(AP) - General Motors Corp. (GM) will spend $332 million to expand its Warren, Mich., transmission plant, the automaker said Thursday.
The investment will allow the factory to produce front-wheel-drive automatic transmissions for the 2007 Pontiac G6, the new 2007 Saturn Aura and three new crossover vehicles: the Saturn Outlook, GMC Arcadia and Buick Enclave.
GM announced Tuesday that it was spending $125 million to expand its transmission plant in Ypsilanti Township, Mich. The automaker is expanding that facility's capacity to produce six-speed rear- and all-wheel-drive automatic transmissions for cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles.
The latest investments bring GM's total spending on six-speed automatic transmissions at its U.S. operations to $1.7 billion since 2003, including $1.2 billion in Michigan alone. The company intends to produce 3 million of these transmissions annually by 2010.
New variants of the six-speed transmissions for front-, rear- and all-wheel-drive applications will be used in nearly 40 GM models in 2006 and 2007.
The 46-year-old Warren Transmission Plant employs 1,200 people. Work on the expansion is to begin this summer and be completed in early 2008.