June 27, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com
In case you were wondering about the lack of JD Power about our van, there is a simple answer – there isn’t any. With passenger vans being the only version that would be sampled, it’s been decided that there just isn’t enough volume to do a statistically valid summary. That said, we do have one good measuring stick in our tool box – warranty data. Being a predominantly commercial vehicle, once again it is a struggle to get an apples-to-apples comparison within GM. But heavy duty versions of the pickups made at Flint and Ft. Wayne have incidents per thousand vehicles 4 to 5 times higher than the van. And our warranty costs for two months in service are the lowest of any truck plant.
This week’s build information: 415 slider doors; 155 r/h door delete; 111 exports; 172 On-Star; 158 Enterprise rent-a-car; 203 diesels; 25 E-26; 106 brake deck spare tire; 127 15 passenger vans; 85.8% white vans; tan interior 1%.
From Automotive News: North American automakers are struggling with a nagging shortage of tires, caused in part by tire plant closings and rising demand for low-volume specialty tires. Automakers are paying much higher prices -- double-digit percentage increases from a year ago -- as tire makers gain pricing power. "We have been bombarded from every side for additional tires, and we can't keep up," said David O'Donnell, Continental Tire's vice president of original equipment in the Americas. "We are at maximum capacity, and all shifts are maxed out." To meet demand, Continental will expand plants in Illinois and Brazil and will build a factory somewhere in North America. But this will take time. The new lines in Illinois and Brazil won't hit full production until 2013, O'Donnell said. Continental is investing $224 million to expand its plant in Mount Vernon, Ill., plus $210 million to expand its plant in Camacari, Brazil. To make things worse, tire makers had been cutting back on North American production capacity before the recession. In 2006 and 2007 alone, four U.S. tire plants were closed, according to TheNew York Times. Plant closures eliminated about 71 million units of U.S. capacity, John Baratta, president of replacement tire sales for the United States and Canada at Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, said in a June article in Automotive News' sister publication Tire Business. Meanwhile, tire manufacturers were opening factories in China that flooded the U.S. market with cheap tires. But in September 2009 the Obama administration slapped a three-year tariff on imported Chinese tires. The tax started at 35 percent of a tire's value declining to 30 percent and 25 percent in the second and third years. The import tax expires in September 2012.
From Cars.com: Despite stagnant sales, the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord remain atop this year's American-Made Index. Falling domestic parts content axed Ford's popular Escape and Focus, but the Dearborn, Mich., automaker's redesigned, Chicago-built Explorer hit the ground running and entered the list at fourth place. General Motors fielded three entrants — a feat not seen since the 2009 AMI — with the Chevrolet Malibu and two large crossovers, the Chevrolet Traverse and GMC Acadia. Honda's Odyssey returned for a second year running, moving up a spot to fifth. Toyota's Sienna minivan and Tundra pickup truck both returned this year, as did Chrysler's popular Jeep Wrangler. Detroit's full-size pickups, once a dominant force on the AMI, remain off the chart. The F-150 held a commanding No. 1 spot in the first three years that Cars.com compiled the index, with domestic parts content as high as 90 percent. Alas, today's Michigan- and Missouri-built F-150 bears only 60 percent domestic content rating. Similarly, the Chevrolet Silverado, which held second place for much of the F-150's reign, has just 61 percent domestic content. Chrysler's Ram 1500 pickup's 70 percent domestic content fares better, but it still falls short of the AMI's 75-percent cutoff. Of the top 50 best-selling models so far this year — a group that made up nearly two-thirds of all car sales — only 29 are assembled in part or in whole in the U.S. Others, from the Toyota Prius to the Chevy Equinox, come from elsewhere. What's more, a number of domestically assembled models, like the Alabama-built Hyundai Sonata and Michigan-built Ford Focus, rely heavily on global parts. That trend could continue. In the 2010 model year, the country's top 20 best-sellers averaged a domestic parts content rating of 62 percent. For the 2011 model year, the top 20 averaged 55 percent. Forthcoming models like the redesigned 2012 Ford Focus — a poster car for Ford's global One Ford strategy — have a domestic parts content rating of just 40 percent. Still, Detroit automakers build a majority of the nameplates with high domestic content. For the 2011 model year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports 37 models have domestic parts content of 75 percent or higher. Twenty-eight of them are from a Detroit-based brand. A year ago, Detroit brands were responsible for 35 of the 47 models rated 75 percent or higher. In 2010, Automotive News reported that the U.S. auto industry produced some 4.4 million cars from U.S. nameplates in the two neighboring countries. That's a sizable number, given the same industry built nearly 8 million passenger vehicles in the U.S. over the same period. It's cheaper to build in Mexico, and thanks to 1994's North American Free Trade Agreement, it comes with little penalty. Labor rates account for less than 10 percent of overall vehicle cost, Fini says. But within that, the difference is significant. In 2010, Canadian autoworkers averaged $38.77 an hour in U.S. dollars, including benefits. Their U.S. counterparts averaged $33.46. Mexican autoworkers, in contrast, made just $3.75 an hour, IHS Automotive found.
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