"Who goofed, I've got to know?!" -Howard Cosell on MNF

If this is a '36 Ford assembly line, why is a Chevrolet grille, turret top roof and OHV I-6 being installed?

I was very suspicious, because when the film first begins, it shows a brake drum that no 1935/39 Ford came with.

And btw: GM made all their own sheet metal, Ford bought their bodies from Briggs.

 

 

All I could think of was what a Herculean job change-over must have been every year, especially when radically changing major components like engines or body styles.

Those were amazing times, with equally-amazing people.

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If you open the video in YouTube, it says it is a Chevrolet plant in Flint MI. I'm sure Sean realized what a faux pas it would have been to post a chebby video here.

Does Ford even do anything like that in their own plants anymore? Seems like all they do is final assembly, and plants like the one in the video (but far more automated) are only "Partner" vendors.

 

 

Chevrolet was founded in Flint MI in 1914 by William C. "Billy" Durant, who had founded General Motors in 1908.

Durant had been ousted from GM in 1910, wanted to get back in the auto biz, so he hired Louis Chevrolet who had been a race car driver for Buick to design a new car.

But the car that Chevrolet designed was too large and expensive. Durant wanted a cheaper car to compete with the Model T, so he had others (it's not known who) design the car that became the Chevrolet 490.

When Chevy's began selling like hotcakes, Durant traded Chevy stock for GM stock, then walked into a GM board meeting in 1916 and announced: I CONTROL!

Chevrolet was then folded into GM. Durant was ousted for the second and last time from GM in 1920, then started his own company: Durant Motors, it folded in 1931, a victim of the Depression.

Durant later owned a bowling alley in Flint and died broke in 1948.

 

 

It was in Fremont, originally Chevrolet, then the joint GM/Toyota NUMMI plant. I think this is where the Tesla is assembled.

Durant was a multi-millionaire when he purchased Buick in 1904. He made his fortune selling road carts with his partner Dallas Dort in the Durant-Dort Carriage Co.

He had retired and was just sitting around doing nothing. A friend who worked for Buick said Buick could be purchased, but Durant wasn't interested in any motor car until he took a ride...then he was sold!

Durant spent too much money when he ran GM, bought auto companies that were moribund and also played the stock market. This got him ousted from GM twice.

btw: Durant also founded Frigid-Aire, came up with the name, used his own money to pay for it and for R & D. When it became a success, he sold it to GM for what he had in it.

There was also a Chevy plant in Van Nuys and a B-O-P (Buick-Olds-Pontiac) plant in South Gate, a Nash plant in El Segundo and a Studebaker plant in Vernon.

Way back when, the Tourist and the Leach were assembled in Los Angeles, the Moreland Motor Truck Co. plant was in Burbank.

Ford had assembly plants at one time or another in Los Angeles (building extant), Richmond (building extant), Long Beach (demolished), San Jose (converted to a shopping mall) and Pico Rivera (demolished).

 

Bill, I think Sean meant Oakland Assembly: This from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Assembly

" Oakland Assembly was a former Chevrolet manufacturing facility that later became a General Motors automobile plant located in Elmhurst, Oakland, California. It was the first automobile plant established in Northern California to build Chevrolet vehicles. In 1916, Chevrolet opened the auto industry's first West Coast assembly plant in Oakland. Production of the Chevrolet Series 490 began on Sept. 23, 1916,[1] while World War I was taking place (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918). "

I first thought of Fremont, too!

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I know far more about Ford than I do about Chevrolet. I knew there was a GM plant in Fremont, thought it was for Chevy originally.

I knew about the B-O-P plant in South Gate, because my dad was an Olds dealer. The Packard Club toured the plant in the early 1970's.

TV series Mysteries of the Abandoned just had a new episode, one of the segments is on the former Packard plant in Detroit.

I knew before the show aired that 95% of it is still there today, it's the largest industrial ruin in the world!

 

While that may be indeed true, my observation over the years is that you've got a very keen mind for all things historical, especially automotive!

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Ah yes, and we both know about the wooden decks on USN warships. They were not plywood, despite what that idiot docent told us when the SoCal Chapter toured the USS Iowa.

They were teak. The plywood had been placed over the deck to cover areas where the teak decking had gone bye-bye. We both walked away laughing.