Moraine plant has had colorful history
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
MORAINE — General Motors Corp.'s decision to end production at the Moraine plant could be the final chapter for a building that GM spent more than $1 billion to convert from a refrigerator factory so that it could make automobiles.
The end of production is likely in mid-2010, or earlier if sales of the sport utility vehicles that it makes continue to fall, GM's management said on Tuesday, June 3.
Extras
The 1981 reopening of the plant to make, at that time, Chevrolet S-10 pickup trucks and diesel engines was seen as evidence of GM's continuing commitment to the Dayton area. In 1979, the company had sold what was then the Frigidaire home appliances business to White Consolidated Industries, which moved the production elsewhere.
That cost about 6,000 jobs at the time in Moraine, but the plant's rebirth as an automotive factory led to the recovery of many of those jobs.
The Chevy S-10 pickup's manufacture in 1981 made it the first road vehicle to be assembled in the Dayton area since the Maxwell Motor Co. closed in the 1920s.
Moraine has been making the mainstays of its current production lineup, the Chevrolet TrailBlazer and GMC Envoy SUVs, since 2001.
There was some chilling news in 2006. GM closed a sister SUV plant in Oklahoma City in February of that year, because of a shrinking market. Then, GM disclosed that it had shelved consideration for Moraine of possible, future production of a redesigned SUV line, and instead said it would continue indefinitely with production of the current SUV lineup.
As recently as June 2006, GM's Moraine sport utility vehicle assembly plant employed about 4,100 people as one of the Dayton region's most prominent employers. But, by the end of that month, GM eliminated the plant's third shift and wiped out about 1,150 jobs.
GM's presence in Dayton goes back to around World War I. It was kick-started by inventor Charles Kettering's development of the electric ignition system for automobiles, which made startups easier than the prior labor-intensive — and sometimes risky — method of hand-cranking vehicles.
Kettering and fellow entrepreneur Edward Deeds founded and built the business of Dayton Engineering Laboratories Co., the Delco unit that later became a key electronics business of GM and then Delphi Corp., the parts maker that GM spun off as an independent company in 1999.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
