The pressure to keep incentives high and move them higher will be pretty intense given amount of inventory and the relatively sluggishness we're seeing in sales. It's hard to imagine them going higher, but GM did throw another $1,000 [per vehicle] on its incentive programs the last week. |
They might want to (pay more) in the short term to avoid a strike. But if they're spending money now to gloss over the hard decisions that Delphi needs to make, they're only going to compound their problems when their turn comes up. |
We had been projecting an (annual) sales rate of 16 million vehicles in September. If I take out a third of sales for only a two week period, you still come out with an eye-popping 13.3 million sales rate; 13.3 million is about as low as sales ever get. |
We're sort of seeing an orchestrated slowing of the economy. But what we're not seeing is a slamming on the brakes. |