Re: New "What Ifs?"
Posted by Steve203 On 2014/8/11 16:29:46
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.
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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.
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