Thursday night, Mark LaNeve wouldn't guarantee that the Lordstown plant would continue making Cobalts and G5's.  But that being said, LaNeve did have a lot of positive things to say about the future of auto production at Lordstown, because at this point in time Lordstown has one huge advantage over other plants.  That it make a fuel efficient car.

Mark LaNeve, General Motor's V-P of sales and marketing, spent much of his evening sitting next to Doug Sweeney, who's family owns one of the largest G-M dealerships in the area. The Sweeney's have benefited from increased sales of Cobalts and G-5's, both made G-M's Lordstown plant, which LaNeve is keenly aware of.

"Our Cobalt and Pontiac G-5 that we build here are hot sellers right now. And I can see that continuing, that great relationship that we have here in the mahoning valley with our lordstown facility, no reason to believe that can't continue on into the future.", states Mark LaNeve.

The evening was somewhat of a coming home for LaNeve.  He grew up in Beaver Falls and attended Blackhawk high school, before leaving to play football at the University of Virginia. It also gave him a chance to meet some of the people that make Lordstown run.

Motor Trend magazine recently ran pictures supposedly of a new Cobalt covered in some sort of camouflage material, and reported that the new Cobalt would be produced at Lordstown beginning next summer.

LaNeve however was non-committal, "Can we expect that to be built at Lordstown.  Well, I can't commit to that right now, but I can tell you that they've always done a great job here.  We have a great partnership with our union partners, the plant management working together to give us a great high quality product."

Right now, LaNeve is high on fuel efficient cars. With truck and SUV sales lagging, he's counting or products like the Cobalt.  "We just introduced a XFE edition, that's extra fuel efficient that's better than Toyota Corrola has for example.  Sales were twelve percent in the month of April which wasn't a good month for the industry but the colbalt did great."

The evening wasn't all about GM. The United Way announced it raised 2.8 million dollars last year. The largest employee gift came the unions at Lordstown, and the largest corporate give came from National City Bank.