Bedford, Other Hoosier Plants to See no Major Impact From GM Move to Shutdown 5 North American Facilities

WITZ Radio News is an affiliate of Network Indiana 

STATEWIDE -- No Indiana jobs will be affected by a plan from General Motors to shutdown five car making plants in North America by the end of the year.

The cuts will leave 15,000 blue collar and white collar workers out of a job. Professor Rodney Parker of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business predicts the move won't any GM operations in the Hoosier state. If anything it will help them grow.

"Back in 2008 eight the market was around 50-percent passenger cars and 50-percent trucks and SUVs," Parker said. "By last year, it was 35-percent passenger vehicles and 65-percent trucks and SUV's"

Parker explains this represents a shift in what Americans are buying, moving away from smaller passenger cars and looking more at pick-up trucks, SUV's and Crossovers. He said all three of those types of vehicles are made at various auto manufacturers in Indiana.

A plant in Bedford makes parts for Chevy pick-up trucks. Some of those parts go to the GM plant in Fort Wayne which makes the Chevy Silverado. The Silverado sold over 400,000 units last year, with all six of Chevy's passenger car models selling a combined 200,000 units.

"GM has been losing money on passenger cars for a long time," Parker said. " so they're finally bitten the bullet in stopping production of most of these models."

Parker adds moves by competing auto makers in Indiana like Subaru in West Lafayette, Toyota in Princeton, and Honda in Greensburg are producing more SUV's and Crossovers than passenger cars.

With the shift in the market towards these types of cars demand for them is going up, which Parker said will only force auto makers to ramp up production in Indiana.