Driving Down Gasoline Alley

To find the new heartland of automaking in the U.S., just head south from Detroit on Interstate 75. As it courses through Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, I-75 follows a corridor that has served as fertile ground for so-called greenfield factories, built from scratch for high productivity. This is where GM put its new Saturn plant, but most of the new factories along I-75 are Japanese transplants.

All told, Japanese companies have built 11 new assembly plants in North America, which employ 33,000 workers. The first was Honda, which manufactures Accords and Civics at two plants near Columbus, Ohio. Among the other newcomers are Nissan, which assembles Sentras and pick-up trucks in Smyrna, Tenn., and Toyota, which builds the Camry in Georgetown, Ky.

Why is the I-75 corridor so popular? One attribute is its character: rural and mostly nonunion. The Japanese are eager to hire young former farmworkers who appreciate the relatively high-paying auto jobs. (Black organizations have accused the Japanese of putting their plants in rural areas to avoid hiring minority workers.) In addition, many states were eager to offer tax and infrastructure incentives to attract new industry to the region, which suffered heavily during the 1981-82 recession. Today it hums with the sound of new cars starting up.