Battle-weary Flint wins with GM Cruze, Volt engine production

Robert Snell / The Detroit News

Four Flint-area plants are sharing a $230 million investment in General Motors Co.'s new vehicle production.

The automaker offered a peek today inside its Flint Engine South plant, where workers are prepping to build 4-cylinder engines for two of GM's most important new launches next year: the Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle and Chevy's new small car, the Cruze.

Both vehicles are a bid by the automaker to boost fuel efficiency, and, in the case of the Volt, transform consumer perceptions of GM.

The investment preserves 400 hourly jobs in a city and region hard hit by GM's bankruptcy and automobile industry turmoil.

"The Flint area is front and center in GM's quest to reinvent the automobile industry," said manufacturing manager Larry Zahner.

The four plants with a piece of the Volt and Cruze programs are Flint Engine South, Flint Metal Center, Flint Tool and Die and the Grand Blanc Weld Tool Center.

The event was attended by Flint Mayor Dayne Walling, UAW workers and others.

The new engines are the 1.4-liter turbo engine for the Cruze and a 1.4-liter, naturally aspirated engine for the Volt.

Last week, President and CEO Fritz Henderson said the Cruze, which is expected to get about 40 mpg and go on sale next spring, was GM's most important vehicle debuting next year.

GM is spending $202 million installing new machinery and equipment at Flint South, which currently builds V6 engines used in the Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia, Saturn Outlook and Cadillac CTS and STS.

The plant employs 325 hourly and 66 salaried workers.

GM also is spending about $32 million upgrading the Grand Blanc Weld Tool Center and Flint Metal Center for Volt-related work.

GM is building robotic weld tool cells in Grand Blanc that will be used to assemble the Volt body.

And the automaker is refurbishing press lines at the metal center to produce sheet metal stampings for the Volt, which debuts late next year.

The automaker had planned to build a 552,000-square-foot plant to produce engines for the Cruze and Volt, but opted build them at an existing Flint facility.

The move saves money and utilizes available floor space within the Flint South engine plant on Bristol Road. Preparation work started last spring, and engine production is expected to begin in December 2010.

That's about one month later than when GM said the Volt would reach showrooms, but the automaker initially will build the engines in Hungary, and ship them to Michigan.

The Volt will rely on a lithium-ion battery pack that will let commuters travel up to 40 miles on electric power alone. The Volt's engine kicks in after its battery is drained by about 70 percent, to sustain the battery's remaining charge to keep the car running for several hundred miles.

The 4-cylinder engines are part of GM's goal of doubling global production of small four-cylinder engines by 2011.

GM has said a third of all its engines made in North America in 2011 will be four-cylinder, and 21 percent of those will be turbocharged -- seven times the number of four-cylinder turbo engines made today.