SPRING HILL, Tennessee – It was the 1980s and General Motors had incorporated its new Saturn brand, billed as a “different kind of car company,” and bought more than 2,000 acres in this one-stoplight town.

The Saturn V had been a NASA rocket in the Apollo space program and ferried astronauts to the moon. General Motors fancied its Saturn car company as history-making, too.

In 1986, GM/Saturn had begun construction in Spring Hill on what Auto Trends Magazine pegged as a nearly $2 billion investment. By 1990, the Saturn plant had started producing sedan and coupe versions of the company’s 1991 S-Series.

Change was coming fast.

But not so fast that auto executives wanted to leave the past behind.

A 1980s Saturn promotional video dubbed “Spring in Spring Hill” opens with shots of the tiny town’s rural way of life — a weathered farmer in overalls saying he doesn’t want to live in the city, cattle grazing and horses galloping, a pristine meadow and a picture-postcard barn, and a woman in a long dress hanging a quilt on a clothesline.

As histrionic music plays in the background, and the idyllic scenes of rural life roll by, a narrator intones, “It’s spring in Spring Hill, the time of year when life begins all over again.”

Taking a risk

“This was purpose-built for Saturn,” said Jeffrey LaMarche, who today is executive director of the General Motors plant in Spring Hill. “It really was an experimental, or progressive, manufacturing site. GM had just started to reduce capacity. And plants in Atlanta and Los Angeles were closing as this one was being born.”

From the start, GM and Saturn executives knew that by coming here they were embarking on a journey not so different from a moon shot. At some level, they were invaders.

Mike Rayburn, facilities manager at the GM Spring Hill plant, came here in 1986 from Detroit. It was a willful choice. Rayburn was familiar with the area because his grandfather had been born about 40 miles away.

He recalls those early days when the plant was under construction. Beyond the one stoplight, there was a single gas station, one restaurant offering the Southern tradition of “meat and three,” and “city hall,” he said, “was run out of the mayor’s home.”

As the plant ramped up to production, Rayburn was joined by thousands of other transfers from Michigan and Ohio.

“There was a little bit of chatter about Yankees coming to town,” he said. “That was a culture shock.

“But those people got established, loved the area and a lot of their children are working in the plant now.”

As for Saturn, it ceased production in 2009 amid GM’s bankruptcy and restructuring and the “different kind of car company” was dissolved.

Mules, electric vehicles and soybeans

In 2021, it isn’t fair to say that Spring Hill is what it is — a population of more than 50,000 with a median household income in excess of $90,000 — just because of General Motors.

Nor is it fair to say that its growth is only a direct result of Nashville’s population/business boom some 30 miles to the north.

In fact, to borrow from the car industry, Spring Hill is a hybrid. Its city limits even span two counties — Williamson to the north, Maury to the south.

Columbia is Maury County’s town seat and home to the annual Mule Day, which celebrates the hamlet’s claim to fame as the “mule capital of the world.”

Mules bred in Maury County helped with the building of Hoover Dam. And the Army used them in Afghanistan in the 1980s and again at the start of Operation Freedom in 2001, said Rayburn, who is casually known as “the historian” among Spring Hill GM employees.

“They took them to Afghanistan during the war,” he said, “because they couldn’t use equipment up in the mountains. So, they needed the mules.”

Mule power, horsepower … it’s all part of the legacy now.

Even 31 years after the plant opened, there is still a recognition that industry and agriculture have entered an improbable alliance here.

Rayburn notes that when the plant was rising from the ground, the lower part of the main building was colored blue and the top part gray to blend more naturally with the surroundings.

“We built berms along the highway to further hide the building as you’re driving on Highway 31,” he said.

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The site originally covered 2,800 acres but is now 1,700 after GM sold some land and donated land, including for a high school and a firehouse.

The site also has maintained some of its natural feel.

“We still farm today on 500 acres — wheat, soybeans and corn,” Rayburn said. “When people come down the highway, they still see that farm. And there’s a lot of appreciation for that from the community.”

Jonathan McPike, who is manufacturing engineer manager at the plant, added, “It’s kind of a good environmental thing and we don’t have to mow.”

So, despite all the machinery and commerce passing through during a $2 billion expansion for the production of the all-electric Cadillac LYRIQ, and the building of a new battery plant in partnership with LG Energy Solution (a $2.3 billion investment) …

“We’re a certified wildlife habitat,” McPike said. “We have foxes, deer, bobcat, turkey, and eagles, too.”

A different kind of culture

As much as the area has stayed the same in some respects, the coming of Saturn was all about change.

A huge piece of it: enhanced collaboration between management and union workers.

Chris Ziegler, 63, worked 31 years at GM, almost 28 of them for Saturn and GM in Spring Hill. After he retired here, he and his wife, Margaret, opened Vintage615, a clothing boutique and marketplace.

He recalls that the mindset Saturn was selling, most employees were buying.

“We had orientation classes to help people understand the Saturn culture,” he said.

Ziegler remembers workers having a lot of good ideas, but he also says it put supervisors in an awkward position and they sometimes stepped back when they shouldn’t have.

“Sometimes, as leaders, we had the team try to resolve thorny people issues,” he said.

The union workers had sacrificed to be part of the new company and its concepts.

“UAW (United Auto Workers) guys when they first came had to resign GM and start over at Saturn,” Ziegler said. “Their GM seniority was moot. That became an issue later as we went back under the GM umbrella. That was a big issue.”

The 2009 bankruptcy even led to the shutdown of the assembly plant for a time.

“But the engine plant kept going,” said Ziegler, who as an engineer was a salaried employee. “I was fortunate enough to be in the engine plant. There was always a presence here, the plant never shut down in its entirety.

“And I credit union leadership with that. Because we kept the engine plant, that kept GM from disposing of this asset.”

Knowing the people, knowing the company

A few years later, Ziegler said, there was a strike.

In a unionized auto manufacturer, of course, a strike is not unusual.

“It’s par for the course,” he said. “Frankly, the relationship here was pretty good. Especially when Saturn began, there was an excellent relationship between UAW and General Motors. Later, things may have gotten more antagonistic, but it was not a real high-stress plant.”

By this point, the GM plant was well known in a growing community that supported much more housing and an expansion of business. It was likely that if people didn’t have a friend or relative who worked at the plant, they at least knew someone who did.

So, when there was stress at the plant the community responded. Rebecca Melton, executive director of the Spring Hill Chamber of Commerce, says that the local food bank helped workers during the strike and Kroger set up a job fair at the union hall and hired people on a short-term basis.

Even with its rapid growth, she says the community remains small enough that knowing someone’s name and face counts for a lot. And this holds true for the giant corporation with thousands of employees.

“The company cares about the community,” Melton said, “but I’ve tried to work on getting GM to be more approachable.”

To that end, GM participated in the Experience Spring Hill event this summer by bringing vehicles for display and making employees available to speak with the general public.

Said Melton: “It helps with kids who can say, ‘This could be a place I could work one day.’”

Thanks to new EVs, GM can ‘ride the market’

With the expansion to build EVs (electric vehicles) and the new battery plant, there is a fresh investment of more than $4 billion at a 31-year-old site.

“GM is still blessed with economies of scale,” said LaMarche, the Spring Hill plant’s executive director.

“We still can cover the entire portfolio. We can develop an electric vehicle that can go from end to end of the portfolio. If you’re going from scratch, you’re going with one. I can develop a battery that will go across eight different vehicles that I can engineer once.

“We can spend less money converting an existing plant and, so to speak, ride the market.

“In Spring Hill, we’re going to go from mid-sized SUV gas to mid-sized SUV electric. We’ll have the ability to do both. If EVs get hot, you put your energy into getting that capacity up. If gas vehicles last longer, we’ve got them.”

Ford, of course, is diving right in with its $5.6 billion investment at the Megasite of West Tennessee in Haywood County to make all-electric F-series trucks.

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“It’s big volume,” said LaMarche. “It’s understandable they’re doing what they’re doing.”

As for the competition from Ford…

“The pros of them coming to the area, there is maybe more opportunity in the tier one and tier two supply base,” he said. “That’ll benefit us.

“A con could be whether you’re competing for resources. So, Memphis is probably far enough away that those two circles from the autoworker standpoint might not intersect. For salaried engineers, leadership, management, those circles will intersect.

“And we’re competing for resources against not just OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). If Amazon comes to town,” LaMarche said, “you’ve got a competitor on your doorstep. They’re coming after your management organization. Hard.”

GM an influencer, not a dictator

As for Spring Hill, the expansions at General Motors in concert with Nashville’s reach continue to lift the local business community.

“Hotels and restaurants get business because of GM,” Melton said, “and people pay attention to how healthy GM is.”

The best proof of the GM effect: Businesses make adaptations to be in sync with the automaker.

“Some daycare centers alter their hours to help the shift workers,” she said. “We have restaurants that are the go-to places for second shift and third shift workers.”

Coming to a small town that is home to an enormous auto plant is sort of like moving to a college town where the university maintains an outsized presence.

“It’s an educational curve,” Melton said. “They do kind of operate their own city over there.”

Meantime, Main Street has no shortage of restaurant chains or big box stores, with Ziegler conceding, “We don’t have a city square or that quaint feel.”

But quaint feel or no, business at the shop he owns with his wife has been good enough that they expanded and opened a second store that sells furniture.

The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic was tough on everybody, but they came through and he is optimistic.

And that’s true whether it’s spring in Spring Hill, or summer, or fall, or winter.

In fact, Ziegler believes the town’s commerce has a foothold that goes beyond General Motors.

“Most of the growth is driven by Nashville and Franklin,” he said. “With the new battery plant, I foresee good things happening. There’s so much going on down here.

“We’re not just an auto town. It’s an important part of the community, but not that big gorilla.”