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Detroit Report: Ford Motor Companys Centennial Celebration Day 1

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Fun for the Whole Family, Fords Celebration Had Something for Everyone

DEARBORN (Mich.)–Day one of Ford Motor Co.s centennial celebration was soggy, thanks to steady rain all day, but that didnt dampen the spirits of those arriving to see a parade of Model Ts or their favorite NASCAR champions on the grounds of the “Glass House.” As very few say you only turn 100 once.

Over a period of five days, from June 12-16, 152 acres surrounding the Henry Ford II World Center–also known as Ford World Headquarters or the Glass House–has been transformed into an entertainment venue complete with Ford race car drivers Ricky Rudd, Dale Jarrett, and Mark Martin signing autographs Thursday, who would go on the next day to start their qualifying runs for a NASCAR race at Michigan International Speedway.

Also on hand were displays of classic Ford cars from the 1920s on up to modern concept cars, such as the stylish Lincoln Navicross and Ford Mustang GT.

The day included special media tours of the yet to be completed Dearborn Truck Plant at the Rouge Center, where the new F-150 pickup truck will be built next year; to Ford Motor Chairman Bill Ford Jr. making the rounds with visitors; and the arrival of a caravan of Model Ts, some of which started out on the west coast.

“This has been a fun experience, all on backroads into small towns, to see all the real nice people,” said John Cranford, who was dressed up along with his wife Lois in “dusters” to keep their clothing clean while on the road. “It makes you realize how great the country is.”

The Cranfords bought a 1927 Model T Ford Roadster several years ago and restored it for the 1998 Model T tour of Europe, which including stops in France, Holland and Germany. Theyve also taken their “T” on a trip from California to Alaska. Their current 19 day journey had only one major mishap, a broken rear axle and wheel which took seven hours to repair.

“There were two or three cars in our group that had blown engines and they had to be repaired overnight,” Cranford said, adding that the caravan was paced by three trailer trucks, ready to assist the Model T motorists that broke down.

While they enjoyed their trip out, the Cranfords will send their Tin Lizzie back on a trailer and fly home instead of retracing their 2,850 mile trip–a distance that they knew precisely because they had a portable GPS unit on hand, a piece of equipment that hardly could have been conceived some 70 years ago.

Of course, some of the Model T caravan participants faced a different problem once they were on the grounds of the Glass House. The fleet of Ford minivans that were supposed to shuttle them to their hotels didnt have their keys readily available, forcing the motorists to wait longer in the rain.

Rouge Center Is Reborn

Members of the media also received a sneak peak at the renovations underway at the Rouge Center, where the new Dearborn Truck Plant is nearing completion and getting ready to produce the Ford F-150 pickup in spring 2004. The new assembly plant has been constructed on land that was formerly occupied by the Rouges railroad siding. It features the worlds largest grass roof, as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records, and will be Fords most flexible manufacturing plant. When fully operational, the plant will be capable of building seven different models off of three different platforms (chassis).

The new Dearborn Truck Plant will feature public tours, a former staple at the old Dearborn Assembly Plant until they were discontinued in 1980 mostly due to liability concerns, but also because the Rouge didnt portray the modern, high-tech image Ford wanted. The new tours will start from The Henry Ford–the new overall name for the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, which are also located in Dearborn.

Tourists will travel from Greenfield Village, by bus, to a special visitors center that has been constructed at the plant, complete with a recreation of the famed employee bridge over Miller Road where, in 1937, Ford security men beat union organizers, including the future president of the United Auto Workers, Walter Reuther.

Inside the visitor center, tourists will be immersed into a nostalgic look at the Rouges past inside one theater and then to another theater where they will see the sites and sounds of the steel making process at neighboring Rouge Steel (including the feel of the heat and the steel making scents) and a look at how vehicles are made as music by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra sets the stage. Then, its off to the 80 foot tall observation tower to see the plants living roof of sedum grasses–meant to control rain water runoff–before walking down a corridor to the mezzanine level of the truck plant, where tourists can peer down and see F-150s being built. (Again, the plant will not be operational until 2004 and the assembly line is not in operation yet).

Best Known Plant in History

The Rouge is arguably the best-known production facility in history, mostly due to the public tours instituted by Henry Ford in 1924, but also due to publicity film clips made over the years.

Conceived by Henry Ford around 1914 for an iron foundry and a place to build his Fordson tractors, Ford originally wanted the site to manufacture parts for the Highland Park assembly plant, where the Model T was produced. But, his goal soon expanded to create a super complex of factories, about 1.5 miles long and three quarters of a mile wide that grew during the 1920s to produce a full steel facility, a vast Edison designed power house, plus tire and glass factories.

The Rouge fully grew into its own where raw materials entered one side of “the plant;” 24 hours later those materials were turned into parts; and then within 72 hours, finished cars rolled out of the assembly plant at the other end.

That was the dream of Henry Ford; it was a process known as vertical integration and the Rouge was Fords crown jewel of manufacturing and the hub for a vast supplier network where Ford owned rubber plants in Brazil to coal plants, forests in northern Michigan to produce lumber, and iron mines in Wisconsin. At the time, the craftsmanship of auto suppliers was questionable and there were shortages of raw materials. Ford wanted to control his destiny.

The Rouge didnt become the true model of vertical integration until the Model T was discontinued in 1927 and the Model A took its place.

Over the years, the Rouge has produced the Ford V8, armaments during World War II, the 1949 Ford, the original Thunderbird, and since the 1964 ½ model year, the Mustang. But time has not been kind to the old facility. From a workforce that reached its peak around 1929, at approximately 120,000 people, Ford diversified its production plants elsewhere starting in the late 1950s. The complex especially started showing its age around the recession of 1980. Its steel making components were spun off into a separate company called Rouge Steel, and the remains of Fords Great Lakes freighter fleet were dismantled. There was even talk of ending production of the Mustang and closing the Dearborn Assembly Plant by the late 1980s.

Both the Mustang and Dearborn Assembly survived due to the cooperation of the company and United Auto Workers Local 600. Then, in 1999, months after a boiler in the complexs power house exploded, claiming the lives of six workers and injuring 38 others, Chairman Bill Ford Jr. announced the $2 billion renovation program to rebuild the nearly 80 year old factory site into the twenty-first century icon for “sustainable manufacturing.”

The Oval Returns and Other Fun Facts

Visitors to Dearborn probably didnt appreciate it, maybe not realizing its symbolic significance, but the Ford “Blue Oval” was back adorning the top of Ford World Headquarters for the centennial celebration.

The oval is one of the top three recognized corporate symbols in the world, ranking up with Coca Cola and McDonalds. It was removed nearly three years ago as part of a marketing ploy by former Ford President and CEO Jacques Nasser to show that Ford Motor Co. was a corporation that also owned Aston Martin, Jaguar, Volvo, and a controlling interest of Japans Mazda.

But with Nassers fall from grace in 2002, when he was fired by the Ford board of directors following a series of missteps that included:

  • The Firestone tire tread separation/Ford Explorer roll over controversy;
  • An employee ranking system that set the white collar staff on edge;
  • Battles with auto suppliers;
  • A lack of new products for the automakers “bread and butter” division–i.e. Ford;
  • And a stock price that dwindled from nearly $32 a share to just above $9 a share.
    “It just didnt feel right taking it down,” said Bill Ford Jr. during the June 5th ceremony marking the unveiling of the oval back on the Glass House.

Other activities for tourists to Ford were: