Leeds Assembly was a General Motors

automobile A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarde ...

factory in Leeds, Missouri. It was closed in 1988. The factory produced the A-bodies and J-bodies. The Leeds Assembly Plant is located in the Leeds district of Kansas City, Missouri, at 6817 Stadium Drive. The GM operations are closed, and the facility has been sold and is now used as a warehouse and for outdoor storage. At its peak employment, over 4,500 persons hourly and salary worked at the Leeds plant producing 60 vehicles per hour on two production shifts.

The early years

The Leeds Assembly Plant began operations in 1929 as two separate divisions with GM-controlled Fisher Body and Chevrolet plants under one roof. Each division had its own staff including engineers and administrative positions. The wall down the length of the Leeds facility completely separated operations of Fisher Body and Chevrolet operations, and the car bodies were literally pushed through a hole in the wall from Fisher Body to the Chevrolet side.

The Leeds sit-down strike

The Leeds plant was one of the earliest

sit-down strike A sit-down strike is a labour strike and a form of civil disobedience in which an organized group of workers, usually employed at factories or other centralized locations, take unauthorized or illegal possession of the workplace by "sitting do ...

locations, following the initial sit-down strike at the assembly plant in

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. On December 16, 1936, Fisher Body workers began an eight-day strike that only ended because of the inability to bring food into the plant for workers. The basis for the strike was the firing of an employee the previous day; however Fisher Body employees were said to be paid less than Chevrolet workers and were to have had less job security, and the

United Auto Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico) ...

(UAW) was pressing for national recognition of the union. Without car bodies being passed through the hole, the production of Chevrolet vehicles quickly ceased. On February 17, 1937, two months after UAW members at the Leeds plant sat down on their jobs, GM recognized the UAW, altering automobile labor relations.

General Motors Assembly Division (GMAD)

General Motors maintained the two division production at the Leeds Assembly plant for 40 Years The Fisher/Chevy Wall in the Leeds assembly came down in 1969 when the General Motors Assembly Division (GMAD) was formed. This consolidated all assembly operations under one division. General Motors divisions (Fisher Body, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac and GMC) were divested of assembly responsibilities. In the 1970s Leeds produced the classic

Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo is a two-door coupe that was manufactured and marketed by the Chevrolet division of General Motors. Deriving its name from the city in Monaco, the Monte Carlo was marketed as the first personal luxury car of the Chevr ...

, the

Chevrolet Malibu The Chevrolet Malibu is a mid-size car manufactured and marketed by Chevrolet from 1964 to 1983 and again since 1997. The Malibu began as a trim-level of the Chevrolet Chevelle, becoming its own model line in 1978. Originally a rear-wheel-dr ...

, and the

Chevrolet El Camino The Chevrolet El Camino is a coupé utility vehicle that was produced by Chevrolet between 1959–60 and 1964–1987. Unlike a standard pickup truck, the El Camino was adapted from the standard two-door Chevrolet station wagon platform and integ ...

BOC and the J-Car

Leeds Assembly operated under GMAD until the early 1980s when the GM assembly operations were reconfigured into the Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac division (BOC) and the Chevrolet-Pontiac-GM Canada (CPC), with Leeds being placed in the BOC division. Following a plant retooling, Leeds produced the downsized Monte Carlo and Malibu, but after mediocre sales of the downsized vehicles, Leeds became one of four assembly plants chosen to produce the J-Car; the other plants were in

Janesville, Wisconsin Janesville is a city in Rock County, Wisconsin, United States. It is the county seat and largest city in the county. It is a principal municipality of the Janesville, Wisconsin, Metropolitan Statistical Area and is included in the Madison–Jan ...

, Southgate in California, and

Lordstown, Ohio Lordstown is a village in southern Trumbull County, Ohio, United States. The population was 3,332 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area. Lordstown is best known as the home of the Lordstown Assembly, a G ...

. Leeds was the primary producer of the

Buick Skyhawk The Buick Skyhawk is an automobile produced by Buick in two generations for the 1975 through 1989 model years. The first generation (1975-1980) were two-door hatchbacks using the subcompact, rear-wheel drive H-body platform, a badge engineere ...

and the

Oldsmobile Firenza The Oldsmobile Firenza was a compact car which was produced by Oldsmobile from 1982 to 1988. It was based on the front-wheel drive GM J platform, which was shared with the Buick Skyhawk, Cadillac Cimarron, Chevrolet Cavalier and Pontiac Sunbird. ...

, with subsequent addition of

Chevrolet Cavalier The Chevrolet Cavalier is a line of compact cars produced by Chevrolet. Serving as the replacement of the Chevrolet Monza, the Cavalier was the second Chevrolet model line to adopt front-wheel drive. Three versions of the Cavalier have been so ...

production.

Floods

The plant is physically located close to the Blue River. Beginning in the late 1970s the plant was subjected to flooding due to street runoff into storm drains upstream in Missouri and Kansas. In 1977 of water flooded the production area throughout the plant; three days later the plant was back in production. The plant flooded one more time while in production, and a third and final time after production had ceased.

Closing

The Leeds Assembly plant officially ceased automobile production on April 15, 1988. The landlocked facility was bordered on the east and west by railroad tracks, on the south by the Blue River, and was not a candidate for expansion. Attempts to bring the Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck to Leeds were not successful.

References

{{General Motors factories General Motors factories Former motor vehicle assembly plants Motor vehicle assembly plants in Missouri Economy of Kansas City, Missouri Buildings and structures in Kansas City, Missouri Buildings and structures completed in 1929 1929 establishments in Missouri 1988 disestablishments in Missouri