Suburban ruins

[Jimaz]

There's a big recently-abandoned factory on the southeast corner of Mound Rd & 23 Mile Rd.

Google Maps shows cars in the lot but it's empty now.

[56packman]

There's a big recently-abandoned factory on the southeast corner of Mound Rd & 23 Mile Rd.

Google Maps shows cars in the lot but it's empty now.

this was plant was built in 1952-'53 by Packard as their Jet engine [[J-47) plant, Secretary of defense "Engine Charlie" Wilson saw to it that his old employer was favored with the lion's share of defense contracts and this valuable part of Packard's business and cash flow disspapeared. Packard moved the machining and assembly of the the new V-8 engines and Twin-Ultramatic transmissions to this plant for the 1955-'56 model year. After Packard was shut down by Curtiss-Wright the complex was sold, then put up for sale, Ford Motor Company bought the whole parcel, proving grounds and plant. The building became a Ford trim plant in the late 50s and went over to Visteon in that book-cooking excercise.
According to some Packard planned on building a new, ultra-modern assembly plant on Mound, next to this plant to replace the East Grand Boulevard plant, this would have been if George Mason's vision for the stillborn "American Motors" with Packard at the top, then Hudson, then Nash and Studebaker as the volume-price leader, stude trucks, Nash-Kelvinator appliances, Packard defense and aerospace and Stude defense. That never happened. If it had the idea was to have the Utica plant to be the "Big car" production plant, ala' GMs BOP division of the 80s and 90s making Packard and Hudson products on the same platform/body shell.