Ford, Chrysler plants in Illinois going strong
While GM idles sedan production, other manufacturers shift to SUVS
While GM is cutting 14,000 jobs and idling five factories amid sliding sedan sales, Chicago-area auto plants are hitting on all cylinders after shifting to SUV production.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles’ Belvidere Assembly Plant, near Rockford, Illinois, switched over to the Jeep Cherokee last year. Ford’s Chicago Assembly Plant is phasing out the Taurus sedan in the spring to build the new Lincoln Aviator SUV alongside the Ford Explorers that have rolled off the line there since 2010.
Nearly 10,000 employees are working at the two plants, both of which operate on multiple shifts. Meanwhile, startup manufacturer Rivian Automotive is gearing up to build electric trucks and SUVS at a former Mitsubishi plant in the central Illinois city of Normal beginning in 2020.
All three Illinois plants are positioned to take advantage of current consumer trends: SUVS surpassed cars in 2016 and now account for nearly half of all vehicle sales, according to IHS Markit automotive industry research. But a future that could include self-driving cars built by robots portends more challenges down the road.
Electric and self-driving vehicles might make the current lineup of SUVS as cutting edge as a 1970s-era conversion van. For thousands of employees at Chicago-area auto plants, a greater concern may be who will build the car of the future.
Some experts are not sure current autoworkers will have the skills needed in the future assembly process.
“Being really good at something that is not really useful to do isn’t a really good ticket to the future,” said Michael Hicks, an economics professor and manufacturing expert at Ball State University.
Here’s a look at the state of auto manufacturing in Illinois.
Ford’s Chicago Plant
At Ford, trucks and SUVS account for more than 80 percent of sales. That percentage is likely to grow after discontinuing all of its sedans but the Mustang and Fusion.
“People are moving out of cars and into SUVS, and it’s really picked up steam over the last four or five years,” said Erich Merkle, Ford’s U.S. sales analyst.
Merkle said SUVS are gaining traction among both aging baby boomers, who find it easier to get into and out of the vehicles, and aging millennials, who need the room for their growing families.
The Chicago Assembly Plant on Torrence Avenue, Ford’s oldest plant in continuous operation, is shifting to an all-suv lineup this year.
By March, the Taurus, long built at the Southeast Side facility, will be out of production. The plant then will begin gearing up to build a new vehicle — the 2020 Lincoln Aviator SUV — along with an all-new version of the Ford Explorer and the police version of the SUV.
The plant, which employs 4,400 workers, has been operating on three shifts, turning out about 313,000 Explorers and 44,000 Taurus sedans through November, according to Ford.
The transformation to the Aviator will require some temporary downtime, Ford spokeswoman Kelli Felker said. During this period, idled hourly employees with more than one year of seniority will receive approximately 75 percent of their pay until the plant resumes operation with the new line.
Felker said there are no changes planned for the size of the plant’s workforce next year, with the current workers keeping their jobs to build the new SUVS.
The plant, which made the Model T when it opened in 1924, underwent a $400 million modernization in 2004, with an additional $180 million investment when it began SUV production in 2010. Ford did not disclose the projected cost of the plant’s retooling this year to accommodate the new SUV products.
Rivian Automotive
Founded in 2009, Rivian employs about 600 people between its Michigan headquarters, technology and engineering operations in California and the former Mitsubishi plant in Normal, Illinois, which the company bought for $16 million from a liquidation firm in January 2017.
Once a hotbed of activity, the Mitsibushi plant ended production in 2015 after years of dwindling sales.
There are about 60 employees “prepping” the Normal plant for production, a number that is expected to reach 465 when the first vehicles begin to roll off the line in late 2020, Rivian spokesman Michael Mchale said.
Rivian is in line to receive $49.2 million in state tax credits over 15 years if it meets employment and investment targets for the Normal facility. Those goals include creating 1,000 jobs by 2024.
The company has set an annual target of 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles over the first two years of production, with the capacity to ramp up to 250,000 vehicles per year, Mchale said.
Mitsubishi Motors opened the Normal plant in 1988 as a joint venture with Chrysler, producing sport coupes and, later, sedans. In its heyday, the Normal plant produced more than 200,000 vehicles per year, while staffing levels reached about 4,000. Before it shut down, the plant was producing the Outlander Sport compact SUV.
Mchale said the community, hard hit by the plant’s closure, is happy to see the lights back on, with some former employees already finding work with the new automaker.
Fiat Chrysler’s Belvidere Plant
The Belvidere plant, once known for the compact Neon, is now the exclusive production home for the Jeep Cherokee. Through September, more than 5,300 employees working two 10-hour shifts per day churned out nearly 220,000 vehicles — already topping the 204,000 built in 2017, when production was split between Belvidere and Toledo, Ohio.
When Fiat Chrysler announced in July 2016 that it was moving production of the Cherokee from Ohio to Illinois, there were about 4,500 employees at the plant outside Rockford, making everything from the now-shelved Dodge Dart sedan to the Jeep Compass and Patriot compact SUVS.
The automaker invested $350 million to retool the Belvidere plant for the Cherokee. That proved a fortuitous transformation for a plant that has seen its share of obsolete vehicles over the years.
The plant, completed in 1965, produced the Plymouth and Dodge Neon from 1994 to 2005. The compacts were supplanted by the midsize Dodge Caliber, which ended its production run in 2011. Fiat Chrysler then invested more than $700 million at the plant to gear up for production of the Dodge Dart, which began rolling off the Belvidere line in April 2012.
FCA spokeswoman Jodi Tinson credited the success at the plant to the leadership and vision of the late Sergio Marchionne, the inaugural chairman and CEO of Fiat Chrysler.
“He saw that the trend was moving away from small cars and towards
SUVS and trucks,” Tinson said of Marchionne, who died in July at age 66 after suffering complications during shoulder surgery.