About 1,200 jobs will be opened in Chicago when Ford Motor Co. starts making the Explorer sport-utility vehicle later this year, says a report from the Crain’s Chicago Business.
Ford executives, along with Gov. Pat Quinn, are expected to announce the Explorer production at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday at the plant near 130th Street. Crain’s first reported about this plan almost a year ago, saying that bringing the Explorer from Louisville, Ky., to the Chicago plant would be helped by recent tax credits that Quinn approved. The Torrence Avenue plant is expected to have a second shift again to accommodate production of the Explorer. Continued after the jump!
The plant, which currently has about 1,400 workers, was changed to one shift for the past year. Another facility that would be helped by the arrival of another vehicle at Torrence Avenue is Ford’s parts-stamping plant in Chicago Heights, which employs about 750 workers.
Ford has set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to spend in Illinois to launch the new Explorer model to be built there.
The carmaker has been retrofitting the plant for the past months. The Explorer, a highly popular Ford vehicle, was redesigned for a smaller, more fuel-efficient car platform that’s produced at the Chicago plant.
The new Explorer will go on sale starting August or September; it’s likely to be the plant’s highest-volume vehicle.
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Tags: car news, Ford, ford 1200 jobs, ford explorer new jobs
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