A pair of Dodge Dart bodies roll down the Belvidere assembly line.
Buoyed by double-digit sales gains that have outpaced the overall U.S. market for 14 months in a row, Chrysler is struggling to keep up with demand – and will cancel planned summer shutdowns at four of its North American assembly plants, the maker says.
Two other factories will have the traditional two-week break cut in half, it has announced in the wake of reporting that its April sales surged 20% above year-earlier levels. That was Chrysler’s 25th consecutive month of sale increases.
The shutdown is one of the perks offered to employees under Chrysler’s contract with the United Auto Workers Union. But Chrysler – like its Detroit rivals, General Motors and Ford Motor Co. – also uses the break as a way to balance inventories and do much-needed factory maintenance. It’s often an opportunity to upgrade to new models, as well.
But with dealers struggling to maintain inventories on some of Chrysler’s most popular models the maker has decided to skip the break and put the production pedal to the metal, so to speak.
If anything, demand is so strong that Chrysler is getting ready to add a third shift at its Jefferson North plant, in Detroit, where it produces both the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango. That factory was the first to put on the no-break list.
Two other Jeep plants will keep operating through the summer: the Toledo Supplier Park facility producing the various Wrangler models, and Chrysler’s plant in Belvidere, Illinois assembling the Jeep Compass and Patriot. But that prairie-based plant has an even more important role for Chrysler that means it can’t take a break. It is just launching the maker’s critical new compact Dodge Dart sedan.
(For a review of the 2013 Dodge Dart, Click Here.)
Chrysler has invested heavily at the Belvidere plant in a goal of delivering Japanese-level quality and will be pushing hard to have enough of the new Dart sedans on showroom floors as the new model-year gets underway.
(For more on Chrysler’s plan to drive quality into the new Dodge Dart, Click Here.)
The fourth plant skipping its normal break is based in Toluca, Mexico. It produces the Dodge Journey crossover – which is sold in Europe as the Fiat Freemont – as well as the little Fiat 500. After a painfully slow start, the microcar has been gaining momentum with the introduction of new variants such as the high-performance Abarth. Fiat 500 sales jumped 336% in April, albeit off a relatively small volume a year earlier.
Workers will get at least a week of vacation at the Chrysler plant in the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, that factory assembling the Chrysler 200, the Dodge Avenger and European-bound Lancia Flavia. Also getting a shortened break is the truck plant in Saltillo, Mexico that produces the various Ram pickups.
All told, Chrysler Group sales have risen 33.4% for the first four months of 2012 – compared to a 10.3% increase for the industry overall.