General Motors has officially announced that it will produce the upcoming Cobalt replacement, the Chevrolet Cruze, at its Lordstown, Ohio facility. The Cruze will make its worldwide debut at this October’s Paris Motor Show.

The car will hit the European market in the spring of 2009, with U.S. production at the Lordstown plant — where the Cobalt is currently made — beginning in June 2010. Although the Cruze will replace the Cobalt, GM will produce both vehicles for a short time together.

GM has yet to release any specs on the all-new Cruze, but it is expected that the new compact will use GM’s new 1.4L turbocharged engine. Fuel mileage should at least equal that of the current Cobalt, with figures in the 40 mpg range likely.

Based on what was once called the Delta 2 platform, the all-new Cobalt will ride on GM’s Global Compact Vehicle Architecture. The primary engineering and development will come from GMDAT — General Motor’s Korean partner (although there has been strong input from the North American and European planning groups).

Codenamed GMX071, the Cobalt shares many components as well as styling features with the next Daewoo Lacetti, including a large portion of sheetmetal.

Obviously Chevrolet’s Cobalt and the Daewoo Lacetti will not be completely identical, as each will have different styling cues on the front and rear clips, headlamps and taillights, although earlier prototypes do appear to have a grille that strongly resembles the new Malibu and upcoming Traverse.

Chevrolet will also offer another version for markets outside of the United States, known as the Optra. In addition to these, there will likely be up to 15 different cars for GM’s global markets based on this new “Global Delta” architecture.