In its final configuration, there were three buildings in use — a body shop that encompassed 789,000 square feet, the paint shop with 800,000 square feet and the assembly line, which occupied 760,000 square feet. When you put it all together, along with inventory and other space, you have more than 4.4 million square feet under that roof.
In its 27 years of vehicle production, the plant produced more than 6 millions trucks and SUVs. The majority were Chevrolet products, starting with the S-10 pickup truck on Aug. 26, 1981. The pick-ups rolled off the line for eight years before General Motors refitted the plant to build the two-door Chevrolet Blazer and GMC Jimmy.
The busiest year in the plant’s history was 2003, when it built more than 350,000 vehicles. In total, nine different models were built in Moraine, including the Buick Rainier, the Oldsmobile Bravada and the Saab 9-7X models.
The numbers for the local economy are also remarkable. The gross wages paid to employees in 2006 total more than $283 million. That same year, 17 million dollars were paid in state and local taxes.
The true beginning of the facility, however, occurred in 1950, when construction on the building started. By late 1951, the Frigidaire plant was up and running, building refrigerators.
In 1979, Frigidaire was sold, and General Motors immediately began pouring money into the plant to refit it to build the S-10 pickups. Competition from Toyota and Nissan and their lightweight, small and fuel-efficient pickups was hurting GM sales. Chevrolet was selling the LUV truck, a small compact built by Isuzu but sold as a Chevy, but they needed to have their own truck.
On Aug. 26, 1981, the first S-10 came off the line, and it can now be seen at Carillon Historical Park, part of a display tracing the history of the trucks manufactured in Dayton. That display also includes the last truck off the line, a GMC Envoy, and shows an “exploded” 1982 S-10 so visitors can really understand the manufacturing process.
When it comes to numbers and money, General Motors poured more than $1 billion into the facility over the years, as it retooled the plant from refrigerator manufacturing to changing the lines as products and models changed. 1989 brought the end of the S-10 pickup production and after a shutdown for more retooling, Chevy resumed production building S10 Blazers in early 1990.
That production continued for four years, and then another retooling brought the introduction of the second generation of the Blazer, with the S10 identifier now gone and the styling of the car greatly changed.
We fast forward to 2002. The Blazer as an SUV is disappearing from the model line, and the plant begins to produce the Trailblazer. It also built the GMC Envoy, a virtually identical vehicle.
Next on the line was expansion to also build the Buick Rainier in 2003 along with other models.
When sales started to drop in 2006, the third shift of production was dropped, and the following year, the Rainier was dropped.
As SUV demand continued to drop, sales for the Trailblazer also fell, signaling the end of the plant.
In its history, more than 6 million vehicles rolled out of that building, which often never slept.
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