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Where is the Volt factory?

4K views 17 replies 13 participants last post by  Desert Volt 
#1 ·
Where is the Volt produced? And is the Ampera produced at the same location?
 
#2 ·
Hamtramck/Detroit Michigan
 
#3 ·
All Volts, Amperas, and ELRs will come from there for the forseeable future.
 
#9 ·
Both the Volt and Ampera are fully painted the same.

I believe you are referring to the grey plastic pieces on the Volt? For the Ampera those pieces come to the factory body coloured from the supplier. However the Ampera does has fewer colour options than the Volt (could be one reason).
 
#12 ·
DHAM largely sits on the site of the original Dodge Brothers plant (known as Dodge Main). This was a giant manufacturing facility established in 1910 and once employing 30,000. In the 1980s Detroit's mayor Young pushed to get a replacement for the obsolete Fisher/Fleetwood/Cadillac facility in south-west Detroit. Dodge Main came down (and a lot of contaminated earth was scooped out). DHAM for much of it's life has made Cadillacs, a legacy passed on to the Volt.
 
#15 ·
Jim in Tucson, I see you do not own a Volt ... yet. The lower panels around the Volt you are referring to are a rough gray plastic and not intended to be painted. This is a common practice on todays cars. Its done partly for appearance, but also its functional. Assuming you do not have mud flaps, the paint on the lower part of any car behind the wheels gets chipped due to the debris the tires kick up. The gray plastic pannels do not have paint to chip and shrug off most of the small stones and such that kick up. Also, if you look at the photos of the original Volt concept car, many things were changed in the design of the production Volt, but GM tried to keep some of the styling, one such aspect is the gray trim around the bottom of the car.

As for the Ampra, its a different body, similar but different. This is also common for "world" cars to have slightly different styling and features to fit what the region prefers. Here are some examples; in Europe manual transmission is very common (not for Ampra), where as in the US in most cars it is not. Cars to be sold in Germany must have the gas filler on the right side of the car (away from traffic if you run out of gas and are pulled off the road), diesel engines are much more popular in Europe than the US. The reason the volt has one backup light instead of two like most US cars is because some countries where the its to be sold have laws about this. And of course styling is different as tastes differ in different parts of the world, but don't ask me to explain that.

FYI, The shiny black below the windows is also plastic and not intended to be painted. Also a carryover from the concept car.

Abottandy, you asked about production volume at Hamtramck - GM also builds Malibu (but not all of them) and the new Impala there.
 
#17 ·
The gray trim is a styling thing.
If this is such a great styling idea, then why don't we see it on other GM cars (besides the Pontiac Aztek)? I don't recall unpainted gray plastic being a trend setting styling feature on any other $35K car currently sold in the USA.
 
#18 ·
Jim in Tucson, Rocker panels in a dark, non body color has been around for a long time. To name a few current Chevy models Equinox and Traverse both use similar gray plastic rocker pannels. Lets not forget the Avalanche before 2005 which had the lower half of the car clad in black plastic. And its not just GM which does this. Nissan, check out the Juke. Honda, Check out the Crosstour. Ford, Focus. And the list goes on. As I said above, styling is a matter of preference. This has a lot to do with why don't all buy the same car, and cars don't all look the same. But the clad rocker pannels are also functional. Last point, its not a cost savings, rocker panels when painted are part of the body and painted at the same time.
 
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