Car brands’ catch up plans are to skip holidays

Honda’s Marysville, Ohio plant will not shut not for holidays this year. Photo: Honda USA

Honda, BMW and Mercedes-Benz are cancelling their traditional summer factory downtime at U.S. and Canadian plants to boost vehicle production.

Factories were idled for several weeks in accordance with government coronavirus rules but now those have eased up.

GM, FCA and Ford (aka the Detroit 3) will next week announce their production calendar. The factory output will be important for the three, as there has been an increase in large ute sales during lockdown.

Honda lost seven weeks of production from March 23 to May 11 as factories across North America shut down to reduce Covid-19 transmission. It is now adding production days June 27, 29 and 30 that had previously been designated as days off for plant workers, the company said in an email to Automotive News.

"With the auto market improving as stay-at-home orders begin to loosen nationally, Honda has seen a steady climb in customer traffic at our dealerships over the last few weeks. We are expecting a strong sales recovery this month and into the summer sales season," the company said.

"To provide our dealers with the vehicles they need, all Honda automobile, engine and transmission plants in the U.S. and Canada will run additional scheduled production on June 27 and June 29-30, which had previously been scheduled as downtime," the automaker said. Honda has U.S. factories in Alabama, Indiana and Ohio.

BMW USA has cancelled its planned break from June 29 to July 2 at its plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina but July 3 remains a factory holiday.