Evening star., 1940-08-04
Auto Plants Expect
100000 Units Weeks
Schedule October |
Trade Observers Feel
Demand for 1941 Cars
To Maintain High Level
Nv the Associated Press.

BY the Associated Press.
DETROIT, Aug. 3.-The Nations
automobile assembly plants will be
back on 100,000-units-a week
production schedule by October /,
If the expectations of leading trade
observers materialize More than
that, consumer demand for la41
models will continue at level high
enough to delay the final COM
pletion of dealer stocking until we'll
after the end of the current calen-
dar year.
The men who head to motor car
industry are not making these pre-
dictions because they long ago de-
cided that there were too many
out-of-sight factors controlling the
activities of both the production and
the merchandising divisions of auto
mobile business.
Full Schedule Outlook.
Of the record, however, a number
of them have agreed that by the be-
ginning of the final quarter of the
year, most if not all car manufac-
turers will be right back where they
were when they began tapering
off 1910 model output-operating on
schedules calling for at least 100000
vehicles a month in the aggregate.
How long they can maintain
those schedules even the more opti-
mistic among the trade experts are
reluctant to guess. Certain it is, lcw-
ever, that the influences that stirlu-
lated a contra seasonal buying wave
during the last several weeks and
cut deeply into half-million new
car surplus by mid-July will con-
tinue to prevail through the Octo-
er-November-D December quarter of
this year.
In addition to endeavoring to
stock up the dealer outlets through
out the country as promptly as COS
sible, the manufacturers undoubt-
edly will plan also to again build
Surplus" or a reserve" inventory
of 1941 models to provide for what
ever contingencies may interfere
with their normal plant activities.
100000 Units Month.
The manufacturers undoubtedly
can get back into 400,0 000-units-a-
month schedule by October /, but
new model production always de-
velops it's crop of bugs" that retard
smooth operation of the assembly
lines. Sometimes it takes only
few days to eliminate these diff
flculties.
There have been occasions, on the
other hand, where production has
been slowed down for as much as
fortnight while the new model
production machinery is being prop
erly shaken down"
Thus, by the law of averages alone,
the car manufacturers cannot pos
sibly begin building up the reserve"
supply of 1941 models until after the
turn of the year. How rapidly the
supply grows then will depend, of
course, upon how much of backlog
of untitled orders has accumulated
at that time.
1t has been several years since the
motor car manufacturers have felt
safe in building up reserve stock
of new models; generally they have
attempted to- gear the production
machinery closely to visible demand.
The reasoning was that if there
were no surplus on hand at the
end of a model season there would
be no major rise and fall in con-
sumer demand over the ensuing
model year.
Defense Is Problem.
Generally the program has worked
out we'll in maintaining more even
level of factory activity, but the
eXigencies of demand almost un-
precedented in midsummer and the
uncertainties of a national war de-
fense program necessitated a re-
arrangement of the production
philosophy throughout the industry
this year.
The car manufacturers have made
1t clear that their facilities are
available for Government defense
orders in so far as their prevailing
equipment is adaptable to such
work. At the same time they are
unanimous in the conviction that a
secondary economic defense" lies in
the maintenance of approximately
normal peace time production &C
tivities.