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Van Nuys Assembly | |
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Operated | 1947 | -1992
Location | Van Nuys, California, United States |
Coordinates | 34°12′51″N118°26′40″W / 34.21417°N 118.44444°W |
Industry | Automotive |
Products | Automobiles |
Owner(s) | General Motors |
Van Nuys Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory in Van Nuys, California. The plant opened in 1947 producing Chevrolet Advance Design trucks. Later it would produce several different models including Chevrolet full-size (Caprice, Impala, etc.), Chevrolet Corvair, Chevrolet Greenbrier, Chevrolet Chevelle, Chevrolet Nova / Buick Apollo / Oldsmobile Omega / Pontiac Ventura, and Chevrolet Camaro / Pontiac Firebird. It also produced the Chevrolet Monte Carlo and the Buick Skylark. The plant was closed in 1992 when Camaro/Firebird production moved to Sainte-Thérèse Assembly in Quebec due to air quality remediation efforts. [1]
The site was razed in 1993. A retail and industrial complex, known as The Plant, resulted on the 68-acre (28 ha) site, as well as Station 81 of the Los Angeles Fire Department. The retail portion totals 365,000 square feet (33,900 m2) and is home to 35 retail stores and restaurants. A 16-screen movie theater honors the site history with automotive themed décor. A mural on both sides of Van Nuys Boulevard, under the rail bridge across from the Van Nuys Station, pays homage to the glory years of the GM plant. [2]
Pontiac, or formally the Pontiac Motor Division of General Motors, was an American automobile brand owned, manufactured, and commercialized by General Motors. It was originally introduced as a companion make for GM's more expensive line of Oakland automobiles. Pontiac quickly overtook Oakland in popularity and supplanted its parent entirely by 1933, in turn establishing its position as one of GM's dominant divisions.
The Pontiac Firebird is an American automobile built and produced by Pontiac from the 1967 to 2002 model years. Designed as a pony car to compete with the Ford Mustang, it was introduced on February 23, 1967, five months after GM's Chevrolet division's platform-sharing Camaro. This also coincided with the release of the 1967 Mercury Cougar, Ford's upscale, platform-sharing version of the Mustang. The name "Firebird" was also previously used by GM for the General Motors Firebird series of concept cars in the 1950s.
The F platform, or F-body, was General Motors' rear-wheel drive pony car automobile platform from 1967 until 2002. It was based partially on the GM X platform, which was used for compact applications instead of the sporting intent of the F-Body. The only two vehicles to have been built using the F-Body platform are the Chevrolet Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird. The fourth character in the Vehicle Identification Number for an F-body car is "F" on model year 1985 and up vehicles. Earlier Camaros and Firebirds had differing VIN codes, but are now commonly referred to as F-bodies.
The Chevrolet small-block engine is a series of gasoline-powered V8 automobile engines, produced by the Chevrolet division of General Motors between 1954 and 2003, using the same basic engine block. Referred to as a "small-block" for its size relative to the physically much larger Chevrolet big-block engines, the small-block family spanned from 262 cu in (4.3 L) to 400 cu in (6.6 L) in displacement. Engineer Ed Cole is credited with leading the design for this engine. The engine block and cylinder heads were cast at Saginaw Metal Casting Operations in Saginaw, Michigan.
The General Motors 60° V6 engine family is a series of 60° V6 engines produced for both longitudinal and transverse applications. All of these engines are 12-valve cam-in-block or overhead valve engines, except for the LQ1 which uses 24 valves driven by dual overhead cams. These engines vary in displacement between 2.8 and 3.4 litres and have a cast-iron block and either cast-iron or aluminum heads. Production of these engines began in 1980 and ended in 2005 in the U.S., with production continued in China until 2010. This engine family was the basis for the GM High Value engine family. These engines have also been referred to as the X engines as they were first used in the X-body cars.
Baltimore Assembly was a General Motors factory in Baltimore, Maryland. The plant opened in 1935 to produce Chevrolets and closed on May 13, 2005. It was a two-level plant located in the Canton Industrial Center to the east of the Inner Harbor, to the west of Dundalk, and south of Brewers Hill in Baltimore.
Arlington Assembly is a General Motors automobile factory located in Arlington, Texas. The plant has operated for more than 60 years and today manufactures large SUVs from GM's divisions Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac.
Framingham Assembly was a General Motors factory in Framingham, Massachusetts which opened in 1947.
Doraville Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory in Doraville, Georgia, just northeast of Atlanta. The plant opened in 1947 and was under the management of GM's newly created Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac Assembly Division created in 1945. It was closed on 26 September 2008 as part of the company's cost-cutting measures. According to an article that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on January 28, 2010, New Broad Street Doraville, LLC, a development company, has executed a purchase contract with General Motors to purchase the former plant, with plans to build a mixed-use, transit-oriented development. New Broad Street's deal fell through when DeKalb County decided against using its federal stimulus and property taxes dollars to partially fund the project.
Wilmington Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory in Wilmington, Delaware. The 3,200,000-square-foot (300,000 m2) factory opened in 1947, and produced cars for GM's Chevrolet, Pontiac, Saturn, Opel, Buick and Daewoo brands during its operation. GM closed the plant on July 28, 2009.
Linden Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory in Linden, New Jersey, United States. The plant operated from 1937 to 2005 and made cars, trucks and SUVs for various GM automotive divisions.
Sainte-Thérèse Assembly was a General Motors Canada automobile factory located in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec.
Oshawa Assembly is a manufacturing facility in the city of Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, that built various automobiles for General Motors Canada.
Spring Hill Manufacturing is a General Motors factory in Spring Hill, Tennessee. It was developed from 1985 and launched in 1990 as the sole manufacturing facility for Saturn Corporation. The plant currently includes vehicle assembly plus powertrain, stamping and molding operations.
Located in Norwood, Ohio, the Norwood Assembly Plant built General Motors cars between the years of 1923 and 1987. When it first opened, the plant employed 600 workers and was capable of producing 200 cars per day. At its peak in the early 1970s it employed nearly 9,000. Norwood is a suburb of Cincinnati.
Orion Assembly is a 4,300,000 sq ft (400,000 m2) General Motors vehicle assembly plant located in Orion Township, Michigan. From late 2025, the plant is slated to assemble battery electric pickup trucks such as the Chevrolet Silverado EV and the GMC Sierra EV. As of September 2019, the plant has approximately 1,032 salaried and hourly employees. It assumed operations of Buick City, and Pontiac Assembly.
South Gate Assembly was a General Motors automobile plant located at 2720 Tweedy Boulevard in the Los Angeles suburb of South Gate, California. It opened in 1936 to build B-O-P (Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac) cars for sale on the West Coast. It was the first GM plant to build multiple car lines, resulting from a Depression-spawned move to cut production costs by sharing components and manufacturing. South Gate was the first of several B-O-P "branch" assembly plants, part of GM's strategy to have production facilities in major metropolitan cities. The originally Pontiac operated South Gate plant was part of GM's Southern California Division through 1942.
The General Motors X platform is a rear-wheel drive compact car automobile platform produced from the 1962 to 1979 model years. Developed by Chevrolet, the architecture was initially unique in the U.S. to the Chevy II, first joined by the Pontiac Ventura in 1971, then a range of other GM products as its divisions expanded their compact model lines.
Buick-Oldsmobile-Pontiac Assembly Division was a designation applied from 1933–1965 to a group of factories operated by General Motors. The approach was modeled after the Chevrolet Assembly Division where cars were assembled from knock down kits originating from Flint Assembly and a collection of sites Chevrolet used before the company became a part of General Motors in 1917.
Chevrolet Assembly Division was a designation used from 1933 to 1965. Fisher Body produced trimmed out bodies and then passed the bodies to the Chevrolet Assembly Division which completed the assembly of the vehicle. To streamline production, the General Motors Assembly Division was created that incorporated both divisions. From 1965 to 1972, GMAD was given responsibility for former Chevrolet / Fisher Body assembly plants.