One morning in the middle of October, more than 1,500 people will head to their shift at Fiat Chrysler’s van assembly plant in Windsor for the last time.

With the entire third shift eliminated, and sales of the plant’s bread-and-butter minivans dwindling across North America, some people worry the company is heading down the same path as General Motors’ ill-fated Oshawa assembly line. A five-week shutdown of the Windsor plant this summer and shorter shutdown of the company’s Brampton plant earlier this year only added to the air of gloom.

The company says it’s staying put, pointing to a $355 million (U.S.) investment in the plant announced earlier this year, and the addition of the lower-priced Voyager minivan to the Windsor lineup. There’s also Fiat Chrysler’s plant in Brampton, which produces muscle cars and a few sedan models.

“FCA Canada is the second-largest producer of automobiles in the country and the third largest in terms of vehicle sales with a network of 440 dealerships. As a company, we have been committed to Canada and will continue to be committed to Canada,” said Fiat Chrysler spokesperson LouAnn Gosselin.

But others wonder about the future of the Windsor plant — which has 6,100 employees — given that it only produces minivans, which doesn’t seem to be exactly a recipe for long-term security.

While FCA’s popular Ram pickups, built mainly in Warren, Mich., helped drive the company’s North American profits to $1.75 billion in quarterly earnings released this week, auto industry analyst Tyson Jominy points out that sales of minivans — like the Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Grand Caravan produced in Windsor — have been plunging for years.

“Things are pretty bleak for minivans right now. They’re pretty much in free-fall. There’s not a lot of new products coming out,” said Jominy, vice-president of data and analytics at J.D. Power’s PIN Consulting.

Last year, minivan sales in the U.S. sank to 364,000, the lowest level in more than 30 years and only about one-quarter of the 1.33 million sold in 2000, the peak year, according to the CarGurus.com auto website.

Sales are down another 16 per cent in the first half of this year, with no end to the decline in sight. That’s a far cry from 1993 to 2005, when automakers sold more than 1 million of the vans in the U.S. every year.

The Grand Caravan, which hasn’t had a major redesign in a decade, is likely being phased out altogether by next year, according to a report from Autonews.Com.

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Minivans also face another big problem, Jominy said — they’re competing against the hottest vehicle category around.

“The category that’s most likely to appeal to minivan buyers is SUVs and crossovers, and that’s one with a lot of new products coming out all the time,” said Jominy. “Most people want trucks and SUVs. This story is old now, but it’s not showing any signs of disappearing.”

Producing models in hot-selling categories would be a little more comforting, conceded Jerry Dias, national president of the Unifor union, which represents the Windsor plant’s employees.

“SUVs and crossovers — that’s where things are at,” said Dias.

Still, Dias, who led a furious public campaign after GM announced plans to shut down its Oshawa assembly plant, isn’t in angry firebrand mode over Fiat Chrysler just yet. The company, said Dias, seems to be paying more than lip service to keeping a significant manufacturing presence in Canada.

“Am I nervous? No. Maybe I’ll regret saying that. Maybe I’m being naive. But I’m not concerned,” said Dias.

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It’s not just what the company’s saying in official statements about Canada that reassures Dias. He doesn’t see any of the red flags that were there in the case of GM’s Oshawa plant.

“I’m really not seeing warning signs. With GM, there were other things. When they didn’t renew naming rights at the GM Centre, that was a sign,” said Dias.

Not that he’s ruling anything out, mind you.

“It’s not inconceivable. GM said they wouldn’t do anything during the life of the contract, then they closed down Oshawa Assembly,” said Dias.

But there is a ray of hope.

For the automakers that still make them — Fiat Chrysler, Honda, Toyota and Kia — the minivan business is still good because the competition has bailed, giving them a bigger piece of a shrinking pie. And they’re hoping that as more millennials, now ages 23 to 38, raise families, they’ll see the value of sliding doors, fold-flat seats, ample storage and easy access to the third row.

Because there is less competition in the segment — General Motors and Ford have stopped making minivans altogether — profit margins are high, with a few options pushing the sticker price north of $40,000 in the U.S.

But that can be bad for young families who need the vans but can’t afford big price tags.

Fiat Chrysler has realized this and in the fall will start selling the Chrysler Voyager, a Spartan version of the Pacifica, starting around $27,000 in the U.S. It likely will replace the ancient Dodge Grand Caravan, which the company has been selling for about the same sticker price. The old van, unveiled in 2008 and last updated in 2011, is the top-selling minivan in the U.S. and Canada this year.

Still, the city of Windsor isn’t taking anything for granted. The spring announcement of the elimination of the third shift at Fiat Chrysler was a stark reminder of the plant’s potential fate, suggested Mayor Drew Dilkens. Almost 20 per cent of the city’s workforce is directly employed in the manufacturing industry, according to numbers from Statistics Canada. And the van plant is the crown jewel.

“There are 6,000 people working at that plant. It had all of us swallowing our breath, imagining that place closing,” said Dilkens. “There’s no putting my head in the sand about what happened in Oshawa.”

While stressing that he’s still a firm supporter of Fiat Chrysler and the broader auto industry, including parts manufacturers and other suppliers, Dilkens said Windsor needs to branch out more strongly into other sectors, including the high-tech industry.

The auto industry, said Dilkens, has been an even more integral part of Windsor’s economy than it has been in Oshawa. Retooling the city — and the region’s — economy is something that needs to happen.

“The auto industry has been our bread and butter. We’ve got to be focused on diversifying our economy,” said Dilkens.