• Advocate business staff
• Published: Jun 17, 2009 - UPDATED: 1:03 p.m.

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State leaders announced V-Vehicle Co., or VVC, as the highly anticipated automaker that will manufacture high-mileage gasoline cars in Monroe with what developers are dubbing a transformational technology.

In an announcement ceremony this morning in Monroe, they said the region would get 1,400 jobs in 15 months after the former Guide Corp. headlamp factory is expanded from its current 425,000 square feet to 750,000 square feet. Jobs would pay, on average, about $40,000 a year, the state said.

A $67 million state incentive package will join $15 million in Monroe and Ouachita Parish incentives with a $248 million capital investment by the San Diego-based car company.

Details on the cars themselves remain sketchy, though the company founder is VVC Chief Executive Frank Varasano, a former Oracle Corp. executive who founded VVC in 2006. He teams up with VVC’s director of design, Tom Matano, who designed the Mazda Miata and who calls the vehicle that will emerge from the new venture “the iconic car of the next 25 years.”

Oil and gas businessman T. Boone Pickens is an investor in VVC. Key investment partners include Ray Lane and John Doerr of the California-based venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Ruston trucking executive James Davison, who bought the Guide plant last year, also will be an investor.

A state-commissioned study by LSU forecasts the VVC plant would generate more than $131 million in new state tax revenue over the next 15 years and create $19.6 billion in new state economic output for the years 2010 through 2024, combined.

All Varasano would say about the car is that VVC would produce a high-quality, environmentally friendly and fuel-efficient car for the U.S. market. Lane, the venture capitalist, said in a news release that the VVC autos would change the automotive business in the U.S.

“The thing that excites me most about V-Vehicle Co. is that it is a holistic change. We’re thinking about, from beginning to end, how to reconstruct a car company,” Lane said.

Lane’s venture capital partner, Doerr, said KPCB’s previous investments in Genentech, Compaq, Sun Microsystems, Amazon and Google helped generate tens of thousands of jobs each.

“I think that V-Vehicle Co. has all the potential that any of those companies have,” Doerr said in a news release about the announcement.

Construction of the expanded Guide plant will begin in late summer, state officials said, with Gray Construction of Lexington, Ky., as the lead design, engineering and construction supervisory firm. Production hiring is expected to begin in one year.

In addition to the state incentives, VVC is applying for manufacturing and engineering loans from the federal Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program. It is a $25 billion loan program established by Congress in 2007 and is administered by the U.S. Department of Energy to spur innovation in automobile technology.

VVC and state officials gave no further details about the design, buyer market or production volume expected for the company’s cars. Louisiana beat competing Southern states — not with the biggest incentive package but with a proposal that included great work force development strengths through the state’s new FastStart program. The program will provide for custom screening and hiring workers for the plant.