Back to the future: Lordstown produces cars America buys

Back to the future: Lordstown produces cars America buys

When General Motors started producing cars at the Lordstown complex more than 40 years ago, it produced 4,000-pound Chevrolets that got 15 or 20 miles to the gallon, and people snapped them up.

And why not, gasoline was selling for 32 cents a gallon (even adjusted for inflation, that’s about half what we’re paying today). The top of the line came with 454-cubic-inch engines — about three times the displacement of a Cobalt power plant. More than 1.3 million Biscaynes, Bel Airs and Impalas where churned out at various Chevrolet plants that year, including Lordstown, and sold for about $2,500 to $3,000 — $16,000 to $19,500 in today’s dollars.

It was a different era — in so many ways.

What hasn’t changed is that the Lordstown plant is continuing to produce cars — granted, smaller cars and with a much smaller workforce — that are in tune with the times and are selling.

What’s new

Tuesday, Rick Wagoner, GM chief executive, announced that the Lordstown plant will begin producing a new vehicle aimed at future buyer demands in 2010. It is designed to meet the needs of motorists in a world where gasoline continues to become ever more expensive — reaching $4 a gallon in the United States and twice that in some European countries.

The new car, a Chevrolet as yet unnamed, will be powered by a 1.4-liter engine (or about 85 cubic inches, for purposes of comparison to the 454 Impala muscle car of 1966). But that’s OK. People don’t talk much these days about how fast a car gets from zero to 60 mph; they’re more inclined to talk about miles per gallon. And the new car is likely to get 45 mpg.

The long-term encouraging news announced by Wagoner came on top of other good news regarding the plant’s present product line, the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5. In May, GM sold 26,702 Cobalts in a month during which General Motors dealers in the United States delivered 272,363 vehicles. That means that of all the GM cars and trucks that drove off dealers’ lots in May, nearly one in 10 was a Cobalt. And when G5 sales are added, the Lordstown plant produced more than 10 percent of all GM vehicles sold — Buicks, Cadillacs, Chevrolets, GMCs, Hummers, Pontiacs, Saabs and Saturns — in May.

Demand is so great that a third shift will return to Lordstown in the fall.

A story on the page opposite this talks about some of the things the United States did wrong after it weathered the first energy crisis of the early 1970s. Americans returned to our profligate ways, and we were encouraged — almost compelled — to do so by American automakers, including General Motors.

There is no point in bemoaning what might have been. What has to be is clear. We have to produce more fuel efficient cars, and GM is on the road to doing so with its Lordstown announcement and with its approval of funding for production of its extended-range electric vehicle, the Volt.

For others, bad news

Unfortunately, where there are winners, there must also be losers. As a community that has suffered industrial downturns — including the re-entrenchment of the steel industry a generation ago and shrinkage in the auto industry in recent years — we appreciate the pain that accompanied other General Motors announcements Tuesday.

The automaker said it would idle pickup and SUV factories, one of them across the state in Moraine. Others are in Janesville, Wis.; Oshawa, Ontario, and Toluca, Mexico.

That Lordstown is not on this list can be attributed in part to good fortune, in that it was assigned a fuel efficient product such as the Cobalt. But it was the recognition by labor and management at Lordstown more than a decade ago that changes would have to be made to meet the demands of a more competitive auto market that saved the local plant.

Had labor not cooperated, the Cavalier would have been the last car to roll off the Lordstown line. And without labor’s approval just this week of a new contract, the Cobalt and G5 may have been the last Lordstown products.

The future today is brighter. Everyone who recognizes the importance of General Motors at Lordstown to the Mahoning Valley is breathing a sigh of relief and hoping for another long and successful run.

It doesn’t matter what GM names the new model, as long as it runs like an impala, shines like cobalt and sells like a winner.