Land cleared for Ford’s Willow Run plant
On this day in 1941 workers start clearing trees from hundreds of acres of land near Ypsilanti Michigan some 30 miles west of Detroit in preparation for the construction of the Ford Motor Companys Willow Run plant which will use Henry Fords mass-production technology to build B-24 bomber planes for World War II.During the war Detroit was dubbed the Arsenal of Democracy as American automakers reconfigured their factories to produce a variety of military vehicles and ammunition for the Allies.When it opened in 1941 expectations were high for Willow Run which at some 3.5 million square feet was called the worlds largest factory under a single roof.Early on however the plant was plagued by such issues as labor shortages and earned the nickname Willit Run The initial problems were later ironed out as workers were recruited from the South women were hired and employee housing was constructed.
Willow Run eventually employed over 42000 people and by 1944 the plant was producing one plane every hour.By the end of the war in 1945 more than 8600 B-24s had been built at Willow Run and the plants mass-production techniques were hailed as a symbol of American ingenuity.Following World War II the plant was used by the newly formed independent automaker Kaiser-Frazer.In 1953 auto giant General Motors bought Willow Run and used the facility to make transmissions.
Starting in 2003 GM spent a reported 600 million to renovate the plant in order to produce a new 6-speed rear-wheel drive automatic transmission.By 2008 GM along with much of the auto industry had been hit hard by the growing global economic crisis and the company was forced to ask the federal government for a multi-billion-dollar bailout loan in order to remain operational.Also that year GM lost its title as the worlds top-selling automakera crown it had held since the early 1930sto Japans Toyota.
On June 1 2009 GM announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.As part of its bankruptcy reorganization plans the auto giant said it would shutter the (by then) 5-million-square-foot 335-acre Willow Run plant.At the time the plant employed over 1300 hourly and salaried workers down from a peak of some 14000 employees in the 1970s. After GM left in 2010 most of the plant was demolished in 2014.
In 2017 the Yankee Air Museum optioned on a portion of the site and in 2018 The American Center for Mobility claimed the remainder of the land to use as a research facility for self-driving cars.
