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Pictures from Spring Hill, Wilmington, and Doraville plants.

GM's plans to introduce a minivan into Saturn's product line beginning with the 2005 model year. But unlike all the Saturn vehicles before it, there are no plans for the minivan to have any ties to Spring Hill, where the first Saturn car rolled off the assembly line more than 12 years ago. The minivan, which will be named in May or June, will be built at GM's minivan plant in Doraville, GA, which assembles the Chevrolet Venture, Pontiac Montana and Oldsmobile Silhouette.

Saturn is taking another step toward blending with its parent, GM. Telephone operators at the automaker's Tennessee assembly plant, who used to greet callers with "Saturn Corp," have begun answering the phone "Spring Hill Manufacturing."

Saturn's Spring Hill plant ranked last in the subcompact category at 33.3 hours per vehicle, however its efficiency improved 12.3% over last year.

Sources say Saturn will shutdown the Spring Hill and Wilmington assembly plants for up to two weeks next month.

Joe Riccio, shop chairman for United Auto Workers Local 435, said workers at the Boxwood Road factory were upset that they first learned about the shutdowns from news reports. "We were worried that there was going to be a long, drawn-out shutdown over this thing," Riccio said. GM has already laid off hundreds of workers and cut production to a single shift at the facility, where the Pontiac Solstice, Saturn Sky and Opel GT roadsters are built. In the most recent cuts, 90 workers were laid off ea...

Spring Hill required 27.15 man-hours to produce the Saturn Ion sedan and Vue sport utility vehicle, a 2.8% improvement over the previous year.

Automotive News reports this week that General Motors will retool the soon-to-be former Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee to build a large Chevrolet crossover utility vehicle based on the company's Lambda architecture. Lambda is currently the basis for the all-new 2007 Saturn Outlook, GMC Acadia, and upcoming Buick Enclave.

Once upon a time there was a sleepy little pit stop called Spring Hill. One day a giant auto manufacturing plant moved in with all of its workers, and almost overnight, the quiet town along the county line exploded with commotion.

General Motors is under the gun to rein in costs, which means it may have to close as many as four more assembly plants in the United States to offset declining sales, some analysts believe. t there's a consensus among most analysts that GM's assembly plant in Spring Hill will be spared the brunt of the company's cuts because GM has big plans for the cars and sport utility vehicles produced there.

All these years later, it still amazes casual visitors that a sprawling auto manufacturing complex like Saturn can be so hard to spot. That an economic entity with such an impact on so many can be comfortably integrated into both the physical and cultural landscape.

Saturn has suspended production of its Spring Hill manufacturing plant in Tennessee for two weeks.

Mike O'Rourke, president of UAW Local 1853, via the Tennessean: What we factually know is that the Spring Hill Manufacturing facility has been placed in GM's good-asset inventory and that, as of today, the Chevrolet Traverse, which currently is built in Spring Hill, is scheduled to move to Michigan in November. When the Spring Hill plant stops production of the Traverse in late November, our facility will still be producing engines in our powertrain building and stamping metal fabrication parts ...

The 2004 Harbour Report, released last week, offers an annual look into the world of manufacturing efficiency at various auto plants in North America.

There could be a Chevrolet in the Saturn plant's future. GM is planning to build a new crossover vehicle at the Spring Hill plant in 2008, making the assembly plant where Saturn got its start the home of a new breed of vehicle linked to GM's top-selling Chevy brand.