It was on September 23, 1935 when the first corporate offices of General Motors de México were inaugurated. Under the direction of Mr. Ivan C. Dresser, they settled on the second floor of Casa Colonia on Calle de Uruguay, on the corner of Avenida 20 de Noviembre, in the Historic Center of Mexico City. With only 36 employees, General Motors de México S.A. was legally established. The following year, on April 16, 1936, the first stone of its future offices was laid. However, the American corporation already had a presence in our country since years before, in 1921, General Motors decided to introduce the Buick brand; By 1923, seven distributors had been established in the national territory.
By the 1930s, the rapid growth of the Mexican economy, the increase in agricultural activities and the government's interest in promoting industry and the construction of roads, drove the demand for motorized vehicles. In 1937, President Lázaro Cárdenas inaugurated GM's first plant, which has contributed to the production of just over 15 million vehicles and almost 30 million engines in the company's four complexes. This plant initially had 222 workers and an area of 9,308 square meters. The production of trucks had, in the beginning, a speed of 10 units per day.
Photo: Courtesy General Motors
It was on September 23, 1935 when the first corporate offices of General Motors de México were inaugurated. Under the direction of Mr. Ivan C. Dresser, they settled on the second floor of Casa Colonia on Calle de Uruguay, on the corner of Avenida 20 de Noviembre, in the Historic Center of Mexico City. With only 36 employees, General Motors de México S.A. was legally established. The following year, on April 16, 1936, the first stone of its future offices was laid. However, the American corporation already had a presence in our country since years before, in 1921, General Motors decided to introduce the Buick brand; By 1923, seven distributors had been established in the national territory.
By the 1930s, the rapid growth of the Mexican economy, the increase in agricultural activities and the government's interest in promoting industry and the construction of roads, drove the demand for motorized vehicles. In 1937, President Lázaro Cárdenas inaugurated GM's first plant, which has contributed to the production of just over 15 million vehicles and almost 30 million engines in the company's four complexes. This plant initially had 222 workers and an area of 9,308 square meters. The production of trucks had, in the beginning, a speed of 10 units per day.
This plant was followed by the Technical Training Center at the Mexico City plant in 1954, by 1963 the construction of the GM Toluca Complex, which began operations in 1965. In this facility, an Engines plant and a Foundry plant were built to fulfill with the then National Integration Plan of the Automotive Industry that decreed that 60% of the components of the units had to be produced locally. In this same place and in April of this year, the production of N1 and N95 masks was implemented to support the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
The rest of the installations arrived in the following years. For example, the Ramos Arizpe complex, where models such as the Chevrolet Citation, Century or Chevy have been produced, opened its doors in 1981 while in 1995 the Silao Complex started operations; today Cheyenne, Silverado and Sierra pickups are produced there. That same year the Regional Engineering Center was established in Touca, in 1996 the After-Sales Service Center was inaugurated in Toluca. In 2008 the San Luis Potosí Complex began operations after a construction period of just 14 months.