By Shelley Kofler, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-804437.mp3
Dallas – The plunge in gas prices has prompted auto analysts and media to suggest that battered SUV sales are recovering. Going up. The Arlington GM plant, increased production of SUVs about 13 percent a month ago. KERA's Shelley Kofler took at look at what's going on.
At Friendly Chevrolet in Dallas, you won't find any 2008 SUVs. Tom Munks says his sales of big, politically incorrect gas guzzlers recently began going up. He says it happened when gas dropped below $3 a gallon.
Monks: The people who were trading in June and July, they were trading in that big SUV and got that smaller car. They are coming back in and trading those cars in and getting their SUVs back.
Since November, the GM plant in Arlington has actually increased the number of full-sized SUVs rolling off the assembly line. Workers are putting in overtime.
What does it mean? Are SUV's starting to make a comeback, even though manufacturers are warning of bankruptcy?
Flores: That's a good question
Local Autoworkers President JR Flores says an uptick in sales would be great, but he and the 2,400 assembly line workers in Arlington read the tea leaves differently
Flores: It's in the back of our minds that a layoff is coming. In the past 70's and 80's it wasn't unusual for General Motors to work us a lot of overtime then shut the plant down and lay us off for a stretch of time.
GM says there no plan for a layoff in Arlington. There's another explanation for the overtime. A General Motor's Mexico plant stopped making full sized SUV's, and the company has moved up the closing date of its other full-sized SUV plant in Janesville, Wisconsin. After December, Arlington will be the only plant producing Tahoes, Suburbans and Escalades. So even though annual SUV sales were 46 percent lower last month, GM's Wendi Sabo says Arlington must work harder to pick up some of the slack.
Sabo: Yeah, the market is going to decrease and we already know that forecast is there. But we are still looking at around 220,000 units and it's more than what we can produce on straight time.
GM also cautions that the great sales news coming from Friendly Chevrolet is not wide spread. Discounts and incentives offered on 2008 models have helped move some SUV's off the lots, and sales may be better in Texas than in other parts of the country.
GM forecasts SUV sales during the first quarter of next year will still be a third lower than 2008, and Sabo says gas prices alone won't turn that around.
Sabo: The big issue is the economy. If you can't finance them with credit you can't buy a vehicle.
In the hope Washington really can ease the credit crunch, the Arlington assembly line keeps cranking. GM doesn't want to be short of SUV's if the good times return.