The coronavirus pandemic has brought the U.S. automotive industry to a standstill unlike any event has since World War II. Factories were shuttered, hundreds of thousands of employees were laid off and no new vehicles rolled off U.S. assembly lines for roughly two months starting in late March.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy described the second quarter as “likely to be the toughest in modern history” for the automotive industry, as companies “grappled with close to a zero revenue environment for a few months.”