Design-Change Plans May Threaten Future of GM Van Nuys Plant
General Motors may phase out its current Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird models as early as 1988, heightening the uncertainty surrounding the future of GM’s Van Nuys assembly plant where the cars are produced, industry and union officials said Monday.
GM officials have pledged in the past to keep the Van Nuys plant--the only remaining auto assembly facility in Southern California--open only as long as the current Camaro and Firebird cars remain in GM’s model lineup.
But GM now plans to introduce new front-wheel-drive Camaro and Firebird models, built with all-plastic exteriors, in either the 1989 or 1990 model years, according to outside suppliers and industry trade journal reports. The new, all-plastic models would replace the current rear-wheel-drive versions of the sporty cars, which would be phased out as early as the end of the 1988 model year, in the summer of 1988.
Since Van Nuys apparently isn’t in the running to build the plastic cars, the design change will leave the plant without having any cars earmarked for production there and could increase the chances that Van Nuys will be shut down.
GM officials in Los Angeles said Monday, however, that they remain optimistic that the company will put other models into production in Van Nuys once the current ones are discontinued.
“It’s a common occurence that models phase out and new models are brought into a plant,” said Harry Kelly, GM’s chief spokesman in Los Angeles.
Kelly said that in November the plant received the third-highest performance rating of all 34 GM assembly plants in the United States and Canada. “You have a good, viable plant with an excellent work force, and you can put other products in there. We’re very optimistic,” Kelly said.
“I don’t expect it to go under,” said Peter Z. Beltran, president of the United Auto Workers Local 645, in Van Nuys, which as far back as 1981 began organizing local labor, political and religious leaders to persuade GM of the community’s need for the facility. Beltran said he has long known about plans to phase out Camaro and Firebird production.
The new plastic Camaro and Firebird models will likely share the technology that GM now uses on its all-plastic Pontiac Fiero two-seat sporty model. They might be built in a plant in Pontiac, Mich., near the company’s existing Fiero assembly facility and close to GM’s outside plastic suppliers, Automotive News, an industry trade journal, reported Monday.
GM officials have indicated to union leaders in Van Nuys that the current Camaro and Firebird lines will be phased out before the 1989 model year, but they have not said whether the facility will be kept open to build another car line after that, according to UAW official Beltran. He said company officials have told him they are still in the process of reviewing their long-range plans for the plant.
GM also builds the Camaro and Firebird models in Norwood, Ohio, but Automotive News said GM’s plans for that facility are also unclear.
The Van Nuys plant, which now employs 4,300 hourly and 500 salaried workers on two shifts, has been the frequent subject of plant closing rumors and protests, partly because so many other West Coast auto plants have been shut down in recent years.
Those plants were originally built to serve the booming Western car market, but the domestic auto makers were forced to shut them down during the last recession after losing so much of their business in California and other West Coast states to the imports.
GM and Ford found that they were shipping their California-built cars back to the Midwest because of poor Western sales, and so they decided to concentrate their manufacturing operations in the central part of the country.
The only other West Coast assembly facility besides Van Nuys that remains open today is the GM-Toyota joint venture operation in Fremont, Calif., which is building Japanese-designed cars in a once-shuttered GM assembly plant.
Industry sources said Monday that top officials at GM have not yet approved the plan to convert the Camaro and Firebird lines to a plastic design, but outside suppliers said they are already working on the program, code-named GM-80. Several GM spokesmen refused to comment directly on the company’s plans for the Camaro and Firebird, but they also pointedly refused to deny statements about the existence of the GM-80 program made by officials at outside suppliers.
Louis Borick, president of Superior Industries in Van Nuys, one of the Van Nuys plant’s largest local suppliers, said he had talked with GM officials about the plan to move Camaro and Firebird production to Pontiac. But Borick, whose company makes wheels for all of the Big Three auto makers, said he received no confirmation that the move would be made.
GM apparently wants to expand the use of the plastics technology that it developed with its Fiero model to save money and time when it changes designs on its cars and trucks.
Because of its use of plastic panels easily hung on a unique “space frame,” the Fiero’s shape and functional design are relatively easy to modify and rearrange, GM officials say.
Auto industry plastics specialists estimate that redesigning a model that uses the Fiero’s plastic frame technology would only take half the time and cost GM just one-fifth what it would pay to redesign a car with a traditional steel frame.
Now, besides the Camaro-Firebird plastic project, GM has also begun work on a new, all-plastic front-wheel-drive van, supplier officials confirmed Monday.
Times staff writer Allan Jalon in Los Angeles also contributed to this article.
