Posted on: Saturday, May 21, 2005

Hyundai latest to open auto plant in South

By Jamie Butters
Detroit Free Press

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An audience of 4,000 that included former President George H.W. Bush sprang to their feet with applause at a ceremony yesterday morning when Hyundai Motor Co. announced the official opening of the Korean automaker's first assembly plant in the United States.

For thousands of new employees, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama represents a better life. For local suppliers, it means more opportunities to do business with a growing company. And for Bush, it was a vindication of the free-trade policies he espoused while in office.

While the plant represents another chapter in Hyundai's global ambitions and is a feather in the cap of Alabama politicians, it is above all another sign of how the U.S. auto industry is thriving with foreign-owned plants in the nonunion South, even as Detroit automakers lose share in their home market and see their standing as borrowers slashed to high-risk junk bond ratings.

The Montgomery plant is just part of a wave of foreign-owned plants opening up across the South. Nissan opened a plant in Canton, Miss., in 2003 mostly to make SUVs and pickups. Toyota will open a truck plant next year in San Antonio, Texas. And in Alabama the other two assembly plants — Mercedes' in Vance, and Honda's in Lincoln — have both doubled in recent years.

Foreign-owned automakers have invested $27 billion and created 55,000 jobs during the last two decades in factories alone, according to the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers.