page_title: Oshawa Car Assembly
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Oshawa Car Assembly / History
caption_attribution_description: 2013 Cadillac XTS photographed in Washington, D.C., USA.
context_page_description: Oshawa Car Assembly is a manufacturing facility in the city of Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, that built various automobiles for General Motors Canada. Vehicles were primarily produced for the US, Canadian, and Mexican markets, but they also built exports for various countries around the world, particularly South America and the Middle East. Historically the Oshawa plant was the source of all right-hand-drive market GM exports with complete vehicles or knock-down kits shipped to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom until the end of the 1960s. At one time, the factory was one of the largest auto manufacturing facilities in the world, with two car assembly plants, a truck assembly plant, as well as parts production including Harrison radiators, AC Delco batteries and American Axle. Between 1999 and 2019, it had won more quality and productivity awards than any other GM plant. The plant is part of the larger GM Autoplex.
  The facility has over 10 million square feet of vacant factory floor.
context_section_description: The facility had produced vehicles since 1907. It was one of six locations building Chevrolet before it merged with GM in 1918.  In January 1918, Oshawa became the first Canadian GM plant to minimize the issue of large scale layoffs by cutting the second shift and alternating day- and night-shift workers at two-week intervals. This system was later adopted at other plants around the continent.
  From its beginnings, the Oshawa plant supplied right-hand-drive vehicles to international markets in kit form for local assembly, or as completed vehicles until the late 1960s. International markets saw U.S and Canadian-only GM vehicles such as the Bel Air, Pontiac Parisienne, Pontiac Laurentian, and Chevrolet Impala.
  In the mid-1980s, GM began a large transformation of the facility, naming the site "Autoplex." The changeover came in three steps, the first being conversion of the truck plant to GMT400 production in 1986. The next step was retooling Line 2 for the new W-body Regal, which began production in mid-1987. The final instalment was a long changeover of Line 1 for the Chevrolet Lumina, which went into production on January 8, 1989 as a 1990 model.
  The Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix were discontinued in June and November 2007 respectively. The Buick LaCrosse was discontinued from Oshawa #2 in 2008 and moved to Fairfax Assembly for 2009. In the fourth quarter of that year, it began producing the new Chevrolet Camaro. Both the Buick Regal and the Camaro Convertible launched on the Flex Line in the first quarter of 2011.  The plant began the production of high performance 2012 Camaro ZL1 and the 2012 Buick Regal GS in 2012 and will build the 2013 Cadillac XTS in the first quarter of 2012.
  In August 2010, the plant began assembling the Chevrolet Equinox in partnership with another GM facility in Ingersoll, Ontario, known as CAMI Automotive. The metal bodies are made at CAMI, trucked two hours east to Oshawa, where they are inserted on the conveyor just before the paint shop. The bodies are painted and then go through the general assembly process at the Oshawa plant. The entire process was developed as a quick way to respond to high demand for the Equinox product. The CAMI facility does make Equinox and GMC Terrain from start to finish at their own plant, but they did not have the capacity to put more bodies through paint and general assembly.
  In mid 2018, it was announced that the previous generation of the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and the GMC Sierra 1500 would be sold alongside their successors for the 2019 model year, as the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LD and the GMC Sierra 1500 Limited. Final assembly of these trucks, which would only be sold in Double Cab, Standard Bed form, would occur at Oshawa Car Assembly. This marks the first time since 2009 that Oshawa Assembly (Oshawa Truck Assembly), which also assembled the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and the GMC Sierra 1500 in Extended Cab form, would assemble trucks. Later that summer, GM also began final assembly of Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD Double Cab models. 
  On November 26, 2018, General Motors announced the closure of the Oshawa car assembly plant complex ending 111 years of auto manufacturing in Oshawa. The final vehicle, a white GMC Sierra pickup truck, rolled off the assembly line on December 18, 2019.
caption: The Cadillac XTS was a product of Oshawa Car Assembly
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