Chrysler minivan plant in Windsor, Ont., takes a week of downtime

Canadian Press: GARY NORRIS | TORONTO (CP) - The Canadian division of DaimlerChrysler AG (NYSE:DCX) will take a week of downtime at its assembly plant in Windsor, Ont., next week, the automaker said Wednesday.

DaimlerChrysler - broadsided by shifting consumer demand toward smaller vehicles - had announced Sept. 19 it would undertake a series of factory layoffs, but details of specific shutdowns are being released no more than about a week in advance.

The Windsor plant, employing 5,800 people and 800 robots, assembles Dodge and Chrysler minivans, perennially among the best-selling vehicles in Canada, as well as the Pacifica crossover, which was an early entry in its segment but has not dominated it.

The production scalebacks outlined last month are aimed at cutting Chrysler's second-half shipments in the United States by 16 per cent to reduce bloated U.S. inventories.

Inventories in Canada are healthy, Reid Bigland, the new president and CEO of DaimlerChrysler Canada, told reporters during a meeting at which the timing of the Windsor downtime was disclosed.

The automaker currently has 56,000 unsold vehicles in Canada, which Bigland characterized as "a reasonable level," down from over 75,000 a couple of years ago.

Bigland, 40, born in Kamloops, B.C., and raised in North Vancouver and suburban Toronto, was given the Canadian CEO job in July. He previously headed DaimlerChrysler's Freightliner custom chassis unit.

Chrysler, which depends on pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and minivans for over 70 per cent of its sales, is moving rapidly to introduce products that stress fuel efficiency, Bigland said.

The recently released Caliber compact hatchback is "moving faster than chickenpox through a kindergarten," he said, with monthly Canadian sales running between 1,500 and 2,200 units - still well behind roughly 7,000 for the segment-leading Honda Civic.

Bigland also pointed to the redesigned Sebring mid-size sedan now hitting the market, and to other products including a Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV with a high-efficiency Mercedes-Benz diesel engine coming to showrooms early next year.

Paralleling those introductions are the less environmentally conscious Dodge Nitro bulky mid-size SUV and the Chrysler Aspen luxury large SUV.

In announcing last month's production cutback plans, Tom LaSorda, president of the German-American automaker's North American Chrysler group, said many of the cuts "are sitting in the truck market and the large-SUV market."

Chrysler's other Canadian assembly plant, a 3,500-employee operation west of Toronto in Brampton, produces the Chrysler 300 and other large rear-wheel-drive sedans.

Union officials have said Brampton faces two weeks of downtime in the current quarter and further shutdowns in early 2007. But LaSorda has said there are no plans for permanent closures.