General Motors Co. said Wednesday it has started construction on a new facility for race engine design and development at its Global Powertrain headquarters in Pontiac, as the automaker works to bring together its North American powertrain engineering group for production as well as advanced and racing engines.
The automaker said the construction project also includes adding an electric motor lab to build prototype electric motors, and a gear center that supports designing and testing of gears in next-generation transmissions.
GM said about 100 engineers and technicians in powertrain racing and those who work in electric motors and the gear center will move from Wixom to Pontiac in mid-2015.
“The GM Performance and Racing Center, or GMPRC, will continue to develop some of the world’s winningest race engines for Chevrolet and Cadillac,” said Steve Kiefer, vice president of GM Global Powertrain, in a statement. “Connecting our race engineers with our global powertrain engineering teams will improve our customers’ powertrains in terms of efficiency, reliability and durability. The center will also provide exciting career opportunities for our engineering organization.”
The new Performance and Racing Center is part of a $200 million investment by GM at its Pontiac powertrain operations that GM announced in January 2013. The automaker did not have a breakout of how much the racing center, electric motor lab and gear center projects will cost. GM said last year it would build a new 138,000-square-foot addition and consolidate work done at four sites into the Pontiac campus, bringing about 400 jobs to Pontiac from sites in Wixom; Castleton, Ind., near Indianapolis; and Torrance, Calif., near Los Angeles. GM’s propulsion systems research lab at the Warren Tech Center also is slated to move to Pontiac.