Chrysler Plant Could Build Other Models

Although Chrysler Group's innovative, new Toledo assembly plant currently is slated to build only the Jeep Wrangler, Tom LaSorda, the company's chief operating officer, says the facility could produce other models.

At a recent automotive conference in Traverse City, MI, LaSorda tells journalists market conditions will dictate the plant's product lineup.

Any vehicle besides the Wrangler built at the new plant would have to have body-on-frame architecture, LaSorda says, but “if a frame-based vehicle gets ‘hot,’” it could be built at the new Toledo plant in the same distinctive process planned for the Wrangler.

LaSorda says although the DaimlerChrysler AG management board ultimately approved the unique plant arrangement to have certain suppliers onsite, it is unlikely the system can — or will — be “retrofitted” in any existing DC assembly plants.

LaSorda says the labor arrangements have yet to be finalized for the 3,500-3,800 new jobs falling under the new plant's operating arrangement. The positions will be unionized.

Chrysler's concept for co-locating suppliers within the footprint of the new Toledo plant differs from a previous then-radical concept for increasing the role of suppliers in the assembly process: General Motors Corp.'s controversial, late-1990s “Yellowstone” project.

The central focus of Yellowstone, however, revolved around suppliers that would construct — in satellite plants near the auto maker's main assembly site — large portions of the vehicle in modules to be shipped to the main plant for assembly by GM workers.