I’m going to leave it for someone else determine what percentage of these cars are Fords. But it’s a pretty healthy one, from a precursory glance.
Here’s another:
Vintage Photo: Ford’s Rouge River Plant Parking Lot, 1953 – Plenty Of Non-Fords
– Posted on April 18, 2021
Looks like about 1/3 Ford products, maybe a little more.
What’s really missing is ’30s. I see a couple of As which would have been collectibles by then. Aside from that, nothing from the whole decade. The war used up prewar cars unless they were already being treasured as collectibles.
For many, it probably took longer to walk to the plant, than their drive from home.
Great photos. I spotted a new 1953 Dodge. Thus, it is not a matter of what the employee could afford to buy used.
A lot of the Fremont, California Tesla, formerly NUMMI, originally GM plant parking is visible from the freeway. In decades of driving by I observed that GM, and later Toyota vehicles were common in the employee parking areas. Tesla, not so much. Nevertheless, having that factory locally and regularly seeing the huge number of new Tesla’s on car carriers or getting staged for shipment is a strong reminder that this is a volume manufacturer. I should try to get a snapshot sometime, for someone to find and post on CC in 2090.
“SAFETY IS EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS.”
Also think of all that industrial fallout raining down on those once-shiny paint finishes!
It’s like pre-Terminator, before the rise of the machines (pickup trucks). Only one among them in the first picture and then the second picture shows just a few more…Eventually SkyNet apparently takes over including this location specifically and it became the leading place to replicate them (with secondary sites in Missouri and Kentucky). But currently the microchips that give them life are supply-limited and the pickup-bots are parked in a state of suspended animation waiting for the final implant before they roll amongst us in their quest for complete domination. Or something like that.
Frazer in the wild…!
+1 Packard and at least 2 Hudson’s!
An interesting pair of photographs; they appear to have been taken around 1951 or 1952. A few pick-ups in the lot but noting like today. There seems to be no vehicles from the 1930’s or early 1940’s, they all appear to date from the late 40’s to early 50’s.
There’s what looks like a Model A in the center and another one in the back.
Wow ~ much fun looking for the cars I liked….
-Nate
There are some cars in this picture from the 30’s and 40’s but you really have to look for them. WW2 used up much of the old cars and buyers were lined up to buy new after it was over. The buying spree lasted for years. That would explain why there are so many newer cars pictured.
During the 1930s, Henry Ford’s “Service Department” sent folks out to employees’ houses to check to see what kind of car they had. If it wasn’t a Ford, you get the drift. My grandfather worked at the Rouge plant and he took the bus to work.
Years ago I was attending a meeting at a General Motors assembly plant. The employees’ parking was divided between General Motors vehicles and non-General Motors vehicles. The non-General Motors employee parking was farther from the building.
Right after the war, I’d figure everyone’s driving whatever they could get. By this point (1952-53), I’d expect more Ford cars there. As an early-1970s Ford employee in Cleveland, I say the hourly parking lot was 60% to maybe 2/3 Ford products. The salaried/management parking was all Ford, I do believe. Here’s Rouge 1961 (eBay photo), with a whole lot of Fords:
Wonder if Ford had any special employee discounts at this time.
I knew a man who was an executive at the GM assembly plant in Baltimore during the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. This plant assembled GM intermediate A bodies and light trucks. He told me that this plant had a program where an employee could custom order any car that the plant built. The car would be flagged as an employee order and given meticulous treatment as it moved down the assembly line. The finished car would then be temporarily assigned to a GM executive as a company car, then after six months or so sold to the employee at a nice discount.
CPJ: All I know about this is that Ford’s “A-Plan” for employees goes back at least as far as the late 1950s (my father’s first new-car purchase). One gets a price that’s about as good as you could ever mega-haggle for, and FoMoCo pays the dealer back some percentage (so the the dealer doesn’t “lose” as compared to selling the same car to a Regular Joe). A Ford dealer told me a couple years ago that Chevy (GM?) has got an even better deal going (I have no idea if that’s true in 2021). Ford’s A-Plan also extends to immediate family, but Chevy (GM?) allows any employee to grant a couple friends a year the same discount.////Separately, my father eventually got to order an executive car yearly to lease, which after 12 months would then be offered for sale to hourly UAW guys. “His” cars were always in demand because he **didn’t** load them up with every available option….