...this story has been officially confirmed by the head of corporate communications for Argentum Motors, Colonel Bhagwati Prasad Suman.

Suman told Just-Auto that Argentum Motors is currently in negotiations with the Chrysler Group about an outsourced manufacturing deal adding that the Indian firm is busy retooling its plant to assemble larger vehicles.

"Right now the work is going on to augment the assembly lines which were made to manufacture small cars," said Suman. "Soon they would be big enough to handle an SUV."

"It's still on the market. We're still actively marketing it, and we'll entertain all offers," said Katie Hepler, a spokesman for Chrysler LLC, which owns the land. The asking price is $60,000 an acre for the whole parcel or $80,000 an acre if it is split up, according to commercial real estate experts.

The former factory produced its last Jeep Wrangler at the end of June, 2006. Over its nine decades of service, it produced an estimated 11 million vehicles, including tens of thousands of Jeeps for the U.S. military during World War II.

"I think we just got sold out by our leadership," said Edward Mendrysa, 56, of Southgate, who for the past 13 years has worked on the door line at the Jefferson North plant in Detroit. The plant, which makes the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Jeep Commander sport utility vehicles, is one of five that will have a shift eliminated under the plan.

...snip...

In addition to Jefferson North, shifts will be cut at vehicle assembly plants in Belvidere, Ill.; Toledo, Ohio; Brampton, Ontario; and Sterling Heights in suburban Detroit. About 200 jobs will be cut at the company's Mack Avenue engine plant in Detroit. Around 5,000 workers will be cut due to the shift eliminations; other cuts will be made throughout the system.

- Chrysler Group to announce future of the smokestacks on the Parkway site

- Plant was oldest manufacturing facility in North America, including 64
years of manufacturing Jeep products

- Operations moved to the $2.1 billion state-of-the-art Toledo Supplier
Park in 2006

After a proud 96 year history and the production of more than 11 million vehicles, demolition of the former Jeep Parkway site is almost complete. Please join us at an event to celebrate the history of the facility and to discuss the future of the site.

When: Monday, June 18 - 10:00 a.m.

Photo Opportunities:
- 1945 Jeep vehicle
- 2007 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited
- Final chance to capture the three smokestacks together against Toledo skyline

Much of the downsizing, analysts believe, will come at plants that make truck-based products, victims of the change in consumer tastes from sport utility vehicles and trucks to more fuel efficient car-based vehicles.

Atop almost all of the analysts' lists of plants likely to be closed is the 2,100-worker factory in Newark, Del., that assembles the slow-selling Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen midsize SUVs.

Analysts say the Mack Avenue Engine Plant 1 in Detroit, with about 530 employees, also is a possibility because it makes the 4.7-liter V-8 engines that go in slow-selling trucks. And a 2,330-worker plant near St. Louis that makes Ram pickups also is on many lists because Chrysler has two other plants that make the Ram. Shifts also could be cut at other plants.

Production of the 2007 Dodge Nitro will begin slowly on Monday on the same line and at the same time as the Jeep Liberty manufacturing on two shifts.

Three production shifts will operate starting Aug. 14, providing jobs to 750 workers who were idled or displaced when Jeep Parkway closed in June.

The third work shift will catapult the Toledo factory into an elite group of North American assembly operations that essentially operate around the clock, at least during the week, to meet demand for products albeit with some drawbacks.

“It’s good news and a sign that market demand is there,” said company spokesman Michele Tinson.

Dan Henneman, chairman of United Auto Workers Local 12 at Toledo Jeep, said the third-shift workers are training this week in that time slot so workers get used to handing off jobs to first-shift workers.

“We will not stop the line,” he said, except for 35 minutes worth of breaks and lunch each shift.

TO THE tens of thousands of workers who turned out 11 million cars and trucks there for more than nine decades, the closing of the Jeep Parkway plant this week will seem like the loss of an old friend.

Sadness abounds for the passing not only of the familiar West Toledo factory with its trademark brick smokestacks but also for the demise of a rich slice of American culture embodied in what once seemed like an unending stream of good-paying industrial jobs.

We may never see their like again on the same grand economic scale, but Toledo still has its Jeep, in spirit as well as steel, sheet metal, and rubber.

Despite all the changes, one of the automotive world’s most famous brand names remains inextricably linked to the city that gave it birth. Its legacy lives on in the five-year-old Toledo North assembly plant and the adjacent complex due to be opened next month on Chrysler Drive.

The last of nearly 970,000 Wranglers made since the icon was last redesigned in 1997 was built at Parkway yesterday, will be painted red there today, and will be finished tomorrow at Stickney, where Mr. Laucks works.

Meanwhile, production of the redesigned Wrangler begins with four-door Unlimited models on July 17 after Mr. Laucks and others return from Toledo Jeep’s traditional two-week summer shutdown. The first finished vehicle is to be done July 24.

“I worked my new job over there for a couple of days — it’s exciting,” Mr. Laucks told The Blade yesterday.

He predicted the latest incarnation of the World War II icon will “sell a lot better.”

Production of two-door Wranglers is to begin Aug. 28, and the complex will add a second shift Sept. 25, Ms. Sidoti said.

For more than 80 years, two smokestacks bearing “Overland” spelled out in brick have towered over Toledo’s Jeep Parkway plant, a remnant of the auto company that started the massive complex in 1910.

But like Willys-Overland Motor Co., what remains of the nation’s longest-operating auto plant will become defunct this week and eventually torn down, wrenching the hearts of workers and retirees such as Lucy Bonilla, Barbara Wawrzyniak, and Marv Machinski. Retirees such as Bob Thompson, however, look to the future.

About a third of Jeep Parkway was demolished in 2002, and a time line for the rest — including the circa-1920 smokestacks, visible from I-75, which generations of local residents identify with — has not been determined, a company spokesman told The Blade last week.