OK, so it’s a somewhat facetious headline: as an auto manufacturer, Saab either builds and sells cars or it disappears. But in the aftermath of Saab CEO Victor Muller’s pledge that “We will definitely ensure that this [production stoppage] will not happen again,” Saab’s most recent shutdown sent shockwaves of concern through the Saab community. After all, Saab’s official line is that “we knew this would happen,” a position that’s more than a little at odds with Muller’s now-broken promise. And though the just-signed Youngman deal could mean more cash with which to get production at Trolhättan back up and running, there’s a bigger question that remains unanswered: why restart production at all?

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Saab was supposed to reach 100% production speed sometime in the middle of last week after enduring a nearly two-month shutdown. But now it seems that more “material shortages” have brought the Trollhättan plant to its knees again, as Steve Wade of inside.saab.com reports

Yesterday, production at Saab Automobile stopped at lunchtime due to material shortages. We have now stopped again today for the same reasons…

The liquidity situation is still tense, and depends on several different financing solutions falling into place, long-term as well as short-term. Some milestones have been achieved, such as the letter of intent signed with Pang Da and the additional funding that their order of Saab cars means. An example of things that still await a solution is the sale and leaseback of Saab AB Property, which we have addressed in previous communications. Representatives from Spyker and Saab will continue to work with these solutions, while the dialogue between Saab and suppliers progresses.

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At the end of May, GM had no fewer than 288,000 pickup trucks sitting on its dealers’ lots (up from 275k in April). With gas prices on a short-term dip, but in the midst of a long-term increase, and with the season of traditional gas price spikes upon us, that could give The General cause for concern. After all, even a short-term spike in gas prices could cause a sharp falloff in truck sales, stranding huge numbers of trucks on dealer lots. But, GM North American boss Mark Reuss tells Bloomberg,

We’re not going to run big incentives to clear inventory. We’ll adjust inventory on a production basis.

That’s good news for GM’s financial position, and a promising sign of a new spirit of responsible pricing. But in an industry as complex as this, even good decisions could have troubling consequences. If GM “adjusts inventory on a production basis,” the “Tier One Gypsies” who fled Orion Township to avoid a 50% pay cut could find their temporary refuge at Flint Truck drying up, as HD pickups are likely the first to undergo “adjustments on a production basis.” And though that’s not explicitly GM’s problem, it could ratchet up the pressure to roll back the two-tier system in the upcoming negotiation session, and generally fire up the UAW’s dissidents and hard-liners. Meanwhile, with CAFE and gas prices converging on Detroit’s BOF bread-and-butter, we’ll be watching for signs of trouble as GM adjusts to the larger issue of likely long-term declines in truck demand.

Rumors began surfacing about a month ago that Mazda was eying a complete pullout from US production, as it endures weak sales of its last American-built product, the Mazda6. Mazda had reportedly planned for 100k units of Mazda6 production at its Flat Rock plant, which it shares with Ford, before the economic crisis sent the US market tumbling. And with only a little more than 36k Mazda6s built alongside the Ford Mustang at Flat Rock last year, Mazda has little reason to maintain its joint venture, and with it, its US manufacturing presence. Now, the Nikkei [via the DetN] reports that Mazda’s pullout is more likely than ever, citing an unnamed Mazda source as saying it hoped to sell its 50% stake in the Flat Rock AutoAlliance plant to Ford as it restructures its global operations.

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With new compact and subcompact models from Ford and GM enjoying respectable sales, the mainstream media has been indulging in some “feel-good” headlines, like the New York Times’s Detroit’s Rebound Is Built on Smaller Cars, or CBS’s more equivocal Can small cars rebound U.S. auto industry? It’s an understandable instinct, as the media has long battered Detroit’s inability to build competitive compact and subcompact cars, and in the post-bailout atmosphere of redemption, these headlines definitely help reassure Americans about the value of their “investment.” Unfortunately (if unsurprisingly), however, these pieces gloss over the full truth of the situation. Yes, Ford and GM are enjoying improved sales success with small cars. The “U.S. auto industry,” on the other hand, isn’t actually getting all that much out of the situation, beyond some fluffily positive press. Here’s why:

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With €30m from PangDa and €30m from Gemini Investments, Saab restarted production today at its Trollhättan factory. According to SaabsUnited, the line will run at 80% speed today and Monday, before moving to 100% (over 200 cars per day) by the middle of next week. Speaking at a press conference, CEO Victor Muller reflected:

It’s been an interesting lesson. A company like Saab, that lives in a glass house, should never be caught in a situation where there is not enough cash to withstand the storm as the one we have seen now. What happened seemed like a very insignificant situation became a very significant situation, and next thing you know, you are losing six weeks of production… it was very, very tough and we’ve had some very adverse circumstances that we’ve had to live with, but we got out of it. I think that if you got through 2009-2010 as Saab has been, anything else is relatively easy. We will definitely ensure that this will not happen again. This means that we will be on a quest to ensure that we have sufficient funds at all times to overcome adveersities like this because we can’t afford to have another production stoppage with all the relating downsides, such as disappointed customers, upset suppliers and media attention… that is definitely not in our interests.

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When I visited GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant back in October, I was greeted with a few surprises. One was a small fire that flared briefly on my sweater after a cinder from the Volt’s body-welding station struck me. The other was the sight of GM’s latest, most high-tech green car being assembled on a line that was filled with GM’s oldest-school dinosaur cars, the Cadillac DTS and Buick Lucerne. The scene was no doubt intended to inspire appreciation for the changing face of GM, but the scarcity of Volts amid the oceans of giant front-drive barges (production was just beginning) made it clear that it would be a while before Volt production would occupy much of the sprawling facility. With the DTS and Lucerne headed for retirement, the new 2013 Malibu will be taking up residence at Detroit-Hamtramck later this year, even as Volt production capacity is increased to hit next year’s 60k unit goal. And now GM is announcing that the next generation of Chevy Impala will be built at Detroit-Hamtramck as well, leaving folks in Oshawa saying “eh?” (or words to that effect).

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After reaping the hurricane by forcing “Tier One” workers at GM’s Orion Assembly plant into the UAW’s “Tier Two” last year, essentially giving workers a 50% pay cut, GM has been working with the UAW ever since to mitigate that decision. Now, Bloomberg reports that the UAW’s GM negotiator is targeting the $14/hour Tier One wages for growth in upcoming negotiations, arguing that the lower pay rate is “not a middle class wage.” But, he adds

The union doesn’t expect to reach $28 an hour this year for new workers, and it doesn’t intend to make GM uncompetitive

We’ll have to wait and see what that means, but any effort on the part of GM and the UAW to reduce the gap between Tier One and Tier Two wages will help relieve the inevitable shop-floor tensions that such inequity creates.

We still have not heard from Saab and there have been six weeks without production. It eventually reaches a point when you have to make a decision

Johan Andersson of the Swedish unit of supplier giant Lear in the WSJ, on why his employers just laid off all 160 workers of its Trollhättan-based Saab workforce. Apparently Mr Andersson and Lear aren’t any more encouraged by Saab’s PangDa deal than TTAC. And considering that the Chinese dealer group is telling Gasgoo that “production has already restarted” at Saab, the fleeing suppliers who haven’t even heard from Saab yet create some credibility problems for the PangDa-Saab alliance (even if PangDa was referencing GM production of the 9-4X at Ramos Arizpe). Which makes the dire rumors that the deal has not, nor will be, blessed by the Chinese government a little more worrying. Sounds like the rotund lady is warming up her vocal cords…

Despite deep skepticism about the value of Saab’s latest “alliance” with the Chinese dealer group PangDa, it seems that the Swedish automaker will restart production next Wednesday. SaabsUnited translates a DI.se report

“I expect the plant to begin production on Wednesday of next week since they’ve come to the Saab on Tuesday this week,” said Gunnar Brunius, Purchasing and Production Manager at Saab Automobile to DI.

On Tuesday, he initiates the process of agreeing with Saab’s 800 suppliers so that they start to deliver the components again after a six-week shutdowns.

The major suppliers, including IAC, Sweden, Plastal and car seat manufacturer Lear, are invited to personal meetings, while many other contacts are handled through e-mail.

Saab will reportedly restart production at a rate of 230-240 cars per day, but first it will have to pay off suppliers. We’ll see if that actually gets accomplished before we take this report too seriously, especially since CEO Victor Muller has admitted that negotiations with suppliers could take “several weeks.” But, Muller tells Saab employees that “we will never give up,” so who knows how long Saab’s death throes could last.

Mazda may be free from its less-than-entirely-successful relationship with Ford, but when it comes to US production, Mazda is still very much stuck in its Ford-dependent past. B-Series pickup production has ended in St Paul, but Tribute is still built alongside Escape in Kansas City (for the moment), and the majority of Mazda’s US production is still accounted for by Mazda6, which is also built alongside Fords at the shared Flat Rock “Auto Alliance” plant. But AutoWeek‘s Hans Greiml reports that the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper believes Mazda could be looking to pull out from Flat Rock.

the Mazda6 is a big reason Mazda can’t turn a regional operating profit in North America–one of its most important markets.

The company planned to produce 100,000 Mazda6 units annually at the Flat Rock, Mich., plant, when the redesigned sedan was launched there in mid-2008. Then the financial crisis hit.

Last year the plant built only 45,168 units.

Mazda is cagey about what options it is mulling. If it quits producing the Mazda6, it could bring in another vehicle–or Mazda could quit the plant completely. Speculation abounds in Japan that Mazda is eyeing a new, lower cost North American production base in Mexico.

With all the excitement brewing in the Compact segment, some may be ignoring a building problem at the other end of the market, in the full-sized truck segment. Automotive News [sub] reports that GM’s truck inventory currently stands at 111 days of surprise, or a whopping 275,000 trucks sitting on lots. In April, Silverado was more than 3,000 units off the previous month’s pace, while Sierra was just over 1,00 units off. GM’s US market boss Mark Reuss tells the industry paper

We’re going to do something about it, but we haven’t made those calls yet… no one month makes a trend, so we’ve got to see where this one holds

Meanwhile, we’d be more worried about Chrysler, which saw Ram sales drop from nearly 22k units in March to 17,680 units in April. And not only is Chrysler more dependent on truck profits than GM due to its tighter balance sheet, it also has fewer high-efficiency alternatives to offer consumers who seem to be slowly responding to rising gas prices and moving towards more efficient offerings. And given that Automotive News [sub] is already noting that Chrysler has fallen behind on its “ambitious” sales goal and quoting analysts bemoaning Chrysler’s “perception” issues, it seems that Auburn Hills should be trying to get ahead of the story the way GM is.

In a surprise press conference that had not been confirmed as late as last night, Toyota’s president Akio Toyoda laid out plans for Toyota getting back to normal. Bottom line: Toyota hopes to be back to normal by the end of the year.

“To all the customers who made the decision to buy a vehicle made by us, I sincerely apologize for the enormous delay in delivery,” Akio Toyoda said. Read More >

MG has been building its 1995-era MGF (now MG TF) at its Longbridge, UK plant off and on since 2007, but it’s been a purely knock-down assembly affair, with kits being shipped in from Nanjing, China. But a new British-built MG is about to go into production since the brand was bought by Nanjing Auto in 2005 (Nanjing has since merged with SAIC). Called the MG6, the new compact sedan isn’t completely built at Longbridge (UK workers build and fit the engines, as well as installing the front suspension and subframe, exhaust system and electrics, but bodyshells are shipped from China), but it was designed and engineered at SAIC Motor’s European technical center in the Midlands.

Is that British enough for you?

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We’ve already asked the cui bono question about Japan’s post-tsunami parts paralysis, and though opinions vary about precisely cui will be doing the bonoing, it’s clear that some are already doing better than others. For more clarity on the developing picture, hit the jump for TTAC’s roundup of the latest parts paralysis news. Read More >