The Walter P. Chrysler Museum started in Highland Park, before Chrysler Headquarters moved to Auburn Hills. What was once in a dark corner of an engineering building was moved then to the HP styling dome, and was open only by invitation. When the complex is Auburn Hills was under construction it was thought that it might be nice to bring these cars and historical artifacts out of HP and make them part of the campus in Auburn Hills.
The leadership at the time, Bob Eaton and Bob Lutz were in favor of this and money was allocated to build the facility in Auburn Hills. They managed to bring off a first-class facility, and tell the corporation's story in an excellent manner. We were a part of the Communications Department [[PR Department) and a very small part of their annual budget. We enjoyed some very good years, and had a number of guests come through the doors every year. More than you would expect, but no where near what a place like the Henry Ford Museum brings, so by that metric it wasn't as successful. We had an excellent educational program, which supported "no child left behind" based lesson plans for science and history, the Chrysler foundation paid for the bus transportation of school children, the biggest impediment to getting school groups in. Various changing shows were mounted from 2002-2007 in an effort of keep attendance figures up. We sponsored an extremely popular series of cruise nights, attracting hundreds of local car enthusiasts. I planned and executed the yearly "Cars, Trees and Traditions" exhibit at Christmastime, which boosted attendance at that time of year considerably.
We had an annual budget for advertising, and a promotions manager who placed many ads, radio station tie-ins and articles in local press. I had the good fortune to be there during some very good years, as the corporation went from boom to bust in 2008 things changed, I lost my job, along with our education director, then one at a time more of the paid staff was furloughed.
The fantastic volunteer corp. of retirees ran most of the day-to-day operations for the open to the public hours [[6 days a week) and their skillful administration of the public tours was something you couldn't hire done.
You can carp all you want about Auburn Hills, but a lot of people live out that way--Rochester, Rochester Hills, Bloomfield. It was built where everything else was for the corporation, and was not necessarily built to make money, rather to tell the story of Chrysler's past, show its engineering and marketing skill and to draw a short line between the successes of the past inside the museum to the new product out on the porch in front. We were a tight, cohesive unit and had a lot of pride in the company and product.
The museum was always an easy target for some young genius middle-level manager to slash out of existence, that was going on before the museum even existed. Back in the 70s some forward-thinking manager wanted to sell the small collection of significant cars that Chrysler owned, including one of the five prototypes of the very first Chrysler produced by Maxwell-Chalmers before the transition to Chrysler. Those cars were moved in a game of three-card monte, to keep them from being sold. At one point they were walled in to a corner of a plant in Cleveland behind drywall and metal studs to make them invisible. So this time the young hot-shot got his way, the miniscule budget that was left was reduced further, but the museum is still there, and very active as a rental facility and place for Chrysler to entertain guests.
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