General Motors plans to invest $439 million over the next two years into its Bowling Green, KY, facility, a project focused mostly on a new paint shop for the Chevrolet Corvette assembly plant.
The 450,000-sq.-ft. (41,806-sq.-m) paint shop will be almost half the size of the entire facility, which is dedicated fully to Corvette production. The outlay comes on the heels of $135 million in investments in the plant over the past four years to accommodate the car’s redesign and a Performance Build Center for enthusiasts.
“With this major technology investment, we can continue to exceed the expectations of sports car buyers for years to come,” GM North American Manufacturing Manager Arvin Jones says in a statement ahead of today’s groundbreaking. “These types of investments are evidence that the customer is at the center of every decision we make.”
The investment is part of a $5.4 billion package GM earmarked earlier this year for updates to many of its U.S. manufacturing facilities.
In addition to new tooling and robots, GM says Bowling Green’s new paint shop will include state-of-the-art environmental and efficiency enhancements such as technologies to eliminate sludge water and waste; LED lighting to improve visual inspections and save energy; robotics and electrostatic applicators for smoother finishes and paint savings of 25%; and more efficient baking ovens to improve paint finishes and trim energy use.
U.S. clean-air regulations are pushing automakers to install costly, lower-emission paint shops, and sprucing up Bowling Green likely indicates GM plans to keep building the Corvette there for many years to come in a future of tightening fuel-economy rules.
The plant improvements begin this summer and will not affect Corvette production, which has been exclusive to Bowling Green since output of the sports coupe moved there in 1981 from St. Louis, MO.
Bowling Green made headlines last year when a giant sinkhole under its museum swallowed up a number of cars in its collection, including a ’09 Corvette ZR-1 “Blue Devil” and a ’93 40th-anniversary model.
Sales of the Corvette this year are up 2.5% to 11,986 units, according to WardsAuto data. Last year, when the redesigned ’15 model launched, sales doubled to 34,839.
