Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly
General Motors will add production of its three-fourths- and full-ton extended-cab pickups to its Fort Wayne plant in January 2010.
The plant will continue to produce the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups that it has been making since the facility opened, but will be able to switch production from one type of truck to another depending on demand, plant manager Mike Glinsky said at a press conference in front of the southwest-side plant Monday.
"It will become one of the most flexible plants in the GM corporation," said Mark Orr, shop chairman for United Auto Workers Local 2209.
General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection June 1 and has been streamlining production as it worked toward the bankruptcy sale of the "old" GM's assets to a "new GM."
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gerber approved the GM sale Sunday.
"GM has had to reinvent themselves. They've had to reinvent the way they do business," Allen County Commissioner Nelson Peters said at the press conference.
Examples of the heavy-duty trucks that will be made here were on display at today's media event, courtesy of Kelley Chevrolet, Fort Wayne, and Sam Pierce Chevrolet, Daleville. The sticker price on the trucks is about $46,000.
The heavy trucks had been made at GM's plant in Pontiac, Mich., which is one of the plants the company is shutting down. The Fort Wayne plant, with the assistance of city and county governments, put together a bid to persuade GM to move production of the heavy trucks here.
The work to adapt production lines to handle both the light- and heavy-duty trucks is beginning immediately.
The Allen County Council already has approved a 10-year tax abatement on $27 million of GM's $46-million investment in new equipment. State training grants could total as much as $2 million, and the city of Fort Wayne also is considering incentives.
GM, which expects to complete the sale of most assets to a new entity this week, will have a "leaner and meaner" management, Steven Rattner, the U.S. Treasury's chief auto adviser, told reporters Monday.
The new GM will be a smaller company than it was and somewhat less global so it would be natural for the management structure to change, Rattner said on a conference call. GM has said it will cut the top 1,300 executives by about 35 percent, or to 845 people.
Rattner said he would "like to hope" that GM will make an initial public offering in the first half of next year, while saying he couldn't make a prediction. Harry Wilson, a Treasury auto task-force adviser, said July 1 in court testimony he expects an offering in 2010.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report