GM to Spend $575 Million to Upgrade Indiana Plant

General Motors on Tuesday announced a $575-million modernization program at its Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada Group plant here.

“We are pleased to strengthen our commitment to the Marion plant, and we know that, with the quality of the work force at this plant, we will be better positioned to take on foreign competition,” David Campbell, a GM vice president and CPC group director, said at the plant.

“We need each other, we need to work together, and I am confident of a strong future and a strong industry,” he said.

The expansion project at the stamping plant is GM’s largest single Indiana investment so far, boosting the auto maker’s outlays in the state to $2.3 billion in the last two years.

Gov. Robert D. Orr said the state has committed $3 million to retrain workers at the Marion plant. The money will come from the state’s basic industries retraining fund and will be spread out over five years.

The alternative to the expansion project was to phase out the plant by 1992, which would have eliminated all 3,700 jobs at the plant, Orr said.

Four General Motors plants are expected to be chosen for large-scale modernization programs, which include installation of the latest in presses and other equipment, said Mark White, director of personnel at the Marion plant. Marion’s sister plant in Mansfield, Ohio, was named as the first on July 3.

Work crews have been building die storage areas, parking lots and an access road since January. The entire project is expected to be completed by 1991.

Ground was broken in early July for an addition to the plant to house the new equipment.

A separate program to upgrade the plant’s tooling center will be finished by January.