Originally Posted by BARRY STAVRO of the LA Times

It was only one of the 3,000 or so parts that go into a new Chevrolet Camaro or Pontiac Firebird. But for Larry Barker, a welder at the General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, one part summed up all that is wrong with the way GM builds cars.

One night last fall Barker, along with the rest of the second shift, was sent home early after GM ran out of a reinforcement panel that is welded next to the wheel wells near the motor compartment of the Camaros and Firebirds. The panels come in pairs--one for the right side, one for the left--and when the plant ran out of panels for one side, the assembly line stopped.

"A night shift supervisor came down," Barker recalled, and for the next 20 minutes, "he actually took one of the panels from the other (wrong) side and . . . literally tried beating it into place with a hammer and then welding it."

This Rube Goldberg fix-it took so long, Barker said, that GM decided "it wasn't worth it, so then they sent us home." But if the wrong part could have been forced into place faster, he believes, "they probably would have run" the assembly line.

Things are not supposed to work that way at the GM Van Nuys plant...

Originally Posted by GREGORY CROUCH of the LA Times

"Our inability to build our daily schedule is causing a serious problem with our dealers and customers," Schaefer wrote. ". . . we have not met our daily schedule and have built almost 1,200 fewer cars than requested by our customers.

"Many of these customers are not waiting for us to build their cars, but are going elsewhere to buy a competitive product. We can't let this happen! We need every customer we can get, and we can't let them buy Ford Mustangs, RX-7's or other competitive products."

Originally Posted by LA Times

In August, the Van Nuys plant began manufacturing the 1988 Firebird and Camaro models, but it took the plant 25 days to meet its daily production schedule. Last year during the model changeover, the plant was up to speed in 13 days. Van Nuys plant manager Ernest Schaefer blames most of this year's delay not on Team Concept but on complicated design changes that were made on the 1988 models.

Making matters worse for GM is the fact that in August the company shut down its Norwood, Ohio plant, the only other plant that produced Firebirds and Camaros.

On Sept. 4 Schaefer wrote a letter to the 4,000 Van Nuys employees pointing out that GM was losing customers to Ford and other car manufacturers because workers were stopping the assembly line too frequently.

Originally Posted by PATRICE APODACA of the LA Times

Southern California's long history as an auto manufacturing center ended Thursday morning when a flame-red Chevrolet Camaro rolled off the assembly line at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys, the last of 6.3 million vehicles built there over 45 years.

The GM plant once symbolized the region's manufacturing might, and it helped foster development in surrounding San Fernando Valley communities. But in recent years, the world's largest auto maker has been hit with stiff competition from the Japanese, huge financial losses and a shrinking U.S. market share.

The Van Nuys factory, which also made Pontiac Firebirds, was the last auto plant in Southern California. Its demise--announced to the plant's 2,600 workers a year ago--follows the closure in the early 1980s of a Ford Motor Co. plant in Pico Rivera and a GM plant in South Gate and the 1971 shutdown of a Chrysler Corp. plant in City of Commerce. Today there is only one auto-manufacturing facility in the state--a GM-Toyota joint venture in Fremont that builds GM's Geo Prizm and the Toyota Corolla. Most domestic auto manufacturing is now in the South and Midwest, where suppliers are closer and labor is cheaper.

"It's sad for the auto industry, sad for GM to leave Southern California," said Pat Morrissey, a GM spokesman. "But if we're going to compete, this is what needs to be done."

Originally Posted by NY Times

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 27— A red Chevrolet Camaro Z-28 rolled off the line today to end 45 years of production at the General Motors Corporation's Van Nuys plant, the last auto factory in the world's biggest car market.

Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds that once rolled out in huge numbers -- 257,000 were built in 1978 by 5,100 workers -- will now be assembled near Montreal. Canada's national health-care system reduces the price per car by $600 to $800 in lower benefit costs, said Raymond Knudson, a union official.

Originally Posted by LA Times

The region, the nation's biggest car market, has not been home to an automobile manufacturing plant since General Motors closed a Van Nuys facility in 1992.

Originally Posted by This American Life

Van Nuys made Firebirds and Camaros, and its reputation wasn't much better than GM Fremont's had been. Defective cars coming off the line, battles with the union, sabotage. So Ernie Schaefer enlisted the same UAW leader who got the union on board at NUMMI, Bruce Lee, to help him win over the Van Nuys workforce.

They shut down the plant for two weeks to train everyone in team concept and quality control. For this workforce, there were no trips to Japan, no tearful sushi parties, and from the start, workers were skeptical.

Larry Spiegel
The lack of receptiveness to change was so deep--

Frank Langfitt
Larry Spiegel was another NUMMI commando. He moved down to Van Nuys to help launch the Japanese system there.

Larry Spiegel
There were too many people convinced that they didn't need to have to change.

Frank Langfitt
Hadn't General Motors threatened to close the plant?

Larry Spiegel
They didn't believe it.

Frank Langfitt
Why?

Larry Spiegel
It's not logical. They just didn't.

Originally Posted by DORON LEVIN of the NY Times

Edmond Dilworth, a G.M. spokesman, said G.M. had tried and failed to make a business case for assembling one or more car or truck models at Van Nuys, which will build the current models of the Pontiac Firebird and the Chevrolet Camaro until the summer of 1992. Then it will be closed. The Scarborough plant will continue building a G.M. van until 1993 before closing.

About 2,700 workers will be laid off at the Van Nuys plant. Already, 900 employees have been temporarily dismissed.

Originally Posted by The LA Times

GM hopes new models of the Camaro and Firebird will revive sales. In November, 1983, 24,000 Camaros and Firebirds were sold. But last month, only about 13,000 of the cars were sold. GM closed its Norwood, Ohio, plant in August, 1987, because of low demand for the Camaro and Firebird.

"They're definitely dinosaurs," John Phillips III, senior editor of Automotive Magazine in Ann Arbor, Mich., said of the two car models. "It is an antiquated design."

The plant review comes at a time when GM's market share has fallen to 35% from 43% 5 years ago. The company is shrinking its production capacity. Ford has done well in recent years by limiting its production and at times has earned more money than GM even though GM is much bigger.

Originally Posted by UPI

'We are not planning any special ceremonies on the final day or when the last car comes down the line,' said GM spokesman Patrick Morrissey. 'Things will probably be pretty tight that day.'

However, a Camaro collector, Leonard Stevenson, of Des Moines, Iowa, has already agreed to buy the final car off the line and will be on hand that day.

Originally Posted by Lowell Turner

The Van Nuys facility produces about 200,000 Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds each year. Since these cars sell for about $20,000 and thus occupy a specialty niche, the plant would seem to be a good candidate for multi-skilled and multi-task team organization. In 1986, the new manager Ernie Shaefer, previously in charge of the innovative Fiero plant in Pontiac, Mich., negotiated a labor agreement based on the team system with the union's shop bargaining committee. It included drastic reductions in job classifications and increased managerial flexibility in assigning jobs.

Originally Posted by LA Times

Schaefer, 43, was sent to Van Nuys in November, 1984, after GM said it was considering closing the plant, which produces Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds. "The mood in the plant was one of concern," Schaefer said recently in an interview. "People were very concerned about the longevity of the plant. Five other plants in California had been shut down. They were the last ones here."

Originally Posted by GREGORY CROUCH of The LA Times

Apparently, some workers already are preparing for a strike by claiming injury and taking disability leave. Workers on leave are paid during a strike.

Last week, a GM official confirmed that disability leaves are up at the Van Nuys plant. The official refused to disclose the amount of the increase.

Originally Posted by ALAN GOLDSTEIN of the LA Times

GM maintains that, without the team concept, elements of which are already in place at one-third of its factories, it cannot keep the plant open. Workers in Van Nuys were told in 1982 that their plant was on the "endangered list" primarily because it is more than 2,000 miles from GM's Midwestern suppliers and is also far from most of its customers.

Only 13% of about 180,000 Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds made at the plant annually are sold in California.

Beltran, however, says GM sells hundreds of thousands more cars every year in California than it makes in Van Nuys. So, he says, the answer is simply to make a greater variety of cars at the plant, the way it was done in the past.