Ford Wixom Assembly Plant Glory Days (Part 2)

This is a video of some of the last memories of the greatest Ford Motor Company plant to ever exist. It was like family where everyone knew everyone. Everyone for the most part got along like family including management. It was a great place to work!!!! There were great memories there and some great friendships that were made and still exist. It has a long history and it as a very sad day when we found out it was closing. It was even harder to see when it was being torn down and till this day it is so weird driving by there and not seeing the plant. But with it being gone we can still hold on to all the great memories. The Wixom assembly plant was one of Ford's largest and oldest manufacturing sites. It opened April 15, 1957, and was ultimately expanded to encompass 4.7 million square feet, and replaced the former Lincoln Motor Company Plant located at 6200 West Warren Avenue (at Livernois). Over the plant's 50 years of operation it produced 6,648,806 automobiles. The last car produced was a white chocolate Lincoln Town Car which rolled off the line at 12:55pm on May 31, 2007. During its long history, the plant was mainly used for the manufacture of Lincolns and the Ford Thunderbird. The Lincoln Town Car and the Ford GT were also produced there. Production of the Lincoln LS ended in early April 2006[4] and production of the Ford GT stopped on September 21,[5] leaving the Town Car as the plant's final product. Wixom was the most profitable plant in the industry during the 1980s when Cadillac downsized its lineup and lost ground to Lincoln. Due to Lincoln's falling sales, Ford announced on January 23, 2006 that the Wixom plant would be idled in 2007 as part of The Way Forward. Some analysts argued that the plant might not be closed. A report in The Oakland Press stated, "The fate of the Wixom plant, however, will depend on the shape of Ford's future product plan, which seems to be currently in flux." Michigan governor, Jennifer Granholm, reportedly offered $115 million in tax cuts to keep the plant open. The plant was nonetheless idled in 2007, and by mid-June 2008, while Ford was able to find buyers for other idled plants, Wixom remained unsold.[6] A couple of alternative energy uses were announced, but none came to fruition. In 2012, Ford began tearing down the old plant. The next year the Baidas family, owners and operators of General RV Center, sought and were awarded[7] mixed use zoning permits for a portion of the old Wixom property. In 2014 the family broke ground on 33 acres of the old Ford Wixom property to build a new corporate headquarters and RV Dealership. A Menards outlet has also been built on the site.