Oshawa to get GM's new Cadillac
One of four GM vehicles to be built at Oshawa

General Motors Corp. will build a new luxury stretch sedan called the Cadillac XTS at its assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., according to suppliers briefed on the automaker's latest product plans.

The new car, together with the upcoming Buick Regal, a redesigned Chevrolet Impala and current Chevrolet Camaro, will form the backbone of the company's manufacturing footprint in Canada well into the next decade, industry sources indicated. GM will also build a hybrid version of one of those four models at the Oshawa site, its main Canadian assembly facility.

While automakers have always trumpeted the new vehicles they build in Canada with splashy launch ceremonies attended by political leaders, the new GM cars have added significance because Canadians would be owners in the company under a reorganization plan for GM being weighed in U.S. bankruptcy court.

The federal and Ontario governments last month pledged US$9.5-billion to help the bankrupt carmaker reinvent itself and protect thousands of jobs. It is the largest-ever public intervention in the industrial sector. Under the plan, Ottawa and Queen's Park would receive 12% of the common shares of a new GM that will exit bankruptcy protection as well as about US$1.7-billion in debt and preferred stock.

"To the extent that both the feds and Ontario have skin in the game, I think they need to be satisfied that they made the right decision," said Bill Pochiluk, president of consultancy AutomotiveCompass LLC in West Chester, Pa. "We think the lineup for Oshawa is very strong."

In exchange for public aid, GM has made several commitments including maintaining in Canada 16% of its North American production capacity. On June 1, the company said it would launch five new vehicles including the hybrid at its two Ontario assembly plants in Oshawa and Ingersoll.

It gave no further details on the vehicles.

The new Cadillac XTS will be the largest four-door sedan in the luxury brand's lineup, replacing the slow-selling DTS, one industry source said. It will compete with other high-end cars from BMW, Audi and Lexus. Production is slated to start in December 2011.
The Buick Regal, to start in Oshawa in August 2011, is a mid-sized family car essentially identical to GM's Opel Insignia model. The Chevrolet Camaro, which Oshawa factory workers began building in March, is an updated take on the classic 1960s muscle car. GM said last week it has filled about half the 25,000 orders taken for the vehicle and can't keep up with demand.

The Chevrolet Impala has for years been one of GM's high-volume, bread-and-butter cars, a model it can throw up against Toyota Motor Corp.'s Camry or Honda Motor's Accord. The next-generation Impala will start production in February 2013, according to the latest timetable communicated by the company to suppliers. The current model, in production since 2005, will be more than seven years old by then. That is an unusually long stretch for a vehicle without a revamp, but GM lacked the money to redo it.

The new Impala, Regal and XTS will all be built on GM's global Epsilon platform, sources indicated. That is significant because it will allow the company to produce three different models for three different brands - Chevrolet, Buick and Cadillac - based on the same basic vehicle underpinnings, and adjust how much of each it builds based on demand.

"It gives GM the flexibility to juggle the production mix to meet the market," said one source familiar with the company's plans. "That is something that GM has not had the full-scale opportunity to do. In the past, they've built assembly lines dedicated to one vehicle, they run the **** out of it, and they throw money at to make the public buy it whether you want to or not. That's passé. That's the bad old days we hope will never come again."