NORMAL - Oh, what a year. Though its sales increased in 2007, Mitsubishi Motors North America now joins other automakers in a drastic downturn as consumers hold onto their wallets in the midst of a plunging stock market, rising unemployment and tighter credit. | 'Car czar' may oversee auto industry restructuring | MMNA to halt production for seven weeks

Through November, Mitsubishi sold 92,687 vehicles, a nearly 25 percent drop from the same time period in 2007.

The situation is so dire that General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are begging for federal help.

In 2008, the Normal car plant introduced redesigned cars, negotiated a contract that traded pay and benefit cuts for job security, and announced plans to suspend production for seven weeks next year.

In the midst of this crisis, Jerry Berwanger, chief operating officer of MMNA's Normal manufacturing division, sat down for a chat about his company and the auto industry at large.

Q. What are your biggest concerns at the plant and in the automotive industry now?

A. The biggest concern right now for us is, being a manufacturing plant, is volume, getting more production in the facility. During this downturn, all we have to do is endure and wait to see what happens. If it was just Mitsubishi that wasn't selling cars, I think it would be an area for concern. But it's not just us. … It's just unique in the automotive industry right now.

We're getting hit kind of a double whammy on the auto side. … We're hearing from our dealers that customers come in to buy a car, and they're having difficulty getting a loan for that vehicle. From the dealer side of it, they want to pick up their inventory. And of course, their lines of credits are being shrunk, so they can't get the inventory. And then we also do a lot of fleet vehicles, rental car vehicles, and some of the fleets are also having difficulty getting lines of credit to get cars into their fleets.

Sales have been falling off all over the world. We've been able to pick up a few more countries we're exporting to. But still that export doesn't really offset what we're losing in volume.

Q. When the redesigned 2009 Galant came out early this year, you said you would have liked to have seen workers get overtime and boost line speed. But in May, Mitsubishi asked production workers to volunteer for a voluntary separation package and slowed the production line speed. Talk about what the company experienced this year.

A. Based on the economy, our volume has dropped. With that, we've offered another round of what we call VSP, voluntary separation, and an early retirement package (in the new contract). … It's not much different than what the other auto manufacturers are offering because they've got too much capacity - too much capacity, not enough volume.

Q. Does the auto industry need a multi-billion dollar government bailout, and what would be the consequences if one doesn't pass?

A. I don't know. I look at it from both sides, whether the glass is half empty or half full. I look at the competition. It seems to me the competition was way ahead of the Detroit Three as far as coming out with hybrid vehicles and small cars. It seemed at that time the Detroit Three was putting a lot of money into SUVs and pick-up trucks and maybe not planning for the future.

But again, if you look at the economy, I believe it's, the last time I heard, it's like one out of six, one out of seven, jobs are affected by the automotive industry. I just don't think that right now, with the economy the way it is, that they can afford any one of them to go down.

And competition is good … I know it's tough for me to say that because if one of them failed, it'd be a little bit more opportunity for us.

(A bankruptcy filing), from the bright side, for us, it might increase our sales. The reason I say that is, and this has been said before in the press, that if a company goes into bankruptcy - I'm just saying General Motors; let's just say they go into bankruptcy. How many people would go out and buy a GM product?

(But) I don't want to see anyone go bankrupt. … The supplier loses volume. They can't maintain their wages, make their payments … Our purchasing department has to go out and find another supplier.

Q. How does this current environment compare to other downturns you may have seen in your career?

A. In my 36 years, this is probably the worst I've seen it. … This is, by far, the worst.

Q. What are your production expectations for 2009?

That can only be based on the economy right now. Money's got to loosen up, and people have got to be working.

A. I'd like to see the economy start to turn around in spring of '09. Maybe by that time they've got this bailout money, how they're going to loosen up the lending, the loans for people. I think that's a key right there.

Q. With an economic turnaround in the spring, you mentioned the plant could then decide in July or August what direction to take. What could that direction include, and are there any plans for new vehicles or partnerships?

A. That could be a re-freshening of the products we have or even bring in a new product. … It's just something we'd like to see by summer. There's always studies going on.

Q. What do you see for Mitsubishi in the year ahead as far as opportunities and challenges?

A. Maybe you've seen some of the advertising on television, the phenomenal four. It's four cars, four cylinders. We've been getting some good reports from our dealers on those. Those cars happen to be built here, all except the Lancer. The Eclipse, the Galant and the Spyder, all available in four-cylinder.

Let me say we're fortunate that we don't that have of all our eggs in pick-up trucks and SUVs. We don't build a pick-up truck here. We build one SUV, but we're still in production of that because it's fairly popular in Mexico and Canada. … I think when things do pick up, it's going to remain with four-cylinder vehicles. … The $4 a gallon gas has really taught people a lesson, scared them.

Q. You say you want to sell cars here, so you have to build them here. What are keys to the plant's survival?

A. Some of the keys I believe we've already overcome. No. 1 is the quality issue. The reliability of the cars a few years ago was in question, but I think that question's been answered. … Value for the cars - the pricing is right. I just think that we have to maybe look at the design and probably improve fuel efficiency even better than what it is today.

(Labor also) is a key. … The contract we just settled makes this plant look even more attractive. … (It looks more attractive to) anybody that might want to come and put product into this plant at a lower labor cost.

We used to build cars for Chrysler and Dodge. That's a little bit far fetched because there's a lot of money that has to go into retool the plant to do something like that, but the opportunity … It'd probably be two-and-a-half, three years out. It falls within that four-year contract we were talking about, see.