Saying It With Figures
There are a numbers of ways to express DSII (Days Sales In Inventory).
It appears that the way Forbes is expressing it is by taking the number of units in inventory and dividing that by an average daily sales level. Using this approach, hardly half of the SSr's made in '04 have been sold.
An alternative way is to take the inventory and divide by the number of units made each day (70). I understand that there are over 7500 SSr's in dealer inventory and that this sum was growing at 35-40 each day.
There is also the issue of sales days (7 in some jurisdictions, 6 in most) and productions days (believe the Craft Center operates one shift 5 days a week).
The way the article in Forbes did it is in compliance with how the industry computes the stat which is last months unit sales divided into the available inventory.
The facts are:
> Most of the 04 SSr's that were sold seem to have been delivered in the early part of the year
> inventory really started to accumulate in February/March and has continued to do so at an alarming rate since then;
> inventory levels for our babies is climbing and at a rate that cannot continue. GM will need to both slow production and do something to improve volume or dealers will be eating SSr's for breakfast. lunch & dinner;
> The General has not done much to assist dealers move the inventory to date. There is limited financial support (rebates, low cost financing et cetera) and resale is nowhere near where many thought it might be such that the mess is getting WORSE fast as evidenced by the fact the improved 05's are readily available at a significant discounts> friend in SC got one for $100 over invoice (dealer kept the holdback)........
> this is supposed to be a 'halo vehicle'. The halo is getting awfully
BLACK
arty
