Volkswagen Westmoreland Assembly Plant
| Volkswagen Westmoreland Assembly | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Type | Factory Complex |
| Location | 1001 Technology Drive |
| Coordinates | 40°11′11″N 79°34′42″W / 40.18639°N 79.57833°WCoordinates: 40°11′11″N 79°34′42″W / 40.18639°N 79.57833°W |
| Construction started | 1968, by Chrysler |
| Completed | 1978 completion |
Volkswagen Westmoreland Assembly was a manufacturing complex located 35 miles (56 km) south of Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania near New Stanton. The complex manufactured 1.15 million Volkswagens from 1978 until 1987. When VWoA began manufacturing at what had been an unfinished Chrysler plant, it became the first foreign automobile company to build cars in the United States since Rolls-Royce manufactured cars in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1921 to 1931.
Chrysler had called the facility the New Stanton plant; Volkswagen changed the name to simply Westmoreland.
The factory manufactured a range of fuel-efficient small cars with gasoline or diesel engines, all variants (or rebadged models) of Volkswagen's Golf: the Rabbit (79–84); Rabbit GTI (83–84); Rabbit Pickup (1979–1982); the Golf Mk2 and GTI (85–89) and the Jetta (87–89). Built with the largest incentive package the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had ever offered, the factory had an estimated annual capacity of 240,000 cars and reached production of 200,000 in 1980. Engines and drivetrains for Westmoreland production were sourced from Germany. Employment, projected at 20,000, reached its highest level in mid-1981 at 6,000 and by 1984 had dropped to 1,500.
Initially, the plant was highly successful, but numerous factors contributed to a sharp decline in sales of the cars manufactured at Westmoreland and the factory's ultimate demise: increased competition in the North American small car market, easing of the period's fuel crisis, poorly received changes to the character of the cars, VWoA's long product life-cycle, the internal economics of the plant itself, persistent labor unrest at the plant and poor networking between Westmoreland and Volkswagen headquarters in Germany. The factory operated at less than half its design capacity and VWoA suffered operating losses during the last five years of its operation. Sales of Volkswagen's U.S.-built cars plummeted by nearly 60 percent between 1980 and 1985.
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