Q3 Sees Minor Adjustment
Executive Summary
As Q3 output gets under way, scheduling adjustments have trimmed North American production plans by just 0.2%.
In their first reassessment of the record-breaking third-quarter North American output plan unveiled a month ago, automakers made mostly minor adjustments, trimming the slate by a mere 10,800 units to 4,507,700 vehicles, still an 0.6% gain on like-2015’s 4,482,700 completions.
Neither FCA nor General Motors made significant changes to their previously set third-quarter plans, although GM added 500 cars and a like-number of light trucks.
Likewise, Ford, which has yet to finalize its third-quarter slate, is expected to build 100 more cars in the period, according to the latest WardsAuto forecast.
The biggest adjustment came at Nissan, where planned August truck output was cut by 10,000 units. But some or all of that may have been more of a correction to previously overstated figures than an actual production cut. And, Nissan added 1,000 units to its September schedule, while cutting 500 cars from the month.
Honda trimmed car output by 4,700 units, nearly a third of it in September, the same month in which it cut 500 trucks.
The only other change of significance was the 2,500 additional units baked into the Q3 output plans of dedicated medium- and heavy-duty trucks makers in the U.S.
Third-quarter tweaks follow an estimated second-quarter finish totaling 4,731,600 vehicles, some 9,300 less than had been expected a month ago.
That includes an estimated June tally 9,000 units below plan and a final May count that was 2,900 units less. Those “losses” were offset partially by an upward adjustment of 2,500 units in revised April figures.
Overall, April-June now includes 11,400 fewer cars and 2,000 more trucks than were slated in WardsAuto’s June 3 report.
The latest quarterly adjustments bring output for the year through September to 13,791,500 cars and trucks. That’s 2.0% more than the 13,552,800 units built in like-2015, with GM, Ford and FCA running at a combined 100.2% of prior-year output, transplants at 104.7% and medium- and heavy-truck makers at 81.8% of year-ago.
