GM Ellesmere Port, UK 50 Years

Canal boats passed through this port many years ago and it now houses the National Waterways Museum with the largest collection of canal boats in the world. I have a connection to the town of Ellesmere Port I won't bore you with here, but it caught my eye when I found out that the GM car plant located there is 50 years old. I wrote about the plant back in 2005, found by clicking here.

The plant is now fifty years old and celebrated as they do with the original Viva model and the current Astra. It was built on a disused WWII airfield to supply other UK factories with subassemblies and engines. However, the Viva HA model started to be made there in 1964. 

By 1975 all Chevettes were manufactured at Ellesmere Port and in 1980 the first Opel badged cars were produced - to go to Germany. In 1981 the Astra model was introduced. In 2005, EP passed the 4,000,000 mark for cars produced.

In recent times GM has been trying to refine its European operations to make them profitable and that meant fewer factories. Ellesmere Port was a possible casualty but it has been given the green light for the 2015 Astra to be made there along with the Gliwice plant in Poland. They will be the only factories making that model.

I have put together a series of lists below, in ten year increments of EP production numbers. Ones that are estimates are rounded. As to why manufacturers do not put this sort of thing out in the public domain I do not know. Anyway, it is very close to exact but has various sources and is not absolute in accuracy. It could depend whether the source included the van variant of the car, or just counted passenger cars.

			64-73			74-83			84-93
		64	7,776		74	94,618		84	34,403
		65	39,312		75	90,191		85	50,592
		66	62,848		76	101,000		86	74,082
		67	132,240		77	93,237		87	89,539
		68	151,612		78	84,041		88	89,425
		69	110,882		79	58,765		89	87,266
		70	115,561		80	55,002		90	105,024
		71	122,958		81	44,204		91	90,233
		72	127,201		82	51,379		92	117,511
		73	93,417		83	49,250		93	111,047
		Av	96381		Av	72169		Av	84912
			94-03			04-13
		94	102,527		04	125,981
		95	108,152		05	189,196
		96	112,424		06	143,654
		97	102,020		07	115,476
		98	98,197		08	102,481
		99	154,741		09	76,771
		00	154,121		10	102,665
		01	132,297		11	137,971
		02	48,332		12	90,187
		03	30,286		13	73,502
		Av	104310		Av	115788