The Rouge was an inspiration to Adolph Hitler to create Volkswagen (the "peoples' car") before the outbreak of World War II, and in the early 1950s to Toyota's Eiji Toyoda, nephew of the Japanese automaker's founder, and Taichi Ohno, Toyota's vice president and manufacturing genius, to build up to Toyota's now acknowledged quality and manufacturing standards.
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| The Dearborn Assembly Plant which was built in 1917 is still producing the Mustang. (Photo: Ford Motor Company) |
After World War II, however, Ford's management began to realize that the one-and-a-half mile long, three-quarter-mile wide complex was too big for its own good and began diversifying operations away from Dearborn. And, over time, the Rouge suffered, losing factories, jobs and prestige. Its factories began operating as separate entities, with very little effort to coordinate the activities from one plant to the next.
The new Dearborn Truck Plant represents a tangible effort by Ford to not only recreate the Rouge, but to recreate itself to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
The Dearborn Assembly Plant, which is still producing the Mustang until the truck plant comes on line, is an aging four-story assembly plant. It was originally built back in 1917 to construct the Eagle Boats and U-Boat submarine chasers for World War II and then modified to be a Model T parts supplier plant to the Highland Park factory and, for a time, to build the Fordson tractor.
In 1929, the assembly plant underwent yet another in a series of changes as it built the Model A. It also used to house the old Henry Ford Trade School, the Rouge hospital, engineering labs, and other Ford office facilities. The Dearborn Independent, the Ford-owned paper that printed a series of anti-Semitic articles in the 1920s along with other stories, was even housed in the factory for a time.