Despite its prolonged shutdown at the start of the year, plus almost Gaily sit-downs in various of its plants, General Motors up to May 31 had built 824000 of its 1937 models, or only 55,000 less than in, the corresponding period one year ego. General Motors expects that its production in June, July and August will be close to 600,000 units.—In cther words, by August 1 it will have made up all the losses in production incurred by its big strike.
One of the country's largest car companies in the low-price feld. Ford, which hes not yet had any labour interruptions, sold more cars at retail in the first ten days of June than in the same period of May. This is contrary to the usual seasonal trend.
Retail sales and factory shipments ct; Hudson and Terraplane cars have set new records for 1937 and have shown steady gains for six consecutive weeks. Cadillac-La Salle shattered all-time records in May by selling at retail 5,273 cars. Thus far dealers have sold 28,947 of the 1937 model Unquestionably the total production of motor cars for the 1937 model year will be affected adversely by the series of strikes through which the industry has gone. To cite an outstanding example, one prominent manufacturer lost 130,000 assemblies during a prolonged strike early in the year which it will not be able to make up the balance of this season. Another company states that its production for the current model year Will be 25,000 cars short of the number it could have sold if it had not been shut down for five weeks by labour disturbances.
"There is one company, on the other band, which has been turning out Cars considerably in excess of its sales requirements all year. Its dealers to-day have full stocks and the factory recently has been compelled to curtail operations to four days each week. The reason for this overproduction has been the fear that a strike might tie up its plants so that dealers would be unable to get new cars. Hence the company has played safe by seeing that dealers have enough cars in stock to tide them over a prolonged strike.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.