdown” became common verbiage.

Yes, a good many of you are really putting miles under your belt (and tires). It’s summer, it’s hot, and lockdown measures are mainly a thing of the past, despite the rising levels of COVID-19 reported in regions that initially escaped the worst of the initial wave. But just how much are you driving?

After a streak of 11 consecutive years of U.S. sales growth for Subaru, a period in which the brand doubled its market share to 4.1 percent, “We’ll start a new streak next year,” the brand’s U.S. CEO Tom Doll says of 2020.

At any other point in history, the declines reported by Subaru over the last few months would be calamitous. Yet Subaru’s year-over-year losses in 2020, a year torn to shreds by COVID-19, have not been as severe as anticipated. Moreover, bright spots have been more numerous than expected.

The company, as a result, is now planning for 2020 to end as the brand’s sixth-best on record.

If the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that you can keep people isolated in their homes without any negative consequences whatsoever.Sure, we’ve seen articles from scientific journals like The Lancet warning that similar experiments run on a much smaller scale resulted in psychological stress and disorder, including low mood, insomnia, stress, anxiety, anger, general irritability, emotional exhaustion, paranoia, drug abuse, depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms, but where’s the evidence of that happening this time?Don’t answer that.Employers the world over are already seeing the benefits of remote work and have begun to consider how to make it a long-term proposition. In addition to protecting companies against any new COVID-19 outbreaks, stay-at-home orders mean paying for less office space and utilities. Automakers are starting to think this is a pretty sweet deal — especially with productivity not having taken much of a hit — and are now considering whether to extend at-home employment indefinitely.

By now, most Americans are sick of seeing the inside of their own homes, but not everyone falls into that camp. There’s pros to go with working from home that, in some cases, outweigh the cons.

Ford Motor Company, which sent 30,000 U.S. employees home amid the coronavirus pandemic, wants to hear from this cohort on whether remote work should become the status quo.

The trans-Pacific flow of automobiles between the U.S. and Japan has always been a lopsided thing, with an infinitely greater number of cars heading east than west. Lately, thanks to a spiky virus, that flow has tapered off.

Just how fewer Japanese vehicles made a boat trip in May is cause for concern for their country of origin.

Don’t let that beer in your hand (and the public patio surrounding you)fool you into believing everything’s normal — the novel coronavirus is still causing headaches, including for automakers attempting to return to full-scale production.

For Volkswagen, it means the plants supplying U.S. dealers with strong-selling models will remain offline for a while longer, complicating the return to normalcy.