JANESVILLE, Wis. -- General Motors Corp. announced on Friday that a Michigan plant beat Wisconsin and Tennessee in a competition to build GM's next-generation small car.

A source told the Associated Press on Thursday that the winning plant is the one in Orion Township, about 40 miles north of Detroit. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan hadn't been made public.

The car will be built at a retooled midsize car factory in Orion Township near Pontiac. That will save about 1,200 jobs at the factory, which had been slated to shut down later this year.

The news is disappointing for Janesville, whose plant was the oldest in the GM family. It made large SUVs until last December, when most production ended and 1,200 jobs were cut. It closed entirely after completing some contract work in April.

Gov. Jim Doyle said this month the state offered GM a package of incentives to reopen the plant.

On Friday, Doyle said the state of Wisconsin offered a "very strong" incentive package to GM. He said he's deeply disappointed the automaker picked its Orion, Mich., plant for the work.

Doyle, in a statement, said he doesn't believe Michigan matched Wisconsin in its incentive package. The governor said he hopes Wisconsin wasn't used "to simply leverage more resources for Michigan."

The co-chair of Janesville's GM task force, Tim Cullen, said Friday that he feels Wisconsin has been "sucker punched," and that GM used Janesville's proposal to get a better deal from the state of Michigan.

"I can't prove this, but I think that if we put in sealed bids last Tuesday, and they just opened the bids and the best one won, I believe we would have won. But we always knew this could happen. The alternative was not to try," Cullen said. "We believed that GM wanted to put the jobs in Michigan. By 'sucker punched,' I mean we knew that we could put together a proposal, and GM would take our proposal and go beat Michigan over the head with it to get them to match ours."

Cullen said he believes this is the end for GM in Janesville and said it's time for all to move on and look for new ventures.

The political push to bring the small-car line to Janesville was widespread. The governor, U.S. Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold and U.S. Reps. Paul Ryan and Tammy Baldwin were among those involved in lobbying for Janesville.

In a joint statement, Kohl, Feingold, Ryan and Baldwin said that they were committed to helping Rock County residents.

“Obviously, we are very disappointed by the decision announced today to continue idling the Janesville plant, but we are deeply proud of the strong showing made by the people of Janesville, Rock County and the state of Wisconsin," the four said.

In a separate statement, state Sen. Judy Robson said that she believes Rock County will recover from the blow.

"We will pick ourselves up and continue to pursue other avenues to fill the void left by the closing of the GM plant. We have a lot of talented people in Rock County who are working hard on a regional approach to nurture and encourage new family-supporting jobs," Robson said in a statement.

Janesville faced an uphill battle to land the new car line because it didn't have a stamping plant nearby, according to WISC-TV auto expert Matt Joseph.

"Orion was always the leading contender. They had a $44 million incentive package -- no one was willing to come up with cash. But in any case, that was the leading contender because you have desperate unemployment in the Detroit area, the Pontiac area, that reaches toward 20 percent, and the people who made this decision live in Michigan," Joseph said.

Joseph said GM is now faced with the decision of what to do with the Janesville plant.

"It's very unlikely GM would do anything with Janesville. I don't know what the town will do with the plant. GM will probably allow the town to dispose of it. That kind of real estate usually sits around for a long time. If you can find someone to come and do it, great, more likely it gets broken up into separate facilities," Joseph said.