"We have shipments coming in December to help offset increased demand," Smith said. "We've never done that before."

Officials of Wayne County and Livonia said they have worked for several months to convince the company to expand in Michigan, rather than a competing site in Tennessee.

The tussle over the bailout has evinced what at first blush may seem a new kind of provincialism that pits Democrats and a few Republicans (like Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio) from heavy union and Big Three states against Republicans from right-to-work states in the old Confederacy. While McConnell & Co. oppose federal subsidies for the Big Three at the federal level, the states from which they hail have generously extended billions of dollars in subsidies to foreign automakers. But there's a deeper cleavage at work here.