Craptastic: GM stuffs the dealer channel to pad sales numbers; Nissan Leaf "easily outsells" the Chevy Volt in May

The phrase "stuffing the dealer channel" describes a method that automobile manufacturers use to pad their sales numbers. They deliver vehicles to dealers, count them as sold, but until actually accepted by customers, the cars just languish on lots.

And channel-stuffing is a tactic that the UAW-controlled General Motors has raised to an art form in its ill-fated attempt to continue operating as if it's 1963.

That GM sales declined in May by 1.2% on expectations of a rise of 1.5% in May is not really surprising: as we have been saying for a nearly three months now, the Japanese earthquake, far from adding points to US GDP, is now impacting every aspect of the US and global economy...

...Furthermore, the bulk of these purchases are the government-funded equivalent of subprime home purchases from 2005-2006: take away government funding and the sales collapse would be historic. Yet what is surprising, and what continues to be the only important metric in the monthly GM sales report, is the monthly channel stuffing update, aka the "month-end dealer inventory." We hope nobody will be surprised to find that it just hit another all time record of 584,000, 7k more than April and 177 more than a year ago. Although in reality, considering that GM car assembly should have been impacted by the Japanese earthquakes, one would have hoped for this inventory to decline. Which is the truly surprising part. In other words, in May, channel stuffing at GM went into overdrive.

Emblematic of this union-orchestrated malaise is the following delightful missive, entitled "Nissan Leaf easily outsells the Chevy Volt in May 2011":

Since the first official month of delivery late last year, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt has held an overall lead in sales over the 2011 Nissan Leaf but in April, Nissan was able to boast of being the bestselling electric vehicle in the US for the first time as their all-electric vehicle outsold the extended range Volt sedan by a margin of 573 to 493... General Motors stated that deliveries were slow because they were working on getting demo vehicles to dealerships but as the May numbers have come in – things haven’t improved for GM. In fact, they have gotten worse as the number of Volts delivered last month was down to just 481; compared to the 1,142 Nissan Leaf units delivered.

But don't worry kids, this little experiment in giving the union bosses control of two auto companies will only cost us $12 billion. So far, that is.