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Built by hand, from the heart

Owners take great pride in the shining star of GM's lineup, and for workers, the Bowling Green, Ky., Corvette facility is a plum assignment.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 7, 2006

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - Gene Taglialavore grinned like a kid on Christmas morning as he watched his wife settle into the driver's seat of the couple's new cranberry red Chevy Corvette.

"It's just something that gets in your blood: the speed and power, the handling," said Taglialavore, 64, who picked up the car in May at the National Corvette Museum, across the street from the plant where the car was assembled in this western Kentucky city 60 miles north of Nashville.

The only factory in the world that builds the iconic sports car, General Motors' Bowling Green plant rolled out its first Corvette in Kentucky 25 years ago on June 1, 1981.

Industry analysts say the plant remains a bright spot for General Motors Corp. at a time when sagging sales have led the automaker to eliminate 30,000 U.S. hourly jobs by 2008 as part of a huge restructuring plan.

About 35,000 Corvettes are assembled at the plant each year - a small fraction of the 9-million vehicles GM is expected to produce worldwide this year.

GM has sold more than 1.4-million Corvettes since the first one was built June 30, 1953, in Flint, Mich. About 300 of the cars were assembled there before production was moved to St. Louis the next year.

After the passage of more strict environmental regulations in the 1970s affecting the car's production in St. Louis, GM then transferred its Corvette facilities to a building that had been a Chrysler air conditioning unit factory in Bowling Green.

Bob Heidbrink, a retired engineer who worked for GM for more than 40 years, including 15 at the Bowling Green plant, gives tours of the facility to Corvette owners who pay an extra fee to watch their new car get built.

Heidbrink said GM was building 10 Corvettes an hour in St. Louis and increased that to 15 after the move to Bowling Green.

By the mid 1980s, however, there were too many Corvettes flooding the market, though it experienced a jump in popularity in the 1990s when the fifth generation model debuted, Heidbrink said.

Now plant workers are putting in a lot of overtime because of the Corvette's popularity, said the plant's union president, Eldon Renaud. The plant also produces 4,000 Cadillac XLRs per year.

Renaud said many GM workers at other locations try to get transferred to the plant - which employs about 1,200 workers - because of its increased job security and the city's appealing quality of life.

[Last modified July 7, 2006, 00:57:55]