Van Nuys produced Camaros. Firebirds, and full-size cars, South Gate produced full-size cars, and Fremont produced mid-size cars and trucks; those plants supplied the west coast regions in order to avoid the freight penalties for shipping cars from the midwest and east to the west coast dealers. Eventually the fixed costs of running those plants and the increasing in-bound freight cost for the parts from the midwest and east exceeded the freight penalty for fully-assembled cars, and Van Nuys and South Gate were closed. Fremont was converted to NUMMI (the GM/Toyota joint venture), and it's the only assembly plant still operating in California. Ford and Chrysler also had California assembly plants in the 60's for the same reason, and they were also closed, for the same reasons.
