December was filled with auto industry news impacting Ohio, both good and bad.

The bad news:
Our sister blog Autoblog.com reports that Ohio Governor Bob Taft offered Ford a package worth $15.7 million if they would keep their Maumee, OH plant open. A Ford official implied that, despite the sweetness, the plant would remain on the chopping block. Also on death row is the transmission plant in Batavia, OH.

More Ford sadness: The company announced they have sold their four-million square foot Lorain Assembly Plant to the Industrial Realty Group for a reported $2.4 million. President of IRG Stuart Lichter was one of the principals in the successful redevelopment of the Goodrich plant in Akron.

Some of the best-known models in Ford history were built in Lorain: the Galaxie, Thunderbird, F-series pickup, Falcon, and my first car, the Ford Fairlane. In the 1970's, 7,500 people earned their paychecks at the Lorain plant.

The Delphi Corp., a spin-off of Chevrolet that supplies parts to the car company, announced that they lost $226 million in November. Their well-known struggles to wiggle out from under pension debt as well as their dependence on troubled General Motors have forced them into a severe pruning of the corporation, including several sites in Ohio. Delphi employs about 8,000 in factories in Ohio, including Sandusky, Columbus, Warren and Vandalia. Only the Warren and Vandalia plants are to remain open.

The good news:
According to Autoblog, Honda's East Liberty, OH plant will be ramping up to build more Civics. Honda plans to increase production by 60,000 cars in 2007, to a total of 440,000 per year. Also rolling off the assembly line in Logan County is the new Acura RDX.

Unfortunately, the pay scale for Honda workers and the many temps Honda uses to flesh out its work force doesn't match the union-scale jobs lost. At least, however, we are seeing some job creation to offset those disappearing.