emccomas

Does $439 million seem a bit much to refurb the paint area / process at Bowling Green?

Sounded like a lot to me when I heard it.

My math is correct, that is almost half a billion dollars, right?

Now, $439 million may not be an unreasonable amount to refit the plant for a mid-engine car.

Just sayin...

JohnZ

Ed, I've built several new assembly plant Paint Shops, and $439 million is a bargain; the Paint Shop is the most expen$ive real estate in any assembly plant. Between the myriad EPA requirements for VOC control (which is why all Paint Shops use waterborne basecoat with booth temperatures and humidity levels held within one degree and one percent of optimal) and the cleaner-than-a-hospital-operating-room environment with positive pressure airlock entry and exit portals serving the rest of the Paint Shop, it's a lot like your environment for assembling satellite probes.

Remember that the capacity at Bowling Green is only about 30 per hour on one shift; a typical high-volume plant (65 per hour, two shifts) Paint Shop these days runs about $600-$700 million - ten years ago that would have bought a complete assembly plant, not just the Paint Shop. Nothing consumes capital like the automobile business.

sub006

With the quality achievable with the factory paint set-up described, wouldn't it be cool to be able to have your properly-prepared vintage Corvette repainted in Bowling Green during the few weeks downtime between model changes? I can see some owners paying $15,000 or more for something like that, coordinated through the nearby National Corvette Museum.

(But maybe the computers would need a new program for C1, C2, etc. body shapes? Or old-school paint won't flow through 21st century equipment? I imagine Mr. Z will tell us why it would never work!)

fyreline

Regarding the money spent on the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, I am reminded of a quote from Henry J. Kaiser regarding the price of doing business in the Auto Industry:

"I expected to toss a few million dollars into the automotive pond . . . but I didn't expect it to disappear without a ripple!"

hedgehead

Another butt ugly Lamborghini wanna be. Doesn't anyone at GM have an original thought?

JohnZ

The short answer is that it isn't going to happen in our lifetime. The C7 Corvette body doesn't go through the Paint Shop - only the exterior panels do, hung on moving conveyor racks that approximate the size and shape of the body. The "Body" only gets primed black, then gets built up as a chassis and powertrain; the painted body panels go on last.

ChattanoogaJSB

Most of the $15,000 people keep paying for paint here on the forum is going for the aforementioned prep. If you paid for prep and paid $15k to the plant you would have a paint job a few here would really brag about... Ludicrously just because they paid so much....