The facility had produced vehicles since 1907. It was one of six locations building
Chevrolet Motor Company automobiles before it was acquired by
General Motors in 1918. In January 1918, Oshawa became the first Canadian GM plant to minimize the issue of large scale layoffs by cutting the second shift and alternating day- and night-shift workers at two-week intervals. This system was later adopted at other plants around the continent. From its beginnings, the Oshawa plant supplied right-hand-drive vehicles to international markets in kit form for local assembly, or as completed vehicles until the late 1960s. International markets saw U.S and Canadian-only GM vehicles such as the
Bel Air,
Pontiac Parisienne,
Pontiac Laurentian, and
Chevrolet Impala. In the mid-1980s, GM began a large transformation of the facility, naming the site "Autoplex." The changeover came in three steps, the first being conversion of the truck plant to
GMT400 production in 1986. The next step was retooling Line 2 for the new
W-body Regal, which began production in mid-1987. The final installment was a long changeover of Line 1 for the
Chevrolet Lumina, which went into production on January 8, 1989 as a 1990 model. The
Chevrolet Monte Carlo and
Pontiac Grand Prix were discontinued in June and November 2007 respectively. The
Buick LaCrosse was discontinued from Oshawa #2 in December 2008 and moved to
Fairfax Assembly for 2010. In the fourth quarter of that year, it began producing the new
Chevrolet Camaro. Both the
Buick Regal and the Camaro Convertible launched on the Flex Line in the first quarter of 2011. The plant began the production of high performance 2012 Camaro ZL1 and the 2012 Buick Regal GS in 2012 and will build the 2013
Cadillac XTS in the first quarter of 2012. In August 2010, the plant began assembling the Chevrolet Equinox in partnership with another GM facility in
Ingersoll, Ontario, known as
CAMI Automotive. The metal bodies are made at CAMI, trucked two hours east to Oshawa, where they are inserted on the conveyor just before the paint shop. The bodies are painted and then go through the general assembly process at the Oshawa plant. The entire process was developed as a quick way to respond to high demand for the Equinox product. The CAMI facility does make Equinox and GMC Terrain from start to finish at their own plant, but they did not have the capacity to put more bodies through paint and general assembly. In mid 2018, it was announced that the previous generation of the
Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and the
GMC Sierra 1500 would be sold alongside their successors for the 2019
model year, as the
Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LD and the
GMC Sierra 1500 Limited. Final assembly of these trucks, which would only be sold in Double Cab, Standard Bed form, would occur at Oshawa Car Assembly. This marks the first time since 2009 that Oshawa Assembly (
Oshawa Truck Assembly), which also assembled the
Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and the
GMC Sierra 1500 in Extended Cab form, would assemble trucks. Later that summer, GM also began final assembly of Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD Double Cab models. On November 26, 2018, General Motors announced the closure of the Oshawa car assembly plant complex ending 111 years of auto manufacturing in Oshawa. The final vehicle, a white GMC Sierra pickup truck, rolled off the assembly line on December 18, 2019. On November 4, 2020, GM announced "Subject to ratification of the 2020 agreement with Unifor, General Motors plans to bring pickup production back to the Oshawa Assembly Plant. Construction will begin immediately at Oshawa Assembly and will include a new body shop and flexible assembly module, to support a fast response to strong customer demand for GM’s new family of pickup trucks." Oshawa pickup production started on November 10, 2021 when the first Canadian-made Silverado HD was completed. The Silverado 1500 began production in Oshawa in May 2022. ==Awards==