GM stops releasing monthly production data

GM has said it will not report monthly production figures to the automotive data providers anymore. According to a wire report, GM told data and research providers Autodata Corp., Automotive News Data Center and IHS Automotive that it will no longer offer monthly production figures, adding that the company will provide figures for wholesale deliveries.

Like many other automakers, GM offered monthly North American production data, broken out by individual models. The US automaker said that the change comes as the company will apply a new policy which will make different the way it records financials for vehicles.

Beginning with the first part of 2013, GM assigned profit and loss to the market in which a car was sold, and not the plant at which it was built. The company says that this makes production figures less critical to keep track of. Suppliers have already expressed their concerns regarding this move, saying that they are not sure how accurate the numbers will be or what the longer term fallout in the industry will be like. Until now, GM’s number have been used by many standard indicators of the US economic health.

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Meanwhile, Mary Barra, GM’s first female chief product officer, might become the automaker’s next Chief Executive Officer. She has been working for GM for the past 33 years, being responsible for the quality and design of all the automaker’s vehicles.

Barra was appointed in the current role in 2011 and many consider her to have a more reserved style, analytical thinking and personality than some of the colourful figures in the auto industry. She plans to make GM as profitable as its global competitors, such as VW and Toyota, by following Billy Durant’s example, the one who founded the company more than a century ago.

Bara will try to cut development costs by manufacturing more vehicles off the same parts, but at the same time avoiding what happened four decades ago, when the automaker earned a reputation for slapping Cadillac, Chevy and Oldsmobile badges on similar-looking vehicles to cut costs.