Two auto assembly plants in Illinois and another in Indiana could benefit from additional work as domestic and foreign carmakers realign production.
Ford Motor Co.’s Torrence Avenue plant on the Far South Side may benefit from a restructuring by Ford aimed at bringing its capacity to build vehicles more in line with its dwindling market share.
Catherine Madden, a production analyst with forecasting firm Global Insight, said Ford plants in St. Louis, St. Paul, Wixom, Mich., Cuautitlan, Mexico, and Atlanta are most likely to be shuttered in Ford’s expected restructuring.Ford’s board of directors was meeting this week to work on a restructuring plan. It is expected to include the elimination of 30,000 manufacturing jobs over the next several years.
The Atlanta plant now builds the Ford Taurus, and production is set to end this summer. In 2007, Atlanta was supposed to start building two new Lincoln sedans and two “crossover” multi-purpose models that are built on the same platform or “architecture” as the models built in Chicago.
With Ford’s product plans in flux, Madden says the Atlanta plant and some of the new models could be cut.
“If Atlanta closes, some of those products could survive and be built in Chicago,” she said.
Ford installed a flexible manufacturing system at Torrence Avenue in 2004 that allows building multiple vehicles that share tooling and components and are assembled in the same sequence.
The Chicago facility builds the Ford Five Hundred and Mercury Montego sedans and the Ford Freestyle crossover. It is scheduled to add a Mercury version of the Freestyle next year.
Ford officials would not say which plants might close, explaining that the matter is still under review.
The Subaru plant in Lafayette, Ind., appears also likely to benefit from a plan now being discussed by the heads of Toyota Motor Corp. and Fuji Heavy Industries, the maker of Subaru vehicles, to build Toyotas at the Indiana facility.
Though news reports from Japan told of a deal reached earlier this week between the companies, Ann McConnell, a spokeswoman for Subaru of Indiana Automotive, said the officials have only agreed to keep up their talks.
Dan Sieger, a Toyota spokesman, described the talks as “moving forward” and quite serious.
With 2,300 workers, the Indiana plant now churns out nearly 120,000 vehicles yearly, among them the Outback station wagon, Legacy sedans and Baja and B9 Tribeca sport-utility vehicles.
Built as a joint venture between Fuji and Isuzu Motors Ltd., production at the plant dropped off in the last few years as Isuzu’s sales declined. Isuzu halted its production at the plant in July last year, leading to the layoff of 124 workers. Of those, about 60 are on a recall list.
General Motors Corp. ended its partnership in October with Fuji while Toyota purchased an 8.7 percent stake in Fuji, a major holding.
So, too, the 1,950-worker Mitsubishi Motors Corp. plant in Normal may pick up added production needed for the firm’s global customers, according to auto industry news reports from Japan.
The news accounts speculated that Mitsubishi would use the Illinois plant as the sole source for its Galant sedan, currently built in Normal and Australia.
But such a decision could be years away, said Mitsubishi spokesman Dan Irvin, adding that company officials in the U.S. are unaware of such plans.
The added work would be welcome at the plant, which builds about 100,000 vehicles a year, but has the capacity to produce 140,000. A second shift at Mitsubishi’s only plant was shut down in September 2004.
———-
rpopely@tribune.com
sfranklin@tribune.com
