btw, the Saturn you buy could be a rebadged Opel made in europe. (not that there is anything wrong with that) They have given up on the plastic body panels on those models too. But, GM is heading away from stuff built in north america to try and save their bottom line. Luckily your dad got out with a pension. GM just announced a program to ALL north american employees for early retirement/packaging. Unbelievable. Just like the British car industry, its the big $ union greed with largely unskilled labour that is killing them more than their questionable north american designs. I think we will be seeing more GM cars coming from their subsidury companies like Opel and Vauxhall in the future.
Help me out here. I'm aware of 4 GM truck plants in Fort Wayne, Flint, Pontiac and Oshawa (I used to work there a long time ago) Where is the GM Mexican plant producing full-size pickups for the Canada/US Market ? I know the Silao MX plant makes Suburbans, Yukons and Escalades, also the Avalanche, but as far as I'm aware, their full-size pickups, excluding the Avalanche are all made in US/Canadian plants.
Ahhhh, thanks. They make some Silverados (although I'm not sure how many with only 78 Hourly and 107 salaried employees) in Toluca. I did not know that. Apparently you can tell which plant your GM vehicle was final-assembled at from the VIN http://www.weber.edu/wsuimages/automoti ... 202005.pdf
Yup, the Honda Ridgeline is made in Aliston, ON, Canada. Even most of the components are made in NA. In fact the suspension is made in Canada too, at the Showa plant in Schomberg, ON, about 10 minutes away from my house in Bolton. I agree, buy local and support your neighbours as much as you can. I did.
I had a Mexican Golf Diesel back in '97-2005. It was great new, but went through a phase where a lot of stuff just went on it. Almost all of it was replaced under warranty. I was lucky, as I know a guy that used to work at a dealer. He arranged to get me German made replacements for a lot of the failed components (glow plugs, alternator, water pump, fuel injector). I eventually got 298,000 KM out of it and traded it in on a Mazda truck (POC) for about 5G. Interesting though, the German parts lasted almost 5 times longer than the Mexican stuff.
i agree completely with the above statement about that for every plant that the big 3 pulls out of NA, the "imports" build one in NA and they pay fair union comparable wages and benefits, without the strikes and dues... i mean toyota alone is continuously increasing their NA production - where GM is constantly threatening to pull out of oshawa
Is this for sure? It makes little sense to me as the Loonie will probably be higher than the US buck for only a short time. When Mercedes moved production to Alabama there was actually a marked increase in the price of their vehicles to go along with the marked decrease in quality (my opinion).
"Honda will begin producing the Ridgeline pickup at its Lincoln, Alabama, plant in early 2009. The announcement was made last week by Hiroshi Sasamoto, CEO of Honda Manufacturing of Alabama LLC. The Ridgeline now is assembled on Line 2 at Honda's plant in Alliston, Ontario. The move will let Honda boost Civic output in Alliston, said Ted Pratt, a company spokesman. Ridgeline production will be added to the Lincoln plant's Line 1, which now produces the Odyssey minivan, while Line 2 will continue to produce both the Odyssey and Pilot crossover. Honda does not expect to increase the straight-time production capacity of the Lincoln plant, now at 300,000 units a year. The Lincoln factory produced a record 314,145 vehicles last year, Pratt said. Honda will begin Ridgeline production trials in Lincoln late this year, he said. In 2007, Ridgeline sales fell 14.7 percent to 42,795."
