When we closed out 2016, we wrote General Motors had a serious inventory problem on its hands. After promises to get its inflating inventory under control, GM is doing just that. On October 1, the automaker reported a 76-day supply, which closes in on its 70-day supply goal by the end of 2017.
Work is still underway to reach the goal, according to Forbes, and CFO Tim Stevens said GM will likely be “somewhere around 800,000” units by the year’s end. That would be down from 850,000 vehicles at the start of 2016 and mark a tremendous inventory turnaround.
The healthy industry average is a 60-day supply of vehicles, but Stevens said it’s approaching normal levels for crossovers, SUVs, and trucks, especially as the market holds strong for utility vehicles.
“We expect to have roughly an 80-day supply of trucks and SUVs which is normal for us; an appropriate level of crossovers – 60, 70 days of crossovers – and somewhere in the zip code of 50 days of passenger cars as we work through that,” he said.
Note the shrinking passenger car number. Much of GM’s planned facility downtime has hit factories responsible for passenger cars, such as the Lordstown, Ohio, plant that produces the Chevrolet Cruze solely.
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