State of the Union June 3, 2011

June 3, 2011 online at www.uawlocal2250.com

Resolutions for the Local Agreement can be submitted through Thursday, June 9. You can get submission forms from your committee person or at the Work Center and return the completed forms to the same.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

On the heels of the best sales month for vans since late 2008, field supplies fell. Total stock fell 1459 units for a 76 day supply and net field stock dropped 1829 to stand at a 45 day supply. There are only 666 (!) passenger vans in net field stock – and over 3000 dealers’ lots available. Oddly enough, 91.3% of Express passengers vans were fleet deliveries while only 22.6% of Savana passenger vans were fleet. On the cutaway side, fleet sales were 82.9% for the Chevy and 96.3% for GMC. Cargo vans were 68.3% fleet for Chevy and 58.5% for GMC. For the month, total cutaway sales were roughly double both last May’s total and this May’s passenger van total – a reflection of large upfitter deliveries typical of this time of year. Overall GM field supplies stood at 611,271 with trucks at a 105 day supply and cars at a 61 day supply (for comparison, Toyota has around 191,000 vehicles total in stock). GM President Mark Reuss told the Wall Street Journal that there are no plans to raise truck incentives to reduce inventory.

Some other interesting facts from May sales: The Malibu was the best selling car for the month, topping Camry, Accord, Fusion, Altima etc. (You’d probably have to go back to the Corsica/Beretta era as the last time GM had the best-selling car in the industry) The Cruze outsold the Corolla, Civic and Focus. The Camaro trounced the Mustang 9451 to 6607. Additionally, 8 of the top 10 selling vehicles in the US were domestic brands.

In mid-June for GM employees paid by Payroll Services in the United States (including ISP paid from the US Payroll Systems), access to your online pay check stubs will move to a new service, ADP iPayStatements. Moving to this new service will allow you to view your paystub whenever and wherever it’s convenient, 24 hours a day/7 days a week using an internet link. There will be no change to the way your payroll is processed. When this change takes place, the payroll history available to you will date back to 12/31/2010. If you need copies of pay statements older than the 12/31/2010 statement, please take the time now to print out your statements. History statements older than 12/31/2010 will no longer be available online after June 18, 2011. Watch for more information, including how to access the new service.

From Autoweek: As proof that there's a group of enthusiasts for just about everything, owners of the lowly Ford Pinto are taking to the roads in celebration of the car's 40th birthday. Pinto owners are driving from Denver to the Carlisle Ford Nationals in Pennsylvania this week, a journeyof approximately 1,600 miles. The group toured Fort Riley in Kansas on Memorial Day, then went on to take laps around the Kansas Speedway and, later in the trip, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The group took several spins around that track at speeds that organizers claimed approached 95 mph (ed. – personally, the only way my ’74 Pinto could go that fast is if you dropped it from a plane).

GM President Mark Reuss recently gave an interview to Automotive News. Here are some excerpts:

Where do you see this year's sales shaking out?
Our production schedules remain pretty flat and constant with around a 13 million-unit [seasonally adjusted annual rate]. I can't predict what's going to happen with the people we compete with here, but that's how we're operating the business. We'll continue to be very agile around things that we run out of or get short of. The mix I think is changing faster than any of us can comprehend.

Is GM commanding more money than in the past for small cars such as the Cruze?

The average transaction price is always a great indicator. Last month [the Cruze] was $2,000 to $3,000 over Corolla and Civic. Granted, those are older products. These small cars, they're heavily contented and great cars to drive. So we're seeing a difference in small-car content buying, and we're seeing a lot of people come to Cruze.

How different will the GMC and Chevy truck lineups be?

We probably have taken a very siloed, two-company, two-brand approach to trucks to take on our competition that has one. When you do that, and you don't do it right, and you've got price overlap and identical incentives and go-to-market strategies, then you're going to get dilution. I think we can do premium Chevrolets and we can take GMC and move it even further up.

Explain what GM has been doing on incentives.

If you look at GM over the last calendar year, we were about $200 [incentives per vehicle] below the industry. That's pretty disciplined. If you look at any one or two months over that year, you'll see us slightly above or below the industry because we're turning different model years. We're not going to be totally predictable for our competition. But we're going to be very responsible from a price retention standpoint. I think if you look at the data, you'll see that General Motors has the highest average transaction prices in the industry.