GM gets new lease on life; Lordstown’s a part of it

For decades, the old General Motors was a huge part of the Mahoning Valley. Now the Valley is a big part of the new, smaller General Motors.

It isn’t quite the same, but it’s better than many communities got, including some in Ohio.

The days of more than 10,000 workers each at Packard Electric, then a division of General Motors, and at the Lordstown assembly complex, have long been confined to history, much as GM’s Pontiac, Saturn, Hummer and Saab brands will be.

In some quarters there is bitterness, especially among former Delphi employees who believe commitments made to retirees should have been honored in full.

But General Motors has a new lease on life and an opportunity to redefine itself as a corporation that is ready to compete in an automotive market place that changed dramatically while too many people in Detroit were not paying attention.

Some of the people who were paying attention were workers and managers at Lordstown, who began looking at each other in a new light more than a decade ago. They were forced to adapt or, they knew, they would die. After years of labor tension, General Motors was on the verge of abandoning the Lordstown complex. Only a new commitment to working together saved it.

First the Cobalt, now Cruze

The result was a massive investment in the plant as part of the conversion to Cobalt production and, now, more reinvestment in preparation for turning out one of the company’s highly touted new projects, the Chevrolet Cruze.

As GM emerged last week from its fast-track bankruptcy reorganization, Fritz Henderson, GM’s CEO, talked about a leaner management team that will be geared toward responding more quickly to the demands of the consumer.

In Lordstown, the talk is about getting back to work turning out the final runs of the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5, and then shifting into Cruze production.

Some of the moves GM made have been and will be questioned — sloughing off Saturn and Pontiac, especially, and eliminating hundreds of dealerships. But the accent must now be on the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac brands, on regaining market share in the United States and building on GM’s popularity in other parts of the world, including the emerging market in China.

General Motors has been producing cars for 101 years. The Lordstown plant has been turning them out for 43 years. And yet, today is the first day of the rest of their lives. May those lives be long and prosperous.