Bowling Green Assembly Plant facts for kids
The Bowling Green Assembly Plant is a special factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It's where General Motors builds its famous Chevrolet Corvette sports cars. For a while, they also made the Cadillac XLR here. This plant is known for making high-performance cars.
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History of the Bowling Green Plant
The very first Corvettes were made by hand in Flint, Michigan, back in 1953. After that, production moved to a factory in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1954. Finally, in 1981, the Corvette factory moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky.
General Motors opened the Bowling Green plant on June 1, 1981. Most of the 900 workers who built Corvettes in St. Louis moved to this new factory. The building used to be an old factory for air conditioning units. Now, it's a huge 1.7 million square foot facility. It employs almost a thousand people! General Motors spent about $130 million to make the factory ready for building cars. You can even take guided tours of the plant on weekdays, three times a day.
Keeping the Plant Modern
Many big investments have been made to keep the Bowling Green plant super modern. As the Corvette cars get better and better over the years, the technology used to build them also needs to be updated. Here are some of the major investments:
| 2017 | $500 million to update the main assembly line, paint areas, and robot systems. |
| 2014/2013 | $3.5 million to move the Performance Build Center to Bowling Green. |
| 2013/2012 | $131 million to remodel the plant for the new C7 Corvette model. $52 million of that was just for the Body Shop. |
| 2007 | $4.5 million for new conveyor belts and updates. |
| 2005 | $12 million for a special paint system called ELPO. |
| 2005 | $5 million for a system to prevent errors during building. |
| 2005/2004 | $19 million to prepare for the C6 Corvette model change. |
| 2005/2004 | $3 million for a paint waste system and air balancing. |
| 1996 | When the C4 Corvette production ended, the plant was completely redone. This prepared it for the more modern C5 Corvette. |
Performance Build Center
The Performance Build Center is a cool place where car fans can actually help build their own special engines! This center used to be in Michigan. But moving it to Bowling Green means customers can now build and watch their car being made all in one place. This move also created 20 new jobs in the community.
This center is where all the special, hand-assembled "dry sump" engines are made. These include powerful engines like the 6.2L LS3 V8 for the Grand Sport coupe, the 7.0L LS7 V8 for the Z06, and the supercharged 6.2L LS9 engine for the ZR1.
New Body Shop
The new body shop at the plant is amazing. It now allows the car's aluminum frame to be made right there in the factory. This new shop was designed to handle the most complex frame ever made for a Corvette. This new frame is 99 pounds lighter than the old one. It's also 40% stiffer, which means it's much stronger. Because the frame is so strong, the C7 convertible model doesn't need extra support. That's very rare for a convertible car!
Helping the Community
The Bowling Green Assembly Plant also cares about its community and the environment. It has a special wildlife habitat that covers 75 acres. There's even a picnic area made from 42,000 pounds of recycled mats from the factory. Students have planted sunflowers on the land. Local Boy Scout troops have also built and installed bluebird boxes. The plant has an environmental team that chooses the best plants for the factory grounds.
