Surging Trucks Prompt $148M GM Engine Investment

General Motors will invest $148 million into its Spring Hill, TN, manufacturing operations to build additional 6.2L V-8 small-block engines for its hot-selling large pickups and SUVs.

“This investment will position GM and its workforce to promptly respond to consumer demand for this engine in the popular truck and SUV segment,” says Arvin Jones, manager-Manufacturing at GM North America.

“The flexibility of Spring Hill’s engine machining and assembly equipment is allowing GM to respond deftly when additional engine variant capacity is needed,” Jones says in a statement.

A rebounding economy and low gasoline prices have fueled truck sales in the U.S., sending overall demand up 12.7% last year to 9.9 million units, according to WardsAuto data. GM light-truck deliveries surged 16.3% to 2.2 million.

And more truck buyers are choosing top-of-line equipment such as GM’s premium, all-aluminum 6.2L V-8. In the ’15 model year, the 6.2L accounted for 3.5% of the engine installations on large GM pickups and SUVs, or 109,008 units, compared with 3.0% the previous model year.

The 6.2L option is available on the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra crew-cab pickups, as well as the GMC Yukon Denali and Yukon Denali XL and the Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV SUVs.

The outlay at Spring Hill, which will see GM repurpose flexible machining and assembly equipment at the site to make a V-8 for the first time, is part of more than $1.35 billion the automaker has invested there since 2010. Prior to that, the future of the 6.9 million-sq.-ft. (641,000 sq.-m) vehicle-assembly, engine-making and stamping- and component-producing complex was in question because of GM’s bankruptcy.

Equipment repurposing will begin immediately, GM says, with V-8 production expected to commence in the fourth quarter.

GM engine plants in Tonawanda, NY, and St. Catherine’s, ON, Canada, also build the 6.2L V-8. Truck plants in Fort Wayne, IN, and Arlington, TX, make the pickups and SUVs and are running at full-output capacity.

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