How Long to Make a Car?

According to the latest Harbour Report, Toyota needs only 29.93 hours to make a car. Nissan came next with 29.97 hours, and Honda third at 31.63 hours. Those numbers cover stamping, engine and transmission production, and car assembly. GM takes 32.36 hours to make a car, which was a 2.5% improvement over the year before.

To be expected, although the domestics put up solid productivity numbers, profit-per-vehicle still lagged. Toyota and Honda made, on average, $1,200 pre-tax profit on each car sold in the US. The Big Three lost anywhere from $1,072 to $5,234 last year on every vehicle sold. Health care and pension liabilities and incentives were to blame.