Collapsing demand for new cars across Europe is to cost skilled workers at General Motors and Ford hundreds of shifts as the car giants try to reduce supply.

General Motors plans to cut production by 40,000 vehicles across Europe as a whole by the end of the year. It is closing its factories in Luton and Ellesmere Port, Merseyside, temporarily this month to try to avert flooding the market with unsold cars.

The Ellesmere Port factory, which makes Vauxhall Astra vans and Vauxhall Astra five-door cars, is halting production for 14 days to cut the number of cars it makes by 9,000. It normally makes about 120,000 vehicles a year, about 46 per cent of which are exported to Spain, Italy and Germany.

The company, which has its headquarters in Detroit, Michigan, will also close its Luton plant for ten days this month, making 4,000 fewer vehicles. It normally makes 90,000 a year. That factory, which makes the mid-sized Vivaro van, exports about 62 per cent of its cars to the Continent.

In Germany, General Motors has shut its Opel factory in Bochum, which makes Astra and Zafira models as well as axles and gearboxes, for two weeks until October 13. Another plant in Eisenach, which makes the new Opel Corsa compact, will halt production from October 13 for three weeks.

A spokesman for General Motors said that it would be premature to say if the temporary European closures would become a permanent feature. A spokesman for Opel said: “The financial crisis has prompted people to hold on to their money and spend less for cars.” He added that there were no plans for any mandatory redundancies in Opel.

Ford plans to rein in output at its German plant in Saarlouis and this month will terminate 204 temporary jobs that were supposed to run until the end of the year.

Last week, car executives made gloomy short-term forecasts at the Paris Motor Show. Fritz Henderson, General Motors’ chief operating officer, said: “Certainly, in the first half [of 2009] it’s going to be weak.”

The American car market, hit hard by a lack of car finance, is suffering even more than Europe. The lack of such financing is estimated to have cost the world’s biggest carmakers about six million vehicles in lost sales this year alone.

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