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GM struggles to sell small cars, plans to lay off 2,084 employees at two plants

Due to low demand for some of its vehicles, General Motors plans to cut 2,084 jobs at its assembly plants in Lordstown, OH and Lansing, MI. At the same time, the automaker also announced plans to invest approximately $900 million in three of its facilities – the Toledo Transmission Operations in Ohio, Bedford Casting Operations in Indiana, and Lansing Grand River in Michigan - for future products. GM will discontinue the third shift at both the Lansing Grand River plant and the Lordstown, OH plant. The Cadillac ATS, Cadillac CTS, and Chevrolet Camaro are made at the automaker's plant in Michigan, which currently has 2,700 employees. The move to eliminate the third shift affects 810 hourly workers, as well as 29 salaried employees, starting on January 16th. The plant in Lordstown, OH currently has 4,500 employees and makes the Chevrolet Cruze sedan. The plan to discontinue the third shift will affect 43 salaried workers and 1,202 hourly employees and will start on January 23rd. As Fortune points out, sales of the Cruze are down 20 percent through October, while sales of the Cadillac ATS and CTS were down 17 percent through the same period of time. In addition to cutting the third shift at both assembly plants, the automaker plans to invest a total of $900 million between three of its facilities for unnamed future products. GM's Toledo Transmission Operations will receive $667.6 million, the Lansing Grand River Assembly plant will receive $211 million, and the automaker's Bedford Casting Operations will get $37 million. Last year, GM cut roughly 500 jobs from its Orion Township factory due to slow sales of the Chevrolet Sonic and Buick Verano, with surging crossover and SUV sales as the most likely culprit. With GM posting much healthier sales figures for the Chevrolet Equinox and Cadillac XT5 compared to the ATS, CTS, and Cruze, it looks like compact SUVs are to blame for this year's layoffs as well. Related Video: News Source: Fortune, General MotorsImage Credit: REUTERS / Rebecca Cook Hirings/Firings/Layoffs Plants/Manufacturing Cadillac Chevrolet GM Coupe Sedan Lordstown Ohio

Weekly Recap: Racing legend Jim Hall explains Chevy's futuristic Chaparral concept

"I said our cars are built to be winners." – Jim Hall Racing legend Jim Hall never thought he'd be a video game consultant, but when Chevrolet asked for his advice to create a futuristic Chaparral for the Vision Gran Turismo series, he was eager to help. He reviewed early sketches and suggested some changes that made it onto the concept, including the addition of a camera that's mounted onto a mast over the cabin to aid the driver. The Chevy Chaparral 2X Vision Gran Turismo concept was revealed this week at the Los Angeles Auto Show and will be part of a downloadable update for PlayStation 3's Gran Turismo 6 in December. Theoretically, at least, it uses a laser-beam propulsion system and an air-powered generator to produce 900 horsepower in the video game. It's capable of sprinting to 60 miles per hour in 1.5 seconds en route to a top speed of 240 mph. Those gaudy performance specs – even in the virtual world – came at Hall's urging. "I said our cars are built to be winners," Hall told Autoblog on the floor of the Los Angeles show. The 79-year-old drove Lotus racecars in Formula One before launching the successful Chaparral Cars in the 1960s. Like his innovative Can-Am racers, the Vision Gran Turismo project has an eye toward the future. It also introduces the iconic Chaparral name to a new generation of fans, and hopefully, Hall says, gets them excited about engineering and design. "It emulates what we did in the '60s," he said. And what they did back then still resonates. Chaparral Racing and Chevy partnered more than 45 years ago for development work on the composite monocoque chassis, lightweight alloy powertrains, automatic gearboxes and active aerodynamics. "He [Hall] walked right back into this and was able to apply thinkings and learnings," said Clay Dean, General Motors executive director of advanced design. The Chevy Chaparral 2X Vision Gran Turismo concept was created at GM's North Hollywood advanced design studio, and it will be on display at the show through November. Other News and Views Sebastian Vettel joins Ferrari team in 2015 Ferrari confirmed that four-time Formula One World Champion Sebastian Vettel will join the Scuderia for the 2015 season, jettisoning Ferrari's current ace, two-time champ Fernando Alonso. Vettel has been F1's most successful driver since Michael Schumacher, though he's struggled to match his previous accomplishments in 2014.

GM's Oshawa plant may close after Camaro production moves

Most of the time, when vehicle production is moved from one assembly plant to another, it spells bad news for the former. While General Motors won't go so far as to say its Oshawa, Ontario factory, which is losing the Chevrolet Camaro to the Lansing Grand River plant, is in trouble, analysts seem to think the factory's days are numbered. Forecasts for the facility are far from positive. The loss of the Camaro this year, combined with GM's targeted shutdown of a single-shift assembly line responsible for the fleet-only Chevy Impala Limited and the Equinox crossover is a bad enough omen. But with AutoForecast Solutions CEO Joe McCabe telling The Detroit News that the plant's other two products, the Cadillac XTS and Buick Regal, aren't likely to stick around beyond 2017, things look decidedly grim at Oshawa. "There is a fairly strong chance that the plant could close," Jeff Schuster, senior VP of forecasting for LMC Automotive, told The Detroit News. That doesn't mean that Unifor, Canada's auto union, and the Canadian government are going to let the factory die without a fight. And with the latter chipping in $10 billion as part of GM's 2009 bailout, you might think it has a degree of leverage in the situation. A meeting between the government and the Detroit Three at the 2015 North American International Auto Show revealed that Oshawa is already a topic of conversation. "We made it very clear that we would like to see an indication on the future of Oshawa sooner, in particular because the timing is very challenging for our supply chain to be able to adjust to potentially future orders or changes, but also to know that there are going to be future opportunities at Oshawa," Ontario's Minister of Economic, Development, Employment and Infrastructure Brad Duguid told The Detroit News. "Bottom line: It's time they made a longer-term commitment here," Unifor President Jerry Dias said, echoing Duguid's statements. It's unclear if this sort of strong talk will be enough to save 3,300-plus employees, although based on the analysts' forecasts, we doubt it.