General Motors to Pick Site for Production of New Car in July

General Motors Corp. expects to announce a production site for its new Saturn small car in July, company officials say.

“I think we’ve been talking about the July time frame, but we’re still looking at it,” Saturn Corp. President William Hoglund said last week at the ground-breaking of the UAW-GM Human Resource Center in suburban Auburn Hills.

When it announced the formation of Saturn Corp. in January, GM planned to pick a site in April, but the date was switched to May because of the intense competition among several states and cities.

Later, GM officials said the announcement might come as late as June.

United Auto Workers Vice President Donald Ephlin, who also attended the ground-breaking, said GM will not announce the Saturn plant site until it has agreed with the UAW on a preliminary labor contract.

Ephlin, director of the union’s GM Department, said the talks may be at least partly responsible for the latest delay in announcing a site.

“You may have noticed things have been slipping a little,” Ephlin said. “I think you might find those things are related.”

Ephlin said negotiators are making progress in discussions on a labor agreement but declined to discuss bargaining details and said he could not predict when an agreement would be reached.

The Saturn plant will employ 6,000 people using the most advanced techniques to build small cars, which GM hopes will become competitive with the lowest-priced imports.

Hoglund said GM has not decided where Saturn headquarters will be located--at the plant site or in the Detroit area.