GM Cuts Initial Goals of Saturn Plant

TROY, Mich. —  General Motors’s Saturn car plant will employ about half as many people and make about half the cars originally estimated when it starts production in 1990, the division’s president said Thursday.

Although larger than first envisioned, the car produced by the newest division of the No. 1 U.S. auto maker still will be aimed at pushing back the growing market share held by imports, Saturn Corp. President Richard LeFauve said.

Last year, GM Chairman Roger Smith said the Spring Hill, Tenn., plant would employ 6,000 workers and produce 500,000 cars in its first year of production.

On Thursday, however, LeFauve reduced those figures to about 3,000 workers and 200,000 to 250,000 cars a year, saying the plant will be designed and built so that expansions can be added later.

“We’re going to have a slow buildup,” LeFauve told reporters at the GM subsidiary’s suburban headquarters north of Detroit. “You don’t start it with what I call a ‘big bang’ approach. You start it up with a very conscientious schedule that allows you to solve every problem that comes up.”

LeFauve said production eventually could reach the initial 500,000-car estimate.

GM still is allocating $3.5 billion to Saturn for plant and equipment capital expenditures, but the money will be spent in stages rather than all at once, LeFauve said.