GM removes made-in-Mexico Chevy Blazer from Comerica Park display after controversy

In a discreet move Saturday, General Motors quietly lowered its new 2019 red Chevrolet Blazer SUV down from its perch above centerfield at Comerica Park and replaced it with an American-made Chevrolet Traverse SUV in white.

Some UAW workers had considered the Blazer an affront to them given that GM builds the SUV in Mexico. The Traverse is built in GM's Lansing Delta Township plant in Lansing.

"It’s very distasteful for people," said a UAW worker at a Detroit-area GM plant. He asked to not use his name because he is not authorized to speak for the UAW. "We’ve done outings to Tigers games. I don’t know if that’ll change or not based on the product sitting on the marque. We have a lot of pride."  

GM has put its cars atop the Chevrolet Fountain for 10 years running. But choosing one built abroad was unsettling to union members, they said, as the union bargains for a new contract and fights to keep GM from closing four U.S. factories.

GM's choice

On March 26, GM hoisted a red 2019 Chevy Blazer SUV and a silver 2019 Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup atop the Chevrolet Fountain, replacing last year's Colorado ZR2 and Traverse SUV.

The Silverado is as American as apple pie, built in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Saturday, GM swapped out the silver pickup for a red one, said GM Spokesman Jim Cain, to complement the Traverse, which is white.

GM assembles the new Blazer at its plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico — a sore spot for the UAW, which had pushed to get the vehicle into a U.S. plant.

"It’s an interesting choice," said labor expert Kristin Dziczek, of GM's decision to mount the Blazer at Comerica. "It is a new vehicle and GM is trying to get a lot of exposure for it."

GM defended its move last week saying, “American workers contribute more to the Chevy Blazer than anyone else," said Cain at the time. "It pumps more than $500 billion into the U.S. manufacturing economy and support thousands of U.S. jobs.”

And Comerica offers Chevrolet a lot of exposure with a baseball season that starts April 4 and runs through September, said Dziczek, vice president of Industry, Labor & Economics at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

"Comerica means the Blazer will be on television every time the Tigers are on television," said Dziczek. "But it is a very polarizing vehicle with the UAW and Canadian autoworkers. It’s just marketing, labor relations and strategy not really mixing — all happening at a very interesting time."

Bad timing

As it happens, baseball season this year overlaps with the bargaining talks between the Detroit 3 carmakers and the UAW. The current four-year union contract expires at midnight Sept. 13, 2019.

With the Blazer looming over the Comerica crowd, which often includes UAW workers, it would have been a reminder of Mexican production and U.S. plant closures on display, some say. That's partly why GM opted to change it out.

"We want people to enjoy baseball without distractions, so we are going to replace the Chevrolet Blazer with a Chevrolet Traverse at the Comerica Fountain," said Cain in a statement. "American workers contribute significantly to the success of the Chevrolet Blazer. The Blazer generates more than half a billion dollars into the U.S. manufacturing economy each year, helping support thousands of good-paying U.S. jobs."

In November 2018, GM said it will idle five plants in North America this year and early next year, affecting about 6,200 jobs. GM has said the cuts are part of its restructuring — which also included cutting 8,000 white-collar jobs — and will save it $2.5 billion this year. The plants that were idled mostly build sedans, which have seen sales decline as consumers shift to buying SUVs and pickups.

Two of those plants are in Michigan: Detroit-Hamtramck, set to stop production in January 2020, and Warren Transmission, slated to idle this year. Another is Oshawa in Ontario, which built the outgoing model of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups, Chevrolet Impala and Cadillac XTS.

“In Detroit and Windsor, that exposure of the Blazer might not be so positive," said Dziczek. "I don’t think GM did it to be antagonistic. It’s a new vehicle they’re trying to sell."

GM's strategy

GM's Cain said the different engine offerings in the Blazer are made at U.S. plants.

The 2.5-liter engine is made in GM's Tonawanda Plant in Buffalo, N.Y. and the 3.6-liter, V-6 engine is made at GM's Romulus Powertrain facility. In total, 2,700 people work in those two plants.

GM has three plants in Mexico, with about 2,800 people employed at its Ramos Arizpe plant. But Cain said the Blazer actually supports more U.S. jobs when counting GM's purchasing of parts from U.S. suppliers and the designers and engineers who work on the Blazer in Detroit.

“More than half of the parts for the Blazer are sourced from the U.S. and Canada, just over 20 percent come from Mexico," Cain said. "We have 168 U.S. suppliers, 70 of which are in Michigan. The total amount we purchase from those suppliers is $500 million for the Blazer.”

The decision to build the Blazer in Mexico was made three or four years ago, said Cain, because U.S. plants were "oversubscribed with vehicles" at the time.

"The capacity in the Mexico plant opened up because we moved production of the Cadillac SRX SUV to Spring Hill, Tenn. in 2016," said Cain. The Cadillac XT5 replaced the SRX in 2017 and is still assembled at GM's Spring Hill plant.

The Blazer, which starts at $28,800, is on sale now in a limited amount as GM ramps up production. GM will report "a couple thousand of them as sold" for the first quarter, said Cain.

It's complicated

The official position by the unions about the Blazer's presence at Comerica Park is murky, and complicated.

A spokesperson for Canada's union, Unifor, declined to comment on the Comerica Park display saying Unifor is not issuing any public comments on GM while in talks about the future of the Oshawa facility.

The UAW did not have a prepared comment about GM's display when asked about it last week. A request Saturday seeking comment was not answered by press time.

GM last made the Blazer in 2005. The new one looks totally different and is aimed at a younger audience. It's bigger than an Equinox, yet smaller than a Traverse.

In June 2018, GM said it would build this hot new SUV in Mexico. There, labor costs are well below those in the United States, and GM's Ramos plant already builds the Chevrolet Equinox SUV, so it is tooled for the larger vehicles. 

But it is complicated for the UAW to take a stance because some of the Blazer's parts are assembled by union workers in the United States at GM's engine plants. The UAW's leadership has taken a harder line than in the past though. In July it blasted GM's decision to build the Blazer in Mexico when U.S. workers at car plants are unemployed.

More:GM faces fiscal, political conundrums as it assesses plants

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"GM employs over 15,000 production workers in Mexico, pays the workers less than $3 per hour and exports over 80 percent of the vehicles to the U.S. to sell here," Vice President for GM Terry Dittes said in July. "This is all happening while UAW-GM workers here in the U.S are laid off."

Last week, GM insisted the Blazer was the right car to adorn Comerica Park's Chevrolet fountain.

“When you look at how many good-paying U.S. jobs are associated with building this vehicle, I think most people, in possession of all the facts, would understand that this is an important vehicle for the American economy and the Chevrolet Fountain is a great platform for showcasing it," said Cain. "If the Chevy Blazer is as successful as we think it will be, everybody wins.”

Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter.