Honda Motor Co. will begin making automatic transmissions at a new west Georgia plant next April, six months ahead of schedule, Honda officials said Friday.
Demand for the company's Odyssey minivans and Pilot SUVs accelerated the automaker's production start date at the Tallapoosa plant. The plant will employ about 400 people and supply Honda's assembly plant in Lincoln, Ala., with about 300,000 transmissions a year.

"We have a pretty aggressive building schedule. We have new customers waiting on our final product," said Ted Pratt, a spokesman for Honda in Lincoln. "The decision was (made to) advance the construction schedule to get the facility on line and production (going) a little sooner."

Honda has an annual production capacity of 1 million automatic transmissions in the United States. The Alabama plant currently gets its transmissions from a Honda plant in Russells Point, Ohio.

The Tallapoosa plant, at 250,000 square feet, is slightly larger than a Wal-Mart Supercenter store.

Honda officials, along with Gov. Sonny Perdue, broke ground for the $100 million facility, known as Honda Precision Parts of Georgia, this month.

The transmission plant will be Haralson County's second-largest employer, just behind another Honda plant that makes locks and has about 700 workers, Pratt said.

The plant will sit on more than 450 acres off I-20, halfway between the Alabama plant and Atlanta, Tallapoosa City Manager Philip Eidson said. It will be a major benefit to Tallapoosa, a town of about 3,000 with a Cherokee name that means "golden water."

"It's going to give our graduates an opportunity to stay at home and maybe go to technical school and college, and work here with a company that can provide them with good-paying jobs," Eidson said.

"Hopefully with that will come some housing and people and other opportunities for other suppliers to come and support the Honda plant."

Hiring for the Tallapoosa plant will begin later this year. Honda officials said they have not determined the wage rate for production workers.

Nationwide, workers in the motor vehicles and parts manufacturing industry averaged about $21.71 per hour in 2004, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But those in automobile and light truck production -- a heavily unionized business with fewer employees -- earned over $29 hourly, BLS said.

While pay grades vary by job and seniority, unionized autoworkers for domestic brands earn about $25 an hour.

That is before bonuses and overtime, which can be generous and add thousands of dollars a year in income.

The Tallapoosa plant is Honda's 13th major facility in North America and brings the company's investment in North American production, research and development and marketing operations to more than $8.5 billion. Using domestic and globally sourced parts, Honda now has the annual capacity to produce 1.4 million cars and light trucks in at five auto plants in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Honda began operations in the United States in 1959 with the establishment of American Honda Motor Co. Inc., Honda's first overseas subsidiary. Honda now has more than 30,000 employees in North America.

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