What, Me Worry? Says Chrysler's Jim Press

(MoneyWatch)  Wow, that must be some "plan" at Chrysler.

With June sales down 35.9 percent in June -- it hurts just to type that number -- Jim Press, Chrysler president and vice chairman, serenely insisted in a July 1 conference call that wholesale shipments to dealers are going "according to plan."

That could mean a lot of things, but one thing I have a hard time accepting is that Chrysler was really planning to have its sales fall by more than a third. Year to date, Chrysler's U.S. sales were off 22 percent, to 867,826, according to AutoData. Chrysler says a lot of the fall-off is due to voluntary cuts in unprofitable sales to rent-a-car fleets, and I can go along with that.

But surely, Chrysler wasn't planning ahead of time to cut production of its brand-new minivans, as it did the other day. And it's clear Chrysler didn't plan from the get-go to add cash rebates to its "$2.99 Gas" offer, which was originally for cheap gas or cash incentives, but not both. Chrysler insists $2.99 Gas is a success, and it's driving showroom traffic. I guess that's why they sweetened the deal, and extended it through the month of July -- because it's working so well. Yeah, right.

So what went quote-unquote "according to plan?"

Maybe it means that inventories were already too high at Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealerships, so Chrysler was already planning to cut back on shipments by more than one-third? That's still an awfully high number.

Maybe the last shipments that left the factory went "according to plan," meaning they didn't get lost, and they all arrived safely? They didn't have to stop and ask directions?

Maybe Chrysler is trying to lull its competitors into a false sense of security?

Press could get away with spouting generalities at Toyota, where he was the top U.S. executive before joining Chrysler last year. Nothing succeeds like success, and at Toyota, when Press repeated truisms like, "Good habits are formed in bad times, and bad habits are formed in good times," or "The strongest steel is forged in the hottest fire," it sounded wise and vaguely Zen-like.

At Chrysler, "according to plan" sounds like the late Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener.