Indiana: Outlook for 2010 and Beyond

From a line worker to a restaurant owner to a CEO, we asked several of the Indiana residents we interviewed: What’s your outlook for the auto industry and Indiana, optimistic or pessimistic? They were surprisingly aligned in their answers, and those answers may surprise you.

If you missed any of our week-long series on Indiana you can catch up via the links below.

Indiana: The State of U.S. Automaking
Mishawaka: Caught in a Global Bind
Does a Phoenix Grow in Elkhart?
Fort Wayne: The Big Three's Last Stand
Hoosiers Sharply Divided over Bailouts
Greensburg: A Year With Honda
Lafayette and the Subaru Survival Story

Lafayette and the Subaru Survival Story

Kelsey Mays
Cars.com

Across Indiana, automotive communities face shrinking jobs — from Elkhart’s collapsed RV industry to layoffs at Chrysler’s casting and transmission plant in Kokomo.

Not in Lafayette. The county it’s in has one of the lower unemployment rates in the state, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. And Subaru is a major reason why.

The Japanese automaker sells just five models in the U.S., but in an industry collectively down some 28 percent in year-to-date sales, it’s one of just three major automakers to see a year-to-date sales increase.

Why is that? Experts say it’s because cars that offer lots of utility sell well during an economic downturn. Perhaps more importantly, the automaker has kept its focus.“Being small during these bad economic times helped us,” said Jeff Bennett, a 19-year Subaru of Indiana Automotive veteran on the vehicle launch team.

So does having such a fresh lineup. Subaru’s sales are buoyed in part by three models — the Legacy, Outback and Forester — which were redesigned for 2009 or 2010.

Greensburg: A Year With Honda

Kelsey Mays
Cars.com

Greensburg High had a breakout basketball season last year: The Pirates nabbed a regional title and advanced to within one game of the state championships. For the 150-year-old seat of Decatur County, it was good news to cheer about. The worst recession in decades had forced companies like Indianapolis-based Delta Faucet to lay off 265 employees at its Greensburg facility last spring.


But the Pirates’ hometown has one more thing going for it: the $550 million Honda assembly plant just off Interstate 74, north of downtown.

Honda opened the plant to build the compact Civic last year. Some residents demurred when the plant came to town, but many were in favor — including some 300 who staged a human “H” photo-op on the city’s courthouse steps to welcome the automaker in 2006.

“It was a community effort to get them here,” said Jerome Buening, Decatur County Board of Commissioners president. “The county and the city both lobbied very hard, and [Honda] saw something they liked here.”

The assembly plant employs around 1,000 workers, and at full production it could employ double that. Civic production began in October 2008; last month, Honda announced plans to build Civics for export here, as well.

However, Honda hasn’t been the boom to Greensburg that some hoped it would be.

Hoosiers Sharply Divided over Bailouts

By Patrick Olsen
Cars.com

On the morning of July 10, U.S. employees of GM’s competitors discovered they were in a new, perplexing position: As U.S. taxpayers, they were now part-owners of perhaps their biggest competitor.

In talking with Indiana residents, including autoworkers, it’s clear that many haven’t given much thought to that idea. However, they have strong opinions about whether the federal government should have bought its way into the auto industry.

While Jeff Bennett, a Subaru employee for 19 years in Lafayette, finds the competing-against-yourself situation “a tough fence to be sitting on,” he still backs the federal bailouts.

“In the whole, what the government did was a good thing,” Bennett said. “They had to do it."

Not everyone feels that way.

Fort Wayne: The Big Three's Last Stand

By Mike Hanley
Cars.com

While there was plenty of losers in GM's recent federally orchestrated bankruptcy, winners also emerged. One of them is the Fort Wayne Assembly plant in Roanoke, the last Big Three assembly plant in the state.

Winner may be a generous term. The plant is still building pickup trucks — the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra — but the segment has lost much of its luster. U.S. pickup truck sales have fallen 60 percent since 2004, according to the New York Times. In 2004, 2.5 million pickup trucks were sold, but about 1 million trucks are expected to be sold this year.

A confluence of forces has contributed to the drop in sales. High gas prices last year and the recession have made the sales outlook shaky, and you can add to that GM's and Chrysler's tenuous standing after emerging from bankruptcy. However, there is some hope that stimulus-supported projects and a home-building rebirth could give new life to pickup sales in 2010 and beyond.

Before GM’s restructuring, Pontiac Assembly Center in Pontiac, Mich., also built pickup trucks. That plant recently closed, and now Fort Wayne is one of three plants building General Motors' full-size trucks.

"I'm happy it happened," said Mark Gevaart, a 29-year GM employee at Fort Wayne Assembly, talking about GM's government bailout. "I'm in a position to say that because I'm in a facility that's still building trucks, that's still working right now. We didn't get 'Oh, your plant's closing; you have an opportunity to go to this plant here.' I don't have that upheaval in my life, so my perspective is skewed."

Does a Phoenix Grow in Elkhart?

By Stephen Markley
Cars.com

When asked what the biggest difference is at her job since the onset of the recession, bartender Amy Picuda half-jokes, “Well, the tips suck.”


Picuda, 23, works at Mr. G’s, a bar and restaurant in Osceola, in the heart of the economically devastated area around Elkhart. She shouts over to her friend, a waitress, “Hey, how long have the tips sucked?”

“Oh, about 17 years,” her friend quips.

She laughs and turns back. “Well, I think it really started about a year and a half ago. If people have $3 in their pocket, they’re always going to buy another beer and stiff you. We’re lucky we have our regulars, though. I know a lot of places that have closed down.”

Welcome to northern Indiana.

Mishawaka: Caught in a Global Bind

By Mike Hanley
Cars.com

In the past year, Mishawaka has been whipsawed by dramatic changes, both at home and abroad.

In the last 12 months, the town went from wondering who'd buy Hummer — whose H2 SUV was built here — to seeing that assembly line shut down. Now, GM has reached a deal to sell the Hummer brand to a Chinese firm. In addition, there are fears that the gradual pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq could mean the loss of jobs for AM General workers building the Humvee.

The Hummer sale is something few would have envisioned for the iconic American consumer brand a few short years ago, but one that could have a direct impact on Mishawaka and the surrounding area.

"Do I personally like it? No. If it keeps jobs here locally, I guess it's more tolerable," said Kevin Candler, manager of Mr. G's Restaurant and Lounge in nearby Osceola, about the possibility that a Chinese company could buy Hummer. "I guess it's better than them buying the brand and making the Hummer overseas."

Indiana: The State of U.S. Automaking

By Patrick Olsen
Cars.com

It’s been a year since we last visited Indiana, and it’s been nothing short of a cataclysm for the U.S. auto industry:

• First came the credit crunch, which kept even the best-qualified shoppers from getting a car;
• Then the economy tanked, driving sales down to a level that hadn’t been seen in decades;
• Chrysler and GM asked the Bush administration for a bailout, and then had to turn to the Obama administration to pursue “prepackaged” bankruptcies.

What’s the national landscape today? General Motors is in the process of shutting or shedding several of its nameplates, and Chrysler has been bought, in part, by Italian automaker Fiat. The federal government’s Cash for Clunkers program brought some temporary — if not frenetic — help in August. But September sales fell again to the low levels of early 2009, even as there is more optimism that the economy is finally beginning to turn around.