{"id":50100,"date":"2012-05-22T00:01:33","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T04:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=50100"},"modified":"2012-05-21T21:25:38","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T01:25:38","slug":"gm-rolls-dice-on-new-midsize-pickup-truck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2012\/05\/gm-rolls-dice-on-new-midsize-pickup-truck\/","title":{"rendered":"GM Rolls Dice on New Midsize Pickup Truck"},"content":{"rendered":"
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General Motors showed this Chevrolet Colorado concept when it announced last fall that Wentzville would be expanded to handle its production.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

General Motors broke ground Monday on a $380 million plant expansion to its Wentzville Assembly facility outside St. Louis, to accommodate the production of the newly designed Chevrolet Colorado midsize pick-up, creating or retaining about 1,260 jobs hourly and salaried jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur plant could not be successful without strong support from our local community,\u201d GM Wentzville plant manager John Dansby said . \u201cWe\u2019re pleased to make this announcement today that strengthens our presence in Wentzville with a significant expansion of our facility that will benefit the local economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Building a Great Automotive Website!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wentzville currently produces the full-size Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana cargo and passenger vans.<\/p>\n

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Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon talks to media at a ceremony where General Motors broke ground on a new $380 million plant expansion to its Wentzville Assembly facility Monday. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GM builds the existing Colorado and its sister truck the GMC Canyon, at a plant in Shreveport, La., which is slated to close.<\/p>\n

The Wentzville plant – currently 3.7 million square feet – will grow by another half a million square feet.<\/p>\n

A UAW official told the St. Louis Dispatch<\/em><\/a> that some of the new hires at Wentzville will come from Shreveport, but estimated 80 percent of the 1,260 jobs will be filled by new hires from the St. Louis area.<\/p>\n

A version of the truck slated for the Wentzville plant is already in production in Thailand.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to read TheDetroitBureau.com’s First Look at the 2012 Colorado.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

GM is gambling that sales for smaller pickup trucks will grow, precisely the opposite of Ford’s strategy. Ford ended production of its small Ranger pickup last year and won’t sell its replacement stateside. Ford has said small pickup trucks have grown so much that there’s little differences between them and their full-size brethren. And those who bought the Ranger as a work vehicle or because it was simply the cheapest new vehicle in the Ford showroom have other options such as the TransitConnect and Fiesta.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GM is betting $380 million that there is still some life in the midsize pickup truck market. The automaker broke ground on an addition to an existing plant where it will build the next generation of the Chevrolet Colorado pickup. TheDetroitBureau.com has the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":50102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50100"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=50100"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=50100"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=50100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}