[link|http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=8724177|http://www.reuters.c...s&storyID=8724177]
General Motors Corp. (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) expects to close more U.S. assembly and component plants over the next few years, slashing at least 25,000 manufacturing jobs as it battles high costs and shrinking market share, the company's chief executive said on Tuesday.
Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, addressing shareholders at a contentious annual meeting, said GM expects to save $2.5 billion a year from the cost-cutting measures.
GM, the world's largest automaker, lost $1.1 billion in the first quarter and is riding out its worst financial crisis in more than a decade. It has been closing and idling plants over the past four years and will have cut its annual North American assembly capacity from six million vehicles in 2002 to five million by the end of this year.
A benchmark annual report on North American manufacturing operations released last week ranked GM dead last among leading automakers in assembly plant capacity utilization.
----------
You mean that with rising prices people aren't buying SUV's again? Maybe fuel efficiency would sell? Welcome back to 1973! Some never learn.