We used to build things here ( GM content)

[mrsleeve]

This is a thread I stumbled across on some obscure Igloo land forum. History and List of many of the now gone GM Assembly plants in the US and Canada. You can spend a good hour taking in all the info. Like stated this is more geared to final assembly as Fisher Body is not featured (though mentioned) nor is Kalamazoo Stamping plant, and a few others

http://canadianponcho.activeboard.com/index.spark?aBID=118110&p=3&topicID=37134625&page=1&sort=newestFirst

I have been in and did lots of work at the GM Assembly in Lansing (including some of the demo work in 06 when they were tearing it down) and got to tour Buick City in 98 for a school thing, and the Flint Truck assembly ( still building trucks there)

We used to build things, Lets try and keep this non politcal (keep the union bashing and the Govt Motors comments to a minimum) as I posted it here so those that dont hit P&R would see it.

GM fan or not this kinda puts things into perspective with our state of economic affairs



Discuss

[Need4Speed1299]

This is very neat! I really found this picture interesting.

[RainierHooker]

Heh, my dad's '58 Chevy Truck, the one I learned stick on, was built in the Oakland, CA assembly plant. Can you imagine that? Heavy industry in California?

[JasonC]

Wonder if one of those Vegas would be my old one lol



But being involved in a plant closure sucks. It happened to me and i dont wish it to happen again. But with most of our manufacturing closing up, it's hard not to think about.

[AndrewBird]

This is very neat! I really found this picture interesting.

That is really interesting. Obviously no fluids could be in the car, so that means they sent them out without starting the engines or driving them at all. I wonder if they even had brake fluid in them?

[DaveSmed]

IIRC the engines seals were designed specifically with that shipment method in mind.

I do remember hearing the batteries were a big problem though...

[kway]

This is very neat! I really found this picture interesting.

My dad was a technician at Chevrolet Engineering back in the late '60s early '70s. One of the projects he worked on was evaluating that transportation method.

They had a vertical shaker rig they set a pre-production Vega up on, and shook the hell out of it to see what would break. Of course they had to go back and beef up a bunch of things before it was ready for prime time.

Then there was a layoff, and he missed the cutoff by six months. The real heartbreaker is that he had ordered an LS6 Chevelle with his employee discount; the car had come in, he even saw it with his name on the window sticker, but he couldn't have it. Those are worth six-figures these days.



EDIT: That thread was a really cool read, sad though. I remember touring the Wilmington plant when I was five or six years old. I think they were building Chevettes/Pontiac T-1000s at the time. The Tarrytown plant was always a familiar sight whenever I'd cross the Tappan Zee Bridge over the years, I remember the time I crossed and it wasn't there anymore.
My dad's '76 Trans Am was built at the Norwood plant. He bought it new, still has it.

[b*saint]

I've been to livonia many times but I can't remember seeing any evidence of the hyrdamatic plant.

[chadthestampede]

My dad worked at the Van Nuys Assembly plant and it's closing forced us to move to Buffalo.

GOD DAMN YOU GM.

[mikeedler]

It really saddens me so much. I have alot of family that lives in Michigan, almost all of them worked before for GM in some sort of way.

Grew up as a GM freak, I now work for BMW over here, but would rather be working for GM if it had stayed the way it was. Just to think that in 1955 alone- there was over 1.3 million full size Chevys built!! so sad to see where it has all gone.

[j0oftheworld]

You can see my old neighborhood in the one Lordstown photo..
Lived there from the time I was 5-11yrs old.
Still making cars there, the Cruze! :)

[Midnight Sun]

This reminded me of a story I heard on the radio about NUMMI. It was a joint venture between Toyota and GM, where GM was to learn the art of lean production. Specifically, that it was OK to stop the production line if a worker saw a problem. The Toyota factory even plays a pleasant jingle over the PA when the line stops so as not to cause any distress among workers.

Here is the wiki link for a brief overview, but any google search will get you more info if want to read more.

Figured this would be a proper place to share that info.

[j0oftheworld]

I now work for Intel and could probably go straight into the GM plant I grew up next to and double it's profits.. UAW permitting of course! :p
I remember touring it in 11th grade. We road a tram around for 20mins and saw a handful of people. The were sleeping. :(

[jrobie79]

not GM related, but American manufacturing as a whole....Jeff Jacoby is a brilliant writer:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/02/06/made_in_the_usa/?p1=Features_link3

IN ECONOMICS as in apparel, most fashions come and go. But like the navy blazer or the little black dress, bewailing the decline of American manufacturing never seems to go out of style.

“They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks

Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back.’’

So sang Bruce Springsteen in “My Hometown,’’ a hit song from his 1984 album, “Born in the U.S.A.’’ More than a quarter-century later, that sentiment (if not the song) is as popular as ever.

“You know, we don’t manufacture anything anymore in this country,’’ says Donald Trump in an interview with CNNMoney. “We do health care; we do lots of different services. But . . . everything is made in China, for the most part.’’

The Donald has his idiosyncrasies, but on this issue he is squarely in the mainstream.

A recent Heartland Monitor survey finds “clear anxiety about the decades-long employment shift away from manufacturing to service jobs,’’ National Journal’s Ron Brownstein reported in December. The “decline of US manufacturing’’ is giving Americans a “sense of economic precariousness’’ — only one in five believe that the United States has the world’s strongest economy, versus nearly half who think China is in the lead. “Near the root of the unease for many of those polled is the worry that the United States no longer makes enough stuff.’’ When asked why US manufacturing jobs have declined, 58 percent cite off-shoring by American companies to take advantage of lower labor costs.

There’s just one problem with all the gloom and doom about American manufacturing. It’s wrong.

Americans make more “stuff’’ than any other nation on earth, and by a wide margin. According to the United Nations’ comprehensive database of international economic data, America’s manufacturing output in 2009 (expressed in constant 2005 dollars) was $2.15 trillion. That surpassed China’s output of $1.48 trillion by nearly 46 percent. China’s industries may be booming, but the United States still accounted for 20 percent of the world’s manufacturing output in 2009 — only a hair below its 1990 share of 21 percent.

“The decline, demise, and death of America’s manufacturing sector has been greatly exaggerated,’’ says economist Mark Perry, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “America still makes a ton of stuff, and we make more of it now than ever before in history.’’ In fact, Americans manufactured more goods in 2009 than the Japanese, Germans, British, and Italians — combined.

American manufacturing output hits a new high almost every year. US industries are powerhouses of production: Measured in constant dollars, America’s manufacturing output today is more than double what it was in the early 1970s.

So why do so many Americans fear that the Chinese are eating our lunch?

Part of the reason is that fewer Americans work in factories. Millions of industrial jobs have vanished in recent decades, and there is no denying the hardship and stress that has meant for many families. But factory employment has declined because factory productivity has so dramatically skyrocketed: Revolutions in technology enable an American worker today to produce far more than his counterpart did a generation ago. Consequently, even as America’s manufacturing sector out-produces every other country on earth, millions of young Americans can aspire to become not factory hands or assembly workers, but doctors and lawyers, architects and engineers.

Perceptions also feed the gloom and doom. In its story on Americans’ economic anxiety, National Journal quotes a Florida teacher who says, “It seems like everything I pick up says ‘Made in China’ on it.’’ To someone shopping for toys, shoes, or sporting equipment, it often can seem that way. But that’s because Chinese factories tend to specialize in low-tech, labor-intensive goods — items that typically don’t require the more advanced and sophisticated manufacturing capabilities of modern American plants.

A vast amount of “stuff’’ is still made in the USA, albeit not the inexpensive consumer goods that fill the shelves in Target or Walgreens. American factories make fighter jets and air conditioners, automobiles and pharmaceuticals, industrial lathes and semiconductors. Not the sort of things on your weekly shopping list? Maybe not. But that doesn’t change economic reality. They may have “clos[ed] down the textile mill across the railroad tracks.’’ But America’s manufacturing glory is far from a thing of the past.

[Tree18is]

It hurts to see and read some of this stuff. I love my bimmers I love my toyotas. If I had the resources to buy a new American car I would. Im not totally ignorant, I hope that some how the American car makers can convince our country of immigrants that we can do it. and hopefully bring a little Pride in Country back.