International Truck and Engine announced Wednesday that it is building a new engine assembly facility at its Huntsville, Ala., engine plant to assemble its new MaxxForce family of big-bore commercial truck diesel engines.

Full production of the MaxxForce 11 and MaxxForce 13 will begin in the spring of 2008. Initial engines will be partially assembled in Germany and finished and trimmed in Huntsville, and will be available beginning in fall 2007. The new facility will be an assembly-only operation, with core engine components sourced globally from suppliers and shipped to the plant.
Jack Allen, president of International's Engine Group, noted that the Huntsville plant offered the ability to produce the engines competitively on a global basis, as well as a proven ability to build a high-quality product.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley related a conversation with Dan Ustian, Navistar International chairman, president and CEO, who was unable to make the event, saying Ustian told him the Huntsville plant is 38 percent more efficient than Navistar's other engine plant in Indiana.
"There is certainly a lot of buzz about this engine in the marketplace," said Jacob Thomas, vice president of International's Big Bore Business Unit. He said he believes the new engine's expected best-in-class fuel mileage and noise characteristics, "will reset the standard in heavy-duty diesel engines."
The announcement was made at the 4-year-old Huntsville facility of International Diesel of Alabama, which is one of two plants in the U.S. currently making light and medium diesels for Ford trucks and International buses and medium-duty trucks. A crowd of plant workers, government officials and media had the opportunity to see one of the new engines in operation in a new International ProStar truck, and commented on the quiet operation and the clean exhaust.