The additional factories make components for slow-selling mid-sized sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and other large vehicles that will face production cutbacks between now and 2009, according to a company report.

More than half of the job losses in the US—5,300 out of 11,000—will occur in Detroit and its surrounding suburbs. In the 1950s, when four out of every five cars in the world were made in the US, the Detroit area had the highest median income and the highest rate of home ownership of any American city. Today, after three decades of plant closings and mass layoffs, the Motor City is one of the poorest big cities in America.

Already reeling from the loss of thousands of jobs at GM, Ford and parts supplier Delphi last year, Michigan has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation, and a record number of its citizens are facing home foreclosures and relying on emergency food assistance.

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