The Brooksville Journal

Lack of Materials Hits Car Output
Production Now Sustained At Level of 100,000 Units a Week.

DETROIT. - Production operations throughout the nation's car industry continue to be hampered by the materials supply situation, especially with respect to sheet and strip steel, with no indications of substantial improvements in sight.

Meanwhile, however, the automobile assembly plants are keeping output volume close to the 100,000-units-a-week level.

That level will be maintained barring a prolonged work stoppage within the industry's own plants or those of vital suppliers.

Swamped by Orders.

The current production rate, maintained through the year, would yield close to five million cars and trucks.

But the industry, with the heaviest accumulation of unfilled orders in its history and no apparent letup in buyer interest, would like to achieve that volume in 11 months or less.

It had planned to this end when it laid out original schedules for July, August and September. Now the prospective tight supply situation may require a sharp scaling down of the original projections that called for around 1,750,000 cars and trucks in the year's third quarter.

Car manufacturers have complained of materials shortages almost since the beginning of postwar operations while at the same time steadily increasing their output.

Capacity Not Reached.

Production volume currently is running ahead of monthly totals as far back as July of 1941.

How many vehicles might be rolling out of the assembly plants if the industry had all the materials it wanted is anybody's guess.

Certainly, the present rate is not keeping much more than 60 per cent of its plant capacity in use.

Quite probably if the industry could turn loose all its production capacity it still would not schedule much more than five million units a year.

It would, however, make them in 10 months, instead of 12 and utilize the other two months for customary model switchover.