Hyundai in High Gear Part 1: Celebrating 20 years of auto plant in Montgomery
Hyundai is celebrating 20 years of making vehicles at its assembly plant in Montgomery, which has brought thousands of jobs to our area.
It was May 20, 2005, that the plant, known as Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, opened its doors after years of construction and much excitement. It represented not just a new business, but an entirely new industry to our part of the state.
Today, the plant has 4,200 workers — more than twice the 2,000 that it opened with.
If you add up the jobs at the plant and the suppliers throughout the area, it’s more than 40,000.
370,000 vehicles are produced each year, generating an annual economic impact for the state of more than $5 billion.
It all started in the spring of 2002. Bobby Bright was Montgomery mayor when he got the news that Hyundai chose us over all of the other U.S. sites it had been considering.
“I will never forget it. I was at my daughter’s softball game, sitting up in the bleachers. I got a phone call, someone brought the phone over to me,” Bright told Action 8 News about the day that changed the city’s fortunes forever.
The call came from the office of Gov. Don Siegelman, saying that Hyundai would be building its plant in Hope Hull, just off of Interstate 65.
Soon, people in other nearby cities and towns learned that thanks to all of plants that would be built to supply Hyundai with parts, they would also benefit.
“It’s these suppliers that will add tens of thousands of new jobs in addition to the jobs Hyundai is bringing,” Gov. Don Siegelman said at the time.
Towns competed for those suppliers, like in Greenville.
“We’re going to do everything we can to take advantage of this,” Greenville Mayor Dexter McLendon told us back then.
Luverne scored big.
“51% of the automobile will be made in Crenshaw County,” Doni Ingram, who led the county’s economic development efforts at the time, said.
Along the way, workers and their families from Korea arrived to a land called Alabama. Sun-Gi Chun led an association to help our new neighbors learn about the city.
“I say this, ‘It’s a very nice town, very conservative and very family-oriented, and maybe you will really like it,'” he said.
The town also changed. The momentum from Hyundai brought growth to the riverfront, Montgomery Biscuits baseball and new economic opportunities.
“In economic development, you get the job, and then when you get a good job, you get the housing. Retail always follows the rooftops,” Todd Strange, who was the head of the Alabama Development Office in 2005, said. Strange later led the Montgomery County Commission and became Montgomery Mayor following Bright’s time in office.
By the spring of 2005, excitement reached a crescendo — with music, parties and food across Montgomery. Then came May 20. The thrill over the first Hyundai Sonata cars to come off of the assembly line and the launch party was so big that it attracted dignitaries from Korea and even former President George H.W. Bush.
“This is a day to celebrate, a day to look forward. And I wish everyone I saw from Hyundai out there in that plant and many of you I haven’t had the chance to meet. I wish you well,” the former president said.
Over the past 20 years, the car models may have changed, but the drive to be the best has remained in high gear.
“I am so proud to go by that plant and say my little bit of effort brought that to Central Alabama, and thousands and thousands of Alabamians to have good paying jobs,” former mayor Bright said.
He wasn’t the only one whose hard work brought the plant here. But there’s something that Mayor Bright has that no one else does — the first car to come off the assembly line. He bought it, and that black Sonata was the car that his wife, retired Judge Lynn Bright, drove for years. It’s now in storage, a family keepsake to last forever.
Below, you’ll find two Action 8 News stories that we aired just before the Hyundai plant opened. The first shows how the plant might impact Montgomery, while the other shows the potential impact in towns landing Hyundai suppliers.
ACTION 8 NEWS ARCHIVES: The Hope for Hyundai, Part 1: Original airdate: May 18, 20005
ACTION 8 NEWS ARCHIVES: The Hope for Hyundai, Part 2: Original airdate: May 19, 2005
