Notes from the Assembly Line
At the Ford Rouge plant, it's one new American dream a minute.
Friday is the only day in a two-week span when there’s no news coming out of NAIAS, except for the fact that the Barenaked Ladies are playing the $400-a-head Charity Preview (which — let’s be honest — would only be news if this were 1998).
In the quest to better understand the American car, the Ford Rouge Factory Tour in nearby Dearborn seems as good a place as any. The root of the problem, or the source of salvation. But, this being Detroit, to understand a car I first had to rent one.
I go to the Enterprise branch closest to the COBO, which is on the first floor of the Renaissance Center, home to General Motors’ global headquarters. After I sign some paperwork, Tony, the manager, walks me outside.
“There it is,” he says, pointing to a powder-blue PT Cruiser. I don’t say anything, but I don’t need to. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Tony offers. “You’re only going to have it for a few hours.” He pauses. “And it’s all we have right now anyway.” I’m not crazy about the idea of driving a car so whimsical and merry to a Ford plant that manufactures only gigantic trucks, but, when life hands you a power-blue PT Cruiser…
Twenty minutes and two highways later, I’m in Dearborn. The Rouge Factory here was Henry’s baby, an almost self-sufficient industrial complex that shipped in natural resources from the company’s quarries, mines, and forests, and produced many of the materials that went into the company’s cars. Today it’s where the F150 pickup is assembled.
On the tour, visitors travel along a walkway elevated above the assembly floor, and watch F-150s being put together by both man (rubber linings, visors) and machines (windshields). There are 250 stations along the 4-mile line, with one to four people at each; a truck passes each station at the rate of about one per minute. It’s a mesmerizing process, hundreds of workers screwing things onto or gluing things into doors, beds, and cabs.
The tour is self-guided, but there are attendants posted along the walkway who are happy to answer questions, even those they think you should know. Surprising things are learned in these interactions, among them the fact that working on an assembly line, you don’t always have the same task day in and day out — you can rotate with other members of your team (e.g. headliner install, door build, cab exterior ornamentation).
And the fact that trucks come down the line based on dealer orders, which is why the colors are all mixed up. (So no, a guide explains, it’s not just “random.”)
And the fact that if someone isn’t back at his station when the line starts up after a break, his tools detect the absence and the line shuts back down. (So no, the same guide explains, it’s actually not a lot like I Love Lucy.)
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The Rouge Factory Tour is part of a network of attractions that includes an IMAX theater and the Henry Ford Museum. The museum is not that of the Ford company, but rather one of American ideas and innovation. Its entrance is a full-size replica of Independence Hall. Inside there’s a bed Washington slept on during the war, the chair Lincoln sat on when he was shot in the head, and the car Kennedy rode in when he was shot in the head.
These are objects that lack any real intrinsic value, when compared with the extrinsic value given them by the actions that happened in or on them. This is the case with many things found in many other museums, where something's displayed just because famous/important person X did Y to or with it.
So how does any of this relate to cars? Because it’s the same kind of value Ford is trying to impose on its products. There’s this idea (and Ford isn’t alone in pushing it) that buying American is buying a piece of history, is helping define the culture. One of the company’s concept cars back at NAIAS is even called the Ford Explorer America.
But this is a false value. While it’s true that cars do have a role in the country’s history and help define its culture, they do so because they’re not pre-loaded with those expectations. History and cultural significance can’t be forced; they just happen. On the tour, a film on Henry Ford’s life explains that he built “cars that became not only classics, but symbols of the American experience.” That’s true, but they did so not because people chose to define them as such symbols, but because they simply liked the cars and bought them.
Ford’s had a rough go of it lately. The company is expected to announce next week yet another quarterly loss, and has had just one profitable quarter in two years. The fact that F-150s are only built to order is a reminder of just how closely tied those 1,100 people on the assembly floor are to the fickle tastes of car shoppers, who, as NAIAS is showing, are finding an ever-widening array of options before them.
But most of the country stopped caring a long time ago whether something was Made in America. It’s not until hundreds of dogs and cats die from tainted pet food, or toys are found to contain lead paint, that anyone questions where something comes from, and those worries don’t end up lasting all that long, anyway. Even the current frenzy for locally-produced food isn’t so much about supporting America as it is about supporting local economies and minimizing the environmental impact of food production.
And while we’re on the topic, a note, the only note on The Environment that will appear here — since so much has already been said elsewhere about cars and the environment at NAIAS when, really, there’s not all that much to say. The Rouge plant claims to have the world's largest "living" roof above its F-150 factory, an environmental initiative that covers 10.4 acres with a succulent plant called sedum. This is a nice enough gesture, though you'd imagine a factory making some of the largest cars in the world would have a pretty big roof.
Maybe Ford could earn a little more goodwill from visitors if it, say, helped invest in some kind of public transportation in the area. So that people didn’t have to take $50 cab rides from the airport to downtown Detroit. So that people didn’t feel stuck in their hotels. So that people didn’t have to waste gas driving powder-blue PT Cruisers to its factory tours. • 19 January 2008
Jesse Smith is managing editor of The Smart Set.
