A Familiar Story at GM Plant in Canada : Autos: Successor to closed Panorama City facility struggles to survive.

The only people still working at the old General Motors plant here these days are the ones running earthmovers, bulldozers and cranes to scrape away rubble.

In August 1992, GM closed the 45-year-old assembly plant, idling 2,600 workers, and shifted production of its Pontiac Firebirds and Chevy Camaros to its newer plant in Ste. Therese, Canada, a suburb of Montreal.

But in an ironic twist reminiscent of the final chapter of the San Fernando Valley plant, things are far from worry-free these days in Ste. Therese.

When Ste. Therese started turning out GM’s new Camaros and Firebirds in 1992--the first major design change for these models in a decade--auto magazines gave the cars raves, and sales jumped to their best levels since the ‘80s. The sales boom meant that the second shift was called back to the Ste. Therese assembly line, and the plant seemed full of promise.

But in the fickle car business, things change in a hurry. Camaro and Firebird sales are down 15% this year, and in October, GM laid off the second shift at Ste. Therese, affecting 1,300 assembly workers. For the 1,500 workers still on the production line, morale is poor, and they are worried that the plant might eventually close, said Richard Fournier, the Canadian Auto Workers local union president.

The only way to ensure the plant’s future, Fournier says, is if GM were to add another car model to the slowing Camaro-Firebird production line.

Camaro and Firebird sales aren’t likely to speed up any time soon, though, because GM doesn’t plan another model redesign for five years. The Ste. Therese plant “will be a one-shift plant for the rest of the decade,” concluded Christopher Cedergren, an analyst for AutoPacific Inc.

Why did GM pick Ste. Therese over the Valley?

The Ste. Therese plant was newer--built in 1965--and the Canadian government put up $165 million in loan guarantees to GM in the late ‘80s. In addition, the auto maker pumped in $172 million to refurbish the plant and put in a new paint shop.

GM liked the Canadian plant because it is closer to parts suppliers--which saves transportation costs--and the Canadian union local got along better with GM than the Panorama City crew. In its final years, the Valley plant turned out some of the lowest quality cars in the United States, according to Consumer Reports magazine.

Although the new Camaros and Firebirds (which are sister cars with minor cosmetic changes) are more streamlined than earlier models, in many ways the 3,600-pound cars are throwbacks, muscle cars updated for the ‘90s. Some come with eight-cylinder engines. The fastest models cover 0 to 60 mph in six seconds, get a meager 16 miles per gallon in the city and can cost $24,000. Automobile magazine calls the latest Camaros and Firebirds “sledgehammers” and “the best they’ve ever been.”

But in the marketplace, new cars can get old in a hurry. “Sporty cars are very trendy and fashionable and buyers gravitate to the styling in the first 18 months. They get dated real quickly and then sales begin to slow down,” Cedergren said.

Camaro and Firebird sales jumped from 78,400 in 1992 to 96,700 in 1993 and hit 161,600 last year. But this year, sales are likely to slump to 136,000, said Ron Clogg with J.D Power & Associates, and GM is stuck with a 130-day supply of Camaros when a 60-day supply is considered healthy.

So production was cut back in October at St. Therese. Only 432 cars roll out each workday now, down from 980.

At least the St. Therese plant is still open. The economic pain any city pays for a closed auto plant is plenty, and since the last car rolled off the GM Panorama City assembly line on Aug. 27, 1992, the site has been a white elephant.

Mayor Richard Riordan said he expects to announce a buyer soon for the vacant 100-acre GM site and that a real estate developer will probably put up a supermarket, and maybe some discount stores and industrial space.

For all the new businesses that will take root where GM once stood, it leaves “a lot of people concerned,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist at the Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County, because the retail stores won’t come close to matching GM’s wages and benefits. At its peak, the Valley plant paid workers $17 an hour plus benefits, and its annual payroll pushed $100 million.

The last years of the GM plant were a tumultuous time, with assembly line workers splintering into militant groups, divided by a new manufacturing system GM wanted to impose without any job guarantees. The new system also required new training and supposedly more worker input in the assembly process.

Different factions battled for control of the United Auto Workers’ Van Nuys local, and morale, which had been poor for years, got ever gloomier as the union tried to read the smoke signals from GM headquarters about the plant’s future.

These days in Ste. Therese, union local chief Fournier tries to read those same signals. He keeps saying that if only his plant can get a new car line, “We have a future.”