BMW, Mercedes to skip summer shut downs

Following in the footsteps of companies like Ford and General Motors, BMW and Mercedes-Benz have announced that they will skip their typical summer breaks in order to meet booming demand for their luxury vehicles.

Despite an economic slowdown on their home continent, BMW and Mercedes will keep factories open through their typical summer breaks in order to fulfill demand from overseas markets. The luxury automakers' decision to keep plants humming through the summer months is in sharp contrast to the rest of the European auto market.

“The split in the automotive industry becomes more apparent in times of crisis,” Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, told Bloomberg. “The German luxury-car makers are still achieving record sales despite the crisis in Europe, because of the splendid developments overseas.”

Other European automakers, such as France's PSA Peugeot Citroen, are shutting down factories and issuing massive layoffs.

Here in the United States, BMW will close its SUV plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for two weeks in July, but that planned shut down is to ready the factory for production of the automaker's all-new X5 and is not related to demand.

BMW and Mercedes are both poised to set new annual sales records in 2013, thanks in large to growing demand in North America and Asia.