General Motors SA's factory in Port Elizabeth is on track to begin exporting the first right-hand drive Hummer H3 units to Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

The company's planning director, Ian Nicholls, said they would be the first of about 10 000 to be shipped by the end of 2007 as South Africa was the only plant assembling vehicles for sale outside North America; a plant in Shreveport, Louisiana, was handling that production.

The cars are much smaller, cleaner and fuel-efficient than the original monsters that first saw service in the first Gulf war.

Nicholls added: "We began exporting left-hand drive Hummers in November 2006 to markets in the Middle East, Europe and Israel 'Our contract is now fully on stream and we will be meeting demand' - Ian Nicholls . Our contract is now fully on stream and we will be meeting demand for left and right-hand drive vehicles."

"A number of other markets, from Asia to South America, have also shown interest in the vehicles."

It's two years ago since GM SA announced it had won the R3-billion Hummer H3 contract and since then 500 jobs have been created and the company's Struandale production significantly expanded.

Nicholls said the original plant covered 46 900 square metres on a 24ha site. That had now almost doubled to 75 625 square metres on a 37ha site and the project had involved experts from Detroit, Brazil and South Africa.