DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Chevy Cruze #1 at one year Anniversary

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General Motors workers celebrate the Chevy Cruze being No. 1 as car hits its first anniversary
Published: Wednesday, September 07, 2011, 6:30 PM
By Robert Schoenberger, The Plain Dealer The Plain Dealer

LORDSTOWN, Ohio -- Most of the workers at General Motors' Lordstown plant had never worked on a best-selling car until this year.

The Chevrolet Cruze has been the No. 1 compact car in the country for the past five months. It was the top-selling car of any size in June.

Lordstown hasn't seen results like that since 1985 when the Chevy Cavalier was No. 1. The Ford Escort passed it in 1986.

GM launched the Cruze exactly one year ago Thursday, and workers say the difference between the new car and the ones that preceded it are huge. Having a hit vehicle generates pride, but there's an equal amount of pressure to keep production high and to build quality into every car.

Getting it right the first time

Jack Norling made some lousy parts last week and sent them on to the next worker on the assembly line. Welds were sloppy, he used the wrong bolts and some things rattled.

And just like he'd hoped, workers caught the mistakes. As a team leader in Lordstown's repair department, Norling usually has his hands full just fixing cars that got damaged in assembly.

"Since about July, we really started to get ahead of things," Norling said. Instead of fixing bad vehicles, he found himself spending more time on maintenance and tracking down minor problems.

In the past, Lordstown workers didn't have the luxury of time to intentionally send bad parts down the line, Norling said.

"The Cobalt was just a number. The Cavalier was just a number. Just hit your numbers, and everybody was happy," Norling said. But with the Cruze, supervisors have madequality a higher priority than production.

The reputations for the Cavalier, built from 1982 until 2005, and the Cobalt, built from 2004 until 2010, was cheap transportation. Lacking cool, modern features, they sold because they cost thousands of dollars less than the market-leading Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla.

Plant manager Bob Purcell said workers were skeptical when GM promised that quality would be the leading concern with the Cruze. But he said in the year since the vehicle launched, the company has proven that it had its priorities in the right place.

"We're trying to build every car that we can, but we're going to build every one right," Purcell said. "You can see it in everybody's face. They're really enthused with what we're doing."

Several workers said even events that could have been negative showed that things were different at GM this time.

In May, just after the Cruze became the best-selling compact on the market, GM recalled all 154,112 vehicles made to check for steering problems. One customer had lost steering control in a parking lot, and the company was worried that drivers complaining of extra noise might be experiencing similar problems.

With the Cavalier or the Cobalt, workers said the company would have recalled a few hundred cars to inspect them and perform minor repairs. The decision to recall the entire run showed a much greater commitment to quality, they said.

"This is the best car we've ever built. We're serious about getting it right," said Todd Burns, a forklift driver at the plant and a union official with the United Auto Workers Local 1112.

Selling cars, walking tall

Salwa Ross waved her car keys at a handful of Lordstown workers who were enjoying some after-work beers at Ross' Eatery and Pub on Friday. Mother of store owner Earl Ross, she's usually quick with a smile or a joke with her regular crowd of autoworkers from the nearby plant. But "Mom," as the guys call her, wasn't laughing.

"This button doesn't work," she told the workers, pointing to a spiral-shaped logo on the key of her top-of-the-line Cruze LTZ. The button should have controlled the remote start for the car, but "I keep pressing it, and it doesn't do anything."

A couple of workers immediately went to help. One of them took the key and pressed the door-lock button.

"You have to hold that down for like 10 seconds," he told Ross. Then, he pressed the remote start button and the car's 1.4-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine came to life.

2011 Chevrolet Cruze at a glance

•The Chevrolet Cruze is on pace to pass 250,000 cars sold this year. That would be the best sales performance for any Lordstown-built vehicle since 2003 when General Motors sold 253,000 Chevrolet Cavalier models. That year, Toyota sold 325,000 Corollas.
•The best year for the Chevy Cobalt was its launch year in 2005. GM sold 212,667 Cobalts in 2005, a figure the Cruze could pass as soon as October.
•So far this year, Cruze sales have outstripped production. General Motors has produced 195,836 Cruze models in Lordstown. It has sold 169,427 in the United States, 28,244 in Canada and more than 7,100 in Mexico.
William Hinchcliffe, a 15-year employee at Lordstown's paint shop, said he and his co-workers are doing whatever they can to make sure that Cruze customers are happy. Whether it's bragging to friends about special features or helping Ross use the extra bells and whistles, a lot of line workers are starting to feel like part-time salesmen.

"Everybody's excited to work. It's a really great car," Hinchcliffe said.

That extra sense of pride is new for a lot of workers at the plant. With the Cobalt and Cavalier, they said it was a sense of professionalism, not pride, that motivated them.

Norling said, "None of us disrespect what we have here. It's a gift to have this good of a car."

Cruze boosts the Mahoning Valley

By 4 p.m., 90 minutes after the afternoon shift started, Ross' store was hopping. Beer flowed from the taps and the kitchen sent dozens of barbecue sandwiches to the after-work crowd. It's exactly what owner Earl Ross envisioned when he decided to add the pub and patio seating to the convenience store he bought 13 years ago.

"I've taken on 15 new employees since they've been back to work," Earl Ross said. He started to expand the shop in 2005, but stopped when work at Lordstown slowed down. He started it up again in 2010 when the Cruze and Lordstown started humming.

Between Lordstown running overtime and the V&M Star steel plant in Youngstown expanding, the Mahoning Valley has been one of the only areas in Ohio to consistently add jobs this year, Cleveland economist George Zeller said.

After decades of industrial decline and massive unemployment levels, Zeller said Youngstown has the hottest job market in the state. He said Lordstown's continued success is a big driver of that as the plant has hired some workers and suppliers that make parts for the Cruze have been busier than they had been with the Cobalt.

Also, workers said the extra shifts have meant a lot of overtime pay. That means more disposable cash to spend with merchants in the area. Although a few did joke that they didn't have enough time to spend the extra money they were earning.

Plant Manager Purcell said it's a good problem to have.

"We're really happy about how well it's done, both from a sales perspective and in customer satisfaction," Purcell said. He later added that he's happy to be able to authorize overtime because it means the plant's making a good product. "As soon as it hits the showroom, someone wants to buy it."


© 2011 cleveland.com. All rights reserved.

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I remember that many of you guys on here that were totally against the GM Bailout were making comments about how they were now going to build Econoboxs.. That it's not General Motors,, but Government Motors..

well, say what you will, but car buyers have spoken.. they love the cruze..

Hundreds of thousands of jobs saved and GENERAL MOTORS is paying the loans back. I honestly believe that we (the people) will get all the money we invested in GM back. I just don't know what our politicians will do with it..but we'll get it back.

I wonder what I'm going to hear next

End of story..

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Yep, it's great when the gov't has to step in to save a business! Thank goodness for poor company management!

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heh, and how many of those units sold were purchased by the Feds?

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Also, let's not go all hog wild over the government having something to do with this vehicle. The Cruze started production and sales overseas in 2009.

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Also, let's not go all hog wild over the government having something to do with this vehicle. The Cruze started production and sales overseas in 2009.

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yup and knowing that, it still didn't stop people from yelling and screaming about how this was going to cause GM to build econoboxs.. i said it then and I'll repeat it now, us bailing out GM had NO EFFECT on the cars they build or were intending to build.

but on this very board, posters who were against the bailout were hailing this as the end of the american car. I remember one poster in particular (and she knows who she is) posting a picture of a small little econobox cartoon and referring to it as a Pelosimobile type vehicle.

that was more about politics than about facts.

I knew someone would bring up production dates,, but that's not really the point is it. GM isn't building econoboxs as predicted by some.

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To be fair, the Democrats really did think that way for a bit (saying "if we own them they are going to build the vehicles we want them to). But ultimately the government had no effect on GM product planning.

Just a hint to what's in the future for GM:



And the 2013 Malibu wipes the floor with the 2012 Camry. Can't find small enough pics to post but the Malibu's looks and interior quality blow the Camry away.

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Let's hope it keeps up and they manage to pay back all the taxpayer money.

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Let's hope it keeps up and they manage to pay back all the taxpayer money.

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Yes. ^^

I own a GM (Saturn) and am not pleased. If GM were to ever fix the fact that you need a football field to turn around in (power steering in all the GM cars I've driven sucks), I might look at them again. But, I doubt it.

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Also, let's not go all hog wild over the government having something to do with this vehicle. The Cruze started production and sales overseas in 2009.

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yup and knowing that, it still didn't stop people from yelling and screaming about how this was going to cause GM to build econoboxs.. i said it then and I'll repeat it now, us bailing out GM had NO EFFECT on the cars they build or were intending to build.

but on this very board, posters who were against the bailout were hailing this as the end of the american car. I remember one poster in particular (and she knows who she is) posting a picture of a small little econobox cartoon and referring to it as a Pelosimobile type vehicle.

that was more about politics than about facts.

I knew someone would bring up production dates,, but that's not really the point is it. GM isn't building econoboxs as predicted by some.

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To be fair, the Democrats really did think that way for a bit (saying "if we own them they are going to build the vehicles we want them to). But ultimately the government had no effect on GM product planning.

Just a hint to what's in the future for GM:



And the 2013 Malibu wipes the floor with the 2012 Camry. Can't find small enough pics to post but the Malibu's looks and interior quality blow the Camry away.

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I don't believe all democrats felt that way.. But there were, I'm sure, a few. Mostly what you heard was rhetoric and chest pounding by politicians saying that now that we own GM, they are going to build better cars... Paraphrasing of course.

New GM models I've had the pleasure of driving recently have been impressive. I love the new Camaro SS I drove a few weeks ago.. didn't like the Lime Green color, but that car was sweeeeeet. Very quick

The Caddys I've driven are excellent vehicles.. THe Malibus and Cruze are really sound automobiles in my estimation. Great value for your dollar for sure.

I'm so anxious to drive a Volt.. All I've read on that car tells me that that could very well be my next new car.

we'll see..

GM has come a long way in the last 4 years in terms of design and quality.

And to think, some people felt it was better to just let them fail..

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Thanks...I'm glad someone else gets it.

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LOL I get what you mean, I just haven't experienced those problems..

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LOL I get what you mean, I just haven't experienced those problems..

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Daman, do you drive another make of car regularly?

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Sure. But you really haven't noticed it with *most* GM cars? And, really, it's something nobody would notice until they needed it. There are times I am in a tight spot and have to make two attempts at getting out of it due to the fact that the turning radius is so freaking large. In any other car I could easily make it in one try.

Been there, done that. My Pathfinder, though a larger SUV, was far tighter than my Vue.

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But you really haven't noticed it with *most* GM cars?

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And for the record, I have the Malibu hybrid.. yes, my conservative arse drives a hybrid... {/quote]

There's nothing wrong with a conservative driving a hybrid. When liberals try to push it onto people is when it becomes a problem.

I don't believe in the hype of man-made global warming, but I still do support having cleaner energies getting developed. It's not a contradiction one bit just like it's not a contradiction for you being a conservative, trying to save money on gas, by driving a hybrid.

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Bite your tongue? Are you saying my experiences are wrong?? How can that be?

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Do the people at GM know that they spelled cruise wrong?

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They didn't want people to think they were associated with Tom Cruise.

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Bite your tongue? Are you saying my experiences are wrong?? How can that be?

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Nope I'm not saying your wrong I was never a Saturn fan, But the Cruze is a very nice small car.

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Cool. I'm gonna have to test one out since you guys all like it so much.