Showing posts with label Oakland County. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oakland County. Show all posts

Fun, Fun, Fun, 'Til Daddy Takes the T-Bird Plant Away

March 2011.

Ford broke ground for the Wixom Assembly Plant in 1955, "shortly after the company went public in what was then the largest initial public offering of stock in U.S. history," according to one article. It was built as the new headquarters of Lincoln, once Ford Motor Co. established it as a standalone brand, and the town of Wixom grew around it at the dawn of the mass exodus from Detroit commonly known as "White Flight." The plant stands along I-96, though when it was opened the freeway had not been built yet. Undoubtedly, there were assurances from highway commission and state officials that one would be built soon near the plant. Most of the original Lincoln Motors plant still stands in Detroit along Livernois Avenue at Warren Avenue, now occupied by Detroit Edison.


A line in a Detroit News article states that the town of Wixom wouldn't have existed without the Ford plant, but luckily the local officials in Wixom saw the closure coming, and had been making preparations long in advance by diversifying town with different business sectors. By the time the plant shut down for good, the city of Wixom only derived 11% of its total revenues from Ford Motor Co.—down from 50% in the 1990s.


Production began with the 1958 model year, and the plant produced two of Ford's most prestigious products—the Lincoln Continental, and the Ford Thunderbird. In fact it was the legendary Thunderbird that was most identified with this plant I think, and I myself have owned two T-birds: a 1978 and a 1996, both of which rank as probably the best cars I ever owned.


An archived page from the Media.Ford.com website entitled "Production Ends at Wixom Assembly Plant" states that production ended on May 31, 2007 at 12:55 pm, "when the last vehicle, a 2007 White Chocolate Lincoln Town Car, rolled off the assembly line." A "wake" for the plant was held on May 19 by the former employees of the plant as a way of saying goodbye to their workplace. That last Town Car was shipped and sold to a customer in Gaithersburg, Maryland. By that point the plant had produced 6.6 million vehicles in its 50 years of operation and had a current roster of 1,100 employees, whereas in 1973 the plant employed 5,468 workers.

The Detroit News article stated that at its peak in 1988, the plant produced 280,659 vehicles per year. In 2007, it barely cleared the 40,000 mark. Throughout its history Wixom Assembly was "routinely hailed for its cutting-edge technology, its quality and productivity." According to a 2008 article in the Free Press, Wixom Assembly was the most profitable plant in the industry during the 1980s when Cadillac decided to downsize its lineup and customers looking for a full-bodied luxury car turned to Lincoln. Wixom production totals suffered a hit in the 1990s however as the regrettable SUV fad set in and customers chose Navigators over Continentals.


The plant remained unsold as of 2009, and a few ideas floated around as to a reuse. The two main (and predictably faddy) reuse options were to turn it into a movie production site to benefit from the Michigan Film Incentive, and to make it a "green energy production plant." Both plans would keep the original factory mostly intact and reuse the space as it stood. I believe the "green" idea was to use the plant to build the new faddy windmills that Governor Granholm was so excited about foisting on the state. Obviously neither of the two main ideas for the site has come to fruition yet, and by the summer of 2013 the plant was completely demolished.


Production of the Lincoln Town Car was moved to the St. Thomas Assembly Plant in Ontario. Wixom was among the up to 15 other Ford facilities that were slated to be idled under the "Way Forward" plan at that time, to "return the company’s North American automotive operations to profitability." Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm offered Ford over $100 million in tax cuts to keep the plant open, but the company still insisted on closing the site.

In the 1990s this plant was expanded to 4.7 million square feet, making it Ford's largest car assembly plant in North America. Which is about equal to 1.3 Packard Plants. Here is an aerial view graphic I have put together to break down this massive plant for you:


You may notice a progression from left to right...first the body panels are stamped in the Body Shop, the unit is assembled in the Assembly Building, and finally the bodies are painted in the Paint Shop before rolling out the back doors on to the train cars that are sitting on the railroad spur there, which also conveniently served as our clandestine route into the plant.

We however followed them all the way to the Water Plant, where we knew of a way in.


It was late; we began this mission at about midnight, and I had guzzled a large coffee before the hike in because I knew we were in for a long night. We were both somewhat nervous, since we knew that multiple security units guarded the plant, and that all power and lighting to the complex was still active.

We weren't sure if the guards actually patrolled inside the buildings, but we were about to find out. We did know that during the day, contractors were working in the plant continuing the dismantling or refitting operation for whatever the plant was supposedly about to be used for next.


We entered the complex from the water treatment plant, which at the time was still essentially active...


We planned to enter the main plant via the roof of the Assembly Building.


Behold, the Thunderbird assembly line:


By this point I had been in a few modern auto assembly plants, but this was by far the freshest and most intact. It was like we had merely stopped in during shift change, or a shutdown for retooling; it felt like we were merely here to punch in for the night shift.


Wixom was also the largest I had explored by far; the Oldsmobile VerLinden Assembly and Pontiac West Assembly plants only stood at 2.6 million and 1.7 million square feet respectively, compared to the 4.3 million here.


I think this robot glued the windshields in:


This is the apparatus used to manually lift windshields from the racks into position on the car body via vacuum-automated suction cups:






Since we were concerned that security might patrol inside the building, the roof was our primary avenue of traveling around the complex. Looking at Bing Bird’s Eye imagery zoomed-in is like looking at the surface of a circuit board…so many nooks and crannies and complex details:


Here is a more zoomed-out view, from Google Earth, c.2005.


We operated under extreme caution for the duration of our visit, because we knew that if the guards were somehow alerted to our presence, being that this was Oakland County suburbia, police were guaranteed to respond. It was too far of a run back to our cars, so we would be forced to hide out in here somewhere, and hopefully not freeze to death.


The conveyors of the assembly line snaked throughout the entire place and connected the various buildings.


This area was actually on a second story of the plant as opposed to ground level.


It was bitter cold that night…17F and windy. The cold weather made the all-steel plant emit all kinds of strange noises as it contracted, which gave us pause many times while we nervously listened to see whether it was the sound of a security guard nearby.


Though it is dark and hard to see, in this area several conveyors converged like tributary streams to form a raging river.


Back out onto the roof again, to reach another part of the plant:


We entered the plant after midnight and stayed there until 6am. We had a full run of the complex, except for a few places that were blocked by ice floes. The guards continued their vigil at the front gate, with eyes locked forward, apparently oblivious to what we were doing behind their backs.


Here is a booth in the Paint Shop:


We found the Paint Shop to be brightly lit and in mint condition.






On November 14th of 1996, the Wixom plant was actually the site of a murder. A man who had dated an employee of the plant walked in "dressed like Rambo" with an AK-47 and randomly began shooting people, killing a manager. The man also hit several other Ford employees and two Oakland County deputies during the episode, before eluding authorities for several hours by hiding in the drain tunnels outside of the plant. It had been "at least the fifth" shooting at a Michigan auto plant in the past two years according to the Chicago Tribune.


Break room:


Wixom Assembly had its own UAW chapter, Local 36. The UAW formed Local 36 in 1957 for those auto workers who were either hired into Ford or transferred from plants covered by Locals 400, 600, and 900 to build T-birds and Continentals at the new Wixom plant.


Surprisingly, Local 36 won the J.D. Power Platinum Award as the top quality plant in the world in 2007, the year it closed. Usually production quality slips once word gets out that a plant will be closed, yet Wixom had the lowest defect rate that year of any auto plant in the world, according to the UAW.




You know what they say..."If You Can't Run With The Big Dogs...Stay On the Porch":


Cassiopeia over the Paint Shop:


We came through a few spaces during our explore of the plant where it was just utterly pitch black, that from the loss of echo of our cat-soft tiptoe steps, and feeble light cast from our candle-dim flashlight beams illuminating the smallest details of seemingly immense machinery cloaked in the inky blackness, we could tell we were standing inside of a space that was just absolutely cavernous and unfathomably vast. However, like rats slinking silently through the soaring grottoes in the unknown bowels of the earth, it was impossible to gauge the true scale of what we were wandering through, or get any usable photos.

Many other areas were lit, but completely empty:










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No More Trucking for Pontiac West

In February of 2008, I received word that the old GM Truck & Bus plant (aka, Pontiac Assembly West, aka, TPC Validation Center) had been totally shut down and vacated, and that the only other person there was a guard who said the plant would be transferred to a demolition company later that month. He also said that GM would cease guarding the grounds until then.


This of course set off alarm bells in my head and plans were made immediately to take advantage of this window of opportunity. At the time the bay doors of the plant were wide open, and only the fence acted as a barrier against trespass in this time of high scrap metal prices and legendary, Robin Hood-esque copper thievery.


Knowing that we had a mere window of about one week to explore this place before the demolition company put guards in place, my colleague Sloop enlisted my aid for a 6.5-hour mission of documentation and petty larceny.


Because once again GM had moved out, leaving everything behind, to what had to amount to millions if not billions of dollars in equity in materiel alone. Perhaps a sale had been conducted, or was about to be conducted, but almost everything still remained in place at the time we visited.


It was bitter #$%&@ing cold out, but we had no choice but to dress warm and brave the elements. Once inside, we could hear a very loud, strange moaning sound from the vicinity of the bathrooms, as well as spattering water. A vast ice floe told us that the pipes had burst, and the bizarre howling sound was that of cold wind funneling through the fractured plumbing of the toilets. The temperature outside was in the single digits, but the air inside may have dipped below 0F.


Like Detroit, nearby Pontiac was clustered with GM plants, but was also the cradle of its own budding auto industry in the early 1900s, especially concerning trucks. The old Jewett Plant still stood on Telegraph Road (but is now demolished), which was a brand once part of Graham-Paige Motor Co., which built trucks back in those days. But it may be the only remnant of the numerous and now-defunct truck makers that took root in Pontiac, most of which were formerly located where the now-defunct Pontiac West Assembly plant stands. In fact, it was many of those small companies that were conglomerated by GM to form what is now known as GMC.


In 1900, Grabowski Power Wagon (eventually bought by Dodge I think) operated three truck plants on Saginaw Street near where Rapid Motors would in 1905 be manufacturing 2-cylinder trucks. It was this site that would become the Pontiac West plant you see here. Reliance Motor Truck (1904-1908) sold to Crescent Motors, then moved to Pontiac and in 1908 combined with Rapid Motors, at which time they became General Motors Truck Co. (hence Rapid Street, which forms the northern boundary of the modern-day GM plant). Yellow Cab (1928-30), first made in Chicago, moved to Pontiac and became General Motors Cab. They were made until 1938, mostly from Chevy bodies with some truck driveline, and longer chassis.

A Michigan DEQ document notes that three of the buildings that were to eventually become Pontiac West were acquired from the Wilson Foundry Co. in 1937, a firm that manufactured castings such as motors. By 1943, Yellow Truck & Coach was added to GMTC, completing the division that from then on would be known simply as GMC. I bet you owners of GMC trucks had no idea that your vehicle has no less than four bloodlines from combined companies whose names no one now remembers. It has been 106 years that truck manufacturing has taken place on this piece of land.


In 1972, Pontiac West became a GM Truck & Bus Division plant, but by 1994 GM announced the plant would be idled. 4,000 workers were employed there at that time. Signage on the front office of the plant indicated that the other GM divisions housed here at the time it was shut down included the Pontiac Pre-Prototype Operations, and their North American Materials Testing Laboratory.

If you own a GMC Sierra or Chevy Silverado with a VIN code "O," "E," or "V," then it was assembled here in Pontiac.


By the way, that UAW flag now flies on my basement wall.


By 1997 the facility was in use once again, under the name GM Truck Validation Center, building platforms for trucks. Sloop said that in 1997 the entire plant had been overhauled and made completely state-of-the-art at that time.


However it is evident in these photos that older portions of the plant remain, because as you can see that the classic 1920s Albert Kahn-style columns of reinforced concrete are present, namely in Building 20:


It is hard to convey just how cold it was in the plant that day...I can't even look back at these photos without shivering.


One of the first things we did was rummage around in some of the offices and locate official GM denim jumpsuits to put on over our clothes, both to help protect against the horribly frigid air trapped inside the plant, and to make ourselves look like we belonged here.


...Then we took a union break.


BBQ chicken wings, Guns & Ammo, and a Chevy piston. They go together like work and napping:


Bran-new in the box Starrett caliper micrometer set...these represent a fraction of the top-of-the-line tools and equipment that will probably get demolished with the plant:


Supposed to say "Emergency Response Team"...just a bit of UAW humor here:


Closet full of assorted dipstick prototypes:


Pallets full of aluminum 4-cylinder Chevy S-10 engine blocks...these were all orange-tagged "REJECT," but nonetheless the core value, or scrap value of this pile represented a small fortune to someone like myself:


We came across a couple not-so-well-hidden UAW flop spots, made from the foam that is normally used as the padding inside the seats of your car, and a couple gaming rooms for playing cards, etc.


Once again, everything is made from stuff found around the plant. Notice this gaming table is held up with yellow safety cans:


We even found one flop spot up on a catwalk that was actually still occupied by a sleeping UAW guy. Apparently nobody bothered to wake him up when the plant shut down and it was time to leave:


We gave him a nudge and said it was his turn on the PlayStation but he just mumbled and rolled over….


We got to the roof and realized we could go up on the big GMC billboard that has advertised to everyone driving up Woodward for decades. The tiny, distant building on the horizon at extreme left is the Daimler-Chrysler headquarters in Auburn Hills:


Once up on the billboard's catwalk, I noticed that in small faded paint at the bottom once read “Plant Tours Daily:”


It’s been awhile since they’ve done that, I bet. I can just imagine how that would have gone...

"And if you look to your left (past the glaring safety violations), you'll see one of our bran-new models rolling down the assembly line (with a guy sleeping off a hangover in the trunk)!"


"On your right you'll notice one of our ace plant managers, using a stopwatch to record just how fast we're falling behind our European and Japanese competition!"


"Up ahead we will get to see a typical workplace accident in progress, as a blue-collar man is maimed because of the way our corporate policies and blind upper management have resulted in dangerous conditions in order to make up for a slump in sales (and vindictively stick it to the UAW over concessions they pried out of us last contract) by laying off workers, so that he is forced to do extra jobs that used to be performed by two other men!"

...Sounds like a fun tour.


Though most of the plant is wrapped in that eyesore white corrugated aluminum, there are spots where the old brick architecture can still be seen:


The huge white thing on the horizon in the next shot is the also abandoned Pontiac Silverdome, former home of the Detroit Lions (which I also managed to infiltrate before it officially closed, in an older post):


One of the more amazing finds we came across were the trunks of unused spaceman-style fireproof suits. I had to help Sloop get into the damned thing, because it's as heavy and cumbersome as a medieval suit of armor:


We wanted to loot one of the suits so badly, but the logistics of getting it over or under the tall fence around the plant in anything resembling a discreet manner pretty much precluded that. I can only imagine each of these suits costs thousands of dollars.

Here was a booth for some kind of coating bake process, I presume, or something else that apparently involved high heat:


On the assembly line in Plant #5 we found there to be auto parts still sitting in their containers, such as coil springs and entire front steering linkages for S-10 pickups…bran-new, waiting to be installed, not even collecting dust yet.


The usual disclaimers:


This plant is one of the bigger ones I've ever explored, sitting on 133 acres and with 1.68 million square feet of space under-roof.


The assembly line track ran through the floor and snaked around the entirety of Plant #5.


A welding station, with protective blinds:


I can only imagine the salivating hoards of scrappers who were watching this joint before it was torn down, hoping to sink their teeth into it. Many of them were probably former workers here—who know just what has been left behind—or who at least wanna clean out their office better. Many cubicles I saw had everything still there, as if the employee was merely on smoke break.


A drawing room in the materials / prototype testing lab:


A glimpse into the mind of the world's largest corporation:


Looks like the "body drop" portion of the assembly line:


I have remarkably few photos from this plant despite the fact that we spent over six hours exploring it, partially because there were so many dark areas, partly because the severe cold sapped my camera's batteries prematurely, and partly because my hands were so cold that most of the time I didn't want to bother taking my gloves off to use it.


But I have rarely if ever seen a more complete and modern plant left abandoned like this with so much stuff left behind.


In 2009—one year later—the Pontiac East Plant was slated to close down as well, essentially gutting what was left of the city of Pontiac's manufacturing core. Today Pontiac West, Pontiac East, Pontiac Central, and the Fiero Plant are demolished.


References:
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/dnre-oppca-cw-cs-gmpontiac1_334842_7.pdf
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1992-04-05/doing-it-right-till-the-last-whistle
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/09/pont-s30.html
http://www.gmheritagecenter.com/docs/gm-heritage-archive/historical-brochures/GMC/100_YR_GMC_HISTORY_MAR09.pdf

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