Pandemic upends Fiat Chrysler US factory opening

Carmaker Fiat Chrysler has pushed back the reopening of a shuttered Indiana factory in the United States until late 2021, blaming delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Company officials had announced in March, a US$400-million plan to convert a transmission factory located in Kokomo, so that it could begin engine production within the first three months of 2021.

That reopening has been delayed until 2021’s last quarter, in part because of the company’s eight-week shutdown earlier this year, Fiat Chrysler spokeswoman Jodi Tinson said.

Older equipment has been removed from the factory and interior walls and offices torn down as part of the conversion project, Tinson said. Steel is being raised to add a 30,000-square-foot (2,787-square-metre) addition to provide more manufacturing space.

Fiat Chrysler said it plans to make the factory, located about 40 miles (64 kilometres) north of Indianapolis, into the US production site for the Turbo 4 engines for the Jeep Wrangler and Cherokee models, which is now built in Italy.

Officials said the project would retain about 1,000 jobs and add nearly 200, bringing the total Fiat Chrysler workforce at its Kokomo-area factories to more than 8,000.

Brad Clark, vice-president and head of engine and transmission manufacturing for FCA North America, said in March the Kokomo plant had made nearly four million transmissions from 2003 to 2018, when the company began to shutter the facility. It sat idle for a few months before the conversion work started.

AP