GM small car sales swell (add an extra shift a month earlier than initially planned)

[Omaha Steve]

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080617/AUTO01/806170352

It adds plant shift to keep up with demand
Sharon Terlep / The Detroit News

General Motors Corp., in the midst of another major downsizing, can't move quickly enough to keep up with demand in one area of the U.S. auto market that's actually growing.

The automaker said Monday it will add an extra shift a month earlier than initially planned at a Lordstown, Ohio, factory that builds the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 compact cars. A third shift of about 1,000 workers will start Aug. 4 rather than Sept. 1.

Demand for small cars is surging as consumers react to the reality of $4-per-gasoline and a sagging U.S. economy.

GM, which has long reserved its biggest and flashiest marketing campaigns for high-margin trucks, has been heavily promoting the Cobalt as a low-cost car -- pricing for the 2008 model starts at about $15,000 -- capable of getting 36 miles per gallon on the highway. Sales of GM's second-smallest Chevy are up 18 percent through May compared with last year, while the automaker's overall U.S. sales are down 16 percent.

"Sales were through the roof -- we're having a problem keeping in stock like everyone else," said Barry Gonis, general manager of Spitzer Autoworld in North Jackson, Ohio, just miles from the Lordstown factory. "People are coming in and they're looking for these Cobalts that are inexpensive and have great gas mileage."

FULL story at link.

[JeffR]

1. Yeah, whodathunk it?

Identify a market trend + capitalize on it = marketplace success. And maybe being able to read the outrageously obvious tea leaves years ago would have told them that this would happen.

I swear the brain trust at GM are all grade-school dropouts.

And as the old saying has it, as goes GM, so goes America.

[Warpy]

2. Yet all the car ads I see on the teevee and billboards

are still trying to push gas hogs. The US makers have made good, sturdy, reliable and efficient small cars for the last 20 years but you'd never know it from their advertising.

They've given the small car market to Asia with both hands. It's only because people aren't finding Asian cars in stock that they've noticed the cars sitting on US makers' lots.

[kestrel91316]

3. Imagine that.

I expect them to shut down the small car plants soon, however, complaining that they just can't make a profit off them, no matter how many they sell.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

4. GM sells SMALL CARS?? I had NO IDEA...

if only they'd marketed them 30 YEARS AGO, the way the foreigns did....