• Detroit Free Press, Friday, October 27, 2006 12:30 PM

The CEO of AutoNation, the largest dealer of new cars and trucks in the U.S., says that GM, Ford and Chrysler need to initiate an aggressive combination of incentives and production cuts to deal with its inventory glut.

"The challenge that we have is even greater than people are talking about," says Mike Jackson, who is responsible for 80 General Motors Corp., 48 Ford Motor Co. and 58 Chrysler Group dealerships nationwide, in addition to 147 other auto franchises. All three automakers respond that they already are taking steps to cut production.

The problem, according to Jackson, is that automakers don't separate retail sales to consumers and fleet sales to rental car companies, governments and businesses. So fleet numbers distort how many days of supply of inventory are really crowding dealership lots across the country.

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