Just passed a dodge dealer with a lot so empty it looked like they were out of business or in the middle of moving - and apparently that is very widespread right now. Yikes.

 

Better than being caught with a massive surplus when demand falls... bad time to buy, though.

 

Could this announcement give us a production hint on the Wagoneer Twins?

If Belvidere is at one shift. Would that give Warren Truck enough chips for the Wagoneer Twins?

Just guessing.

As far as the Cherokee. My wife's is at a month and is fun for her.

Overall I want Belvidere at 3 shifts building product(s). Those products can be Ram, Jeep, Chrysler or Dodge.

Hate seeing a good plant sitting at one shift.

 

With the plants all down, I happened to look at my local dealers' inventories, and just wow. The big one around here usually has 900+ new vehicles. They are down to under 200 on the lot. a handful of Dodges, no Chryslers, and then an even split of Rams and Jeeps. They are all like that too. I can see why the used market is so crazy right now. The going rate for my Durango SRT (with the age and miles I currently have on it) is a few grand MORE than when I bought it. I got an amazing deal, so I can't really sell.

Side note, wouldn't now be the perfect time for companies that are stopping plants to do process improvements to help with build quality type issues? Also, I would think they could also use this time to work on the new product coming down the pipeline (wagoneer twins and grand cherokee twins at this point)

 

I am not picking on you @mentalicca, but others have suggested doing plant improvements and that is totally ignorant of how things work in the auto industry (and most others).

First, there is a budget for such things.
Second, planning is required. You do not shut down and have contractors arrive the next day to work on something that has not been designed yet.
Third, do any of you know what it is like to get contract labor right now? There is a massive shortage and the wait times are months for most projects.

They can move up some maintenance inside the plant and maybe get some things done that were planned to be done in the next month or so, but major work is not going to happen at the drop of a dime.

 

The work on new product has nothing to do with production of current product. They can't easily move plant workers to engineering.

 

So maybe I misstated or overstated my intent with that side comment. For process improvements, I did not mean full scale equipment replacement. I meant things more along the lines of machine recalibration and other things like that. Things that might take several days to accomplish. But, my past experience with regard to that is NOT within the auto industry.

Again, my previous experience in an Engineering R&D group in manufacturing is different than the auto industry, but we would routinely need to go out to plants to do test runs of equipment in the real environment. And that time was always at a premium. But with more plant downtime I just figured there was an opportunity to schedule additional tests/checks/etc that might not have been feasible while a plant is fully operational.

That said, if the lines that run the new product are still being run, that whole point is moot. Heck, it has been 10 years since I worked in that capacity so maybe my knowledge is obsolete.

 

Oh - that makes more sense.