Mitsubishi Motors is shuttering its US factory in Illinois from 16 February to 3 April after North American sales slowed, company officials in Japan said on Tuesday.
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The provisional halt at Mitsubishi Motors Manufacturing of America would allow growing inventories to be reduced, they told Kyodo News.
The factory assembles the Galant sedan, Eclipse Spyder and coupe, and Endeavor SUV.
A North America Mitsubishi spokesman told Reuters this would be the longest production halt since the Normal plant opened in 1988. The plant has 1,568 employees, including more than 1,200 hourly workers represented by the United Auto Workers union.
As with a recent hiatus at Toyota plants in the US, the Mitsubishi employees would remain on the payroll, shifting to non-production work including maintenance and training during the period, the spokesman said.
Toyota even sent some workers from its San Antonio truck plant out into the city to work on community projects such as painting plant benches.
Mitsubishi’s US sales fell 36% to 5,096 last month and were off almost 25% to about 93% for the year to date.
A report from the US earlier this week said that automakers were leasing additional space at entry ports to store unsold imported vehicles as inventories swelled amid the sales slowdown.
