How a shut down saves money...

You may have asked yourself, with all of the recent news that some of the Big Three were shutting down plants, how does this actually save money? If they don't make cars they can't sell cars, and they do still have to pay for utility costs and other costs. This CNN article focuses on the reasons that Chrysler will save money by shutting down. I recommend reading the full article, but a few selected parts:

First off, Chrysler's inventory glut won't continue getting worse during the month its factories are idle, even if it doesn't get much better.

At the beginning of December, Chrysler had 399,700 vehicles, or a nearly four-month supply of cars, trucks and SUVs, according to data from Automotive News. About a two-month supply is considered normal in the industry.

"If they can get that down below a 90-day supply, I think that would be an intermediate goal," said Jesse Toprak, an analyst with the automotive Web site Edmunds.com. He was speaking about both Chrysler and General Motors, which has also announced drastic production cutbacks in the face of bloated inventory.

So apparently that is the goal here, to actually increase the sales of the cars that are in inventory.