| By Bob Weaver
The American auto industry is facing hard times like American steel, a double blow with the globalized market and high gasoline prices.
Gasoline appears to be headed toward $5 a gallon.
General Motors announced it is closing four pickup truck and sport-utility vehicle factories. They're trying to unload the Hummer.
With hundreds of thousands of jobs already shifted abroad, further job loss is expected to climb dramatically, linked to oil.
General Motors plans to build a new small car starting in mid-2010 and move forward with plans to launch the Volt plug-in vehicle.
Ford, Chrysler and GM are sliding fast in sales.
While the industry blames problems on high labor and benefit costs, big gas guzzlers are now at the center of the storm.
The energy crunch should be no surprise to the auto makers, who with the support of the US government have failed to develop a national energy policy that would consume less oil.
Despite efforts a number of years ago to downsize vehicles and work on fuel efficiency, the industry-government initiative was abandoned, full steam ahead for king oil.
Two Toyota sedans, Corolla and Camry, outsold the Ford F-150 pickup truck in May. The F-150 had been America's favorite vehicle since 1991.
Meanwhile, the Harbour Report - the auto industry's productivity scorekeeper - rated Toyota's four-cylinder engine plant at Buffalo, Putnam County, as the most productive in North America.
The Harbour Report says "Toyota remains the industry benchmark through its renewed commitment to lean production."
Honda and Nissan led the six largest North American automakers, each earning a pretax profit of $1,641 per vehicle on their North American sales, followed by Toyota at $922 per vehicle.
Chrysler lost $412 per vehicle for the first nine months of 2007, while GM and Ford lost $729 and $1,467, respectively, per vehicle for the full year.
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