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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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even this number is tiny compared to what the Ford Rouge plant was gushing out
I figure the Rouge is a special case as it is so integrated. The steel mill probably ran 24/7, so car output had to be large enough to use all that steel. <i>I suspect there are still offline assemblies of specialty vehicles going on somewhere in the country still today.</i> Seeing trucks with only the front clip on the chassis is normal as so many are fitted with custom bodies. And there are always custom shops whacking up cars. iirc that is how the Chrysler converts got started in the 80s: coupes were shipped to Cars and Concepts where the tops were whacked off and some reenforcement welded into the floorpan. Kaiser at W-R was an early adopter of the present layout, with most of the stampings shipped in nested on skids, to be built up and painted at the head of the assembly line. Almost odd to me that Kaiser went to the expense to move Graham Paige presses to W-R as Graham's body plant was on Michigan in Wayne, just east of where Ford built Wayne Assembly in 53, so it was already close to W-R. Instead, the Wayne plant was sold to Gar Wood, which made garbage trucks there into the 70s. Studebaker had a different setup. All the buildings were in a central campus, with a web of rail road tracks connecting them. The "new" body plant, built in the 20s, was at the north end of the complex. Final assembly was at the south end of the complex, so bodies were shuttled to assembly in rail cars. Attach file:  (44.00 KB)
Posted on: 2014/8/11 16:29
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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I'm confident all of the car business will be gone in 30 years. For one, the American car market is shrinking from a relentless decline in the standard of living. Next, maintaining the huge infrastructure in an abandoned city like Detroit is impossible. The place is surrounded by lakes and yet the cost of water is among the highest in the nation. The roads are dilapidated and hazardous and the insurance rates through the roof. Crime and drugs are the main source of income, but even the drug dealers are going broke. The only reason to live here is the shortage of skilled labor which is expected to disappear in a couple of years when the companies are expected to get into trouble again. Everybody here lives with a suitcase in the closet.
The municipal governments are also collapsing into bankruptcy. Nothing sensible will come from Washington D.C. (Stands for Doesn't Care) and the Federal Government spends 30 cents more per dollar than they take in. Eventually there will be a crash and they will try to suspend the bill of rights, but by then the cops will all be on minimum wage and won't do anything. We all joke that hopefully we'll be dead by then. Consider this example of how bad things are: In 1991 a school teacher in greater Dearborn earned $26 an hour. Today that figure is $16. I work with people who have higher degrees and we all joke that the rate being paid to scientists and engineers is not worth the headache. In the last bankrupt place I worked as a scientist the only thing they cared about was butt kissing. Then there was the big crash. Today they are gone.
Posted on: 2014/8/11 17:17
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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"We all joke that hopefully we'll be dead by then."
Those of us of a certain age can take comfort in the fact that we lived in the very best of times at least here in Canada where we were not involved in any wars and jobs were plentiful even for the unskilled. Once when I needed a job so I could pay to go to college I walked into the Chrysler Canada office and applied for a job and was told to report for duty the very next day with a good union wage. I am saddened that my son and grandchild do not have those opportunities. I grew up across the River from Detroit and saw it in its heydays and it has been very sad to see it decline to what it is today.
Posted on: 2014/8/11 17:55
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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Question for Leeedy:
Seems I recall you saying you worked in building 22 some years after Packard pulled out. I have been wondering how they got the Merlins from 22 over to 84, Michigan winter weather not ideal for pushing an engine on a dolly over railroad tracks. Saw a comment by someone in another forum that there is a tunnel under the tracks between the two buildings. He quoted an acquaintance who had worked in 84, iirc for Stone Container, that there is a steel door at the end of a sloping floor in the east wall of 84, "big enough to drive a car through" that was padlocked shut. In your explorations of 22, did you see a corresponding door, or confirm the existance of a tunnel to 84? If so, about where is this tunnel? Thanks
Posted on: 2014/8/11 18:15
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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Quote:
Whoa-whoa-whoa and ah-ah-ahh!! I hope I never said anything about working in the plant. Only that I had free access to it via a special permission... and an aunt who used to work for a Packard exec. And I may have mentioned that I still have my ID badge given to me after Packard officially left... and the site was then owned by Packard Properties, Inc. But yes, there certainly were tunnels. Yes. And lots of other cool things people today don't know about. I have quite a few ancient EGB Packard Plant blueprints (from when PMCC was actually there) that I saved from the trash back in the 1960s and 1970s. Here is one that I believe shows some tunnels. It's a BIG one... so lonnnng I can't fit it in one shot. Shows the entire property-over a mile long... including areas there would now be north of Edsel Ford Expressway (Freeway). I am considering making copy scans of this one and making the copies available for a fee. This one spent a lot of years in my storage buildings being hauled around and packed away. At one time I had about a thousand of these in different views, sizes, subject matter, etc. Most were lost when I was robbed and they disappeared in the trunk of my Caribbean which was stolen. I am certain the dirtbag thieves probably dumped all of the paper first thing... with no idea what it was. Funny how greed so easily overrules intellect. Cute, huh? Attach file: (94.46 KB)
Posted on: 2014/8/12 1:07
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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Quote:
RE: Ford Rouge being a "special case... Nope. Not a special case production-wise. The production I'm talking about had nothing at all to do with Ford's adjacent steel mill, etc.etc. It all had to do with downright raw, insatiable customer demand for the vehicles-namely Mustangs. Production on the first two years of Mustang never outstripped demand. Not even close. In fact there were dealers screaming that they could not get enough cars! I know...I was there. If only such a dream situation could have existed for Packard in the mid-1950s like it did for Ford in the mid-1960s. RE: trucks natually being transported incomplete... As I said previously, in California I said I have seen large numbers of imported pickup trucks (I specified as such) transported incomplete... and large numbers of pickup beds... also transported separately. I also stated that there are reasons for this (legal, financial, and customs fees-wise). But none of this has anything with these trucks receiving custom bodies... just their normal pickup beds. Over the years there have been imported pickups that actually never got their final assembly until they reached their port facility in the USA. In many cases, this is where pickup beds were finally installed. Big trucks are another case altogether. And having worked for an Asian car company for nearly 20 years, I can also assure you that for many of those years, partially-assembled OR incomplete-spec cars arrived at USA ports only to be seriously added to, or have their final assemblies done. Good example here is passenger cars ordered with so-called "factory air"... which actually was not installed when the car was built in Asia... then shipped to the USA... THEN the IN-DASH factory air system was installed... and other things done. This is just one example. So as I said earlier. The practice continued long after AMC.
Posted on: 2014/8/12 1:29
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<i>I hope I never said anything about working in the plant.</i>
I probably inferred it from what you have said about having access. So, no specific knowledge of a tunnel for pushing Merlins over to 84? Speaking of tunnels in general, did you hear about the scrappers that were in one of the tunnels last winter stripping pipes, and they cut into an active gas main? Fire breaks out at Packard Plant after scrappers sever gas line Scrappers trying to steal pipes from the tunnels that run underneath the Packard Plant struck a natural gas line Thursday, sparking fires at the sprawling abandoned auto factory, a fire official said. http://www.freep.com/article/20131213/NEWS01/312130028/Packard-Plant-fire-scrappers
Posted on: 2014/8/12 1:42
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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Hello Steve...
No personal knowledge of the tunnel you mention but I am sure it existed and I have indeed heard about it. WWII... remember? Anyway, no pity for the scrappers tapping into a gas line. It should have gone ka-boom and sent them to the great beyond. However I continue to ask the same unanswered question I have asked for decades now: WHO is buying all of this stuff and why are they not being held responsible? So-called "scrappers" would not be stealing building parts if nobody was buying them, or there were strict rules about buying and selling such stuff! It seems that money doesn't just buy insulation out of buildings... it buys a whole different kind of insulation too!
Posted on: 2014/8/12 2:10
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
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Leedy-- that is the $64,000 question, and as I write this Detroit is being systematically dismantled by low-rent, don't want a real job losers who are thriving in an underground economy that rivals narcotics. These people are making money that is not taxed, it is not helping pay police, fire or services for city residents, and it's a lot of money.
Any building that sits idle is fair game, and the police are so vastly outnumbered and outgunned that they can't begin to respond to scrapping calls. They can't keep up with murder calls, so the priority of scrapping is low on the scale. Almost every one of the 100 or so school buildings closed has been scrapped, including the lovely 1924 English Tudor elementary school I attended. The city is full of scrap dealers, some are somewhat honest, most are not. The city recently enacted a scrapping ordnance, things like catalytic converters are not permissible for fast cash transactions and business transactions must have a paper trail--but there are ways around this. I honestly think the only way around this is to starve out the bad dealers by taking the supply of scrap away--I'd station the national guard at every abandoned building for a year. Apply the rule your mother gave you "if it's not yours, don't touch" But that's not going to happen. We have one of the most impressive stocks of historic buildings in the country, if they can survive this wild, wild west thing until order prevails, if ever.
Posted on: 2014/8/12 9:55
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