Here's a surprise - Big 3 production drops sharply

As sales continue to tank for the domestic automakers, production follows right along with the trend. So far this year, plant downtime is running nearly double what it was in 2004, with predictable impact on the bottom line of the Big 3. It's a heck of a situation to be in, as the workers get paid whether or not they're building cars, so it comes down to simply writing off the lost productivity, or building cars that will collect and need to be sold off as leftovers in whatever next summer's big sales event happens to be. "New products" coming next year are said to be the hope for reversing the trend. Now, I don't want to get too snarky, but, uh, haven't we been pinning our hopes on the upcoming "new product" for about four years now?