Re: One Story Assembly Plant What If?

Posted by Dave Brownell On 2014/5/18 17:59:54

Leeedy's comments that ended "maybe you had to be there" really rang true to me. I grew up in St. Louis, once the second largest auto producing city, after Detroit. Tens of thousands of autoworkers made a decent living for their families at Chevrolet's three plants, Ford's Mercury plant and Chrysler's two. For me, the sounds, smells and heat given off of the old Corvette plant meant that new dreams were being made inside for some lucky customers. Unlike Packard, Chevy lost the battle to save those three plants mostly due to the cost of retrofitting them to EPA standards that would have eliminated the sounds, smells and other things that made me remember them most. Now, the birthplace of the 1954-81 Corvettes is gone, replaced by a Pepsi bottling plant and job-training center, protected from unwanted intruders by a tall, chain link fence. Now, scores of Corvette fans who want to see where their cars were made are told to look where that big Pepsi sign now stands. I suppose that people who love those 1903-54 Packards can at least see EGB as some sort of hallowed ground. Those of us with Conner Street V-8s can no longer even feel that magic.

Here in Atlanta, we've now lost two GM plants and the Ford Taurus/Sable plant that produced half of all those cars for the American market. Just a few years earlier, that Ford plant was proclaimed the J.D. Power award winner for quality. Now it is scheduled to become the official "factory delivery experience center" for Porsche and Audi in North America. Sometimes, there is a happy ending to where a Dream Factory once existed. Time will tell, but I still miss driving by that Corvette plant, windows open on a warm summer evening.