I am working at the Buick City plant in Flint ,Mi. today tearing it down.VERY VERY sad:ball: -in the mid 80s this 235 acre plant employed 28,000 workers,if your Buick had a H in the vin. then this is where it came from. Today this plant employs (0) ou: As of today only plants remaining on the complex is plant # 10 which is almost tore down and plant # 5 which will be comming down in next few weeks.Here are some pictures :kodak: I took today Picture 1 and 2 is on top of #5(south end) plant looking South toward downtown,picture #3 is looking S.E. where plant #81 use to be,4 and 5 is looking N.E. at what is left of plant #10 and picture # 6 is of plant #5 looking N.W. I am VERY lucky to have rescued some COOL things out of plant :beer PLEASE BUY AMERICAN:idea2: or ALL our grandchildren will have careers at Mcdonalds ray:
28,000 employees......gone...amazing. Blame the big shots that ran the motor companies and the UAW. When I started at Ford Credit back in 1972, I received the same benefits (not the salary) as the UAW workers. The benefits (time off, medical and etc) were amazing. UAW workers made/make way too much money for the task they performed. You can't price yourself out of the market place. We made the same mistake in NW Illinois by allowing teachers the ability to go on strike. We ran scared and gave them the keys to the bank. Their salaries are outrages. They receive 80 -90% of their pay as a pension. That's why I paid $381.5k for my house and my taxes are $10k a year. Trust me, all of my tax dollars don't go to educate the kids. It's to pay for those teacher benefits. Time to get off my soap box. Norm
Please keep taking pics and post them up. These will be the last pictures taken of an amazing part of car history. Thanks
That is sad. I keep saying it all the time, pretty soon it will be Mcdonalds, or WalMart, THATS it for jobs. it already is around here. GE used to employ so many and the city was a truly nice place and safe to be in. now GE employs a fraction and the ONLY other jobs are Mcdonalds, Burger king, walmart, ect... now the city is trash and almost everyone is just on the system instead of working... cant blame them really when ALL there is for a job is crappy fast food.... i wish we wtill made things in this country but the generation before me destroyed that and sealed the fate of the future forever by being greedy unions who squeeze all they could get then left nothing for us... Also, what did you save out of there? anything really cool?
Thanks for the pics. My Riviera's birthplace is the Flint plant. I've been driving it for the past few weeks around town, getting many looks & compliments from people, including a PG&E worker who was doing some repairs outside of my building at work. We truly had a powerhouse of engineering and manufacturing in the USA not too long ago. Like Buick City, there are some things once sold, we may never get back. I hope we can reverse the trend before it is too late.
BUICK CITY COMPLEX <iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/u2rE06_kTgA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I watched the same destruction of the Guide Lamp and Delco Remy Plants here in Anderson, Indiana. Anderson was also a workforce of 20,000 people now gone and so is what used to be a great city. Now they are just big fields of grass, never to come back. :ball:
My father in law worked his whole life at the Wixom Lincoln plant. now an empty shell. He admitted that he made too much for what he did. Tim
Try doing a UAW member's job or CAW member for a while. Who's to blame for all the stuff going on in North America? Ask the Old Money share holders and tell them to look in a mirror. Do you think they would care to join 28,000 lost UAW jobs. Don't throw stones, my Brother. CAW Local 887
I have friends and family that are CAW workers. I don't want to throw stones but they make way to much for what they doo No: They will be the first to say that. The unions and the CEO's are the reason we pay way to much for most things. Just My 2c
They think they are overpaid. The sheer monotony of the job is the reason. "Been there, hated it." Big $$$ pays for a lot....ask workers overseas.
I don't want to get too far off track, but consider this: At present, most local private universities - Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, Northeastern, Harvard, etc. Charge north of $50,000 per year. To be a public school teacher in Massachusetts requires a master's degree. $50,000 X 6 years = $300,000. Starting teacher salary in most local school systems is less then $40,000. You cannot economically now attend a private college and then become a public school teacher. It takes 14 years to get to the top step in the public school system where I taught.
This unfortunatley may be the way the now empty GM truck and bus plant in Moraine (about 7 minutes from me) is going. They are trying like heck to save it and bring in tennants, but every time it looks like a promising deal is at hand, it falls through for various reasons. I drive by it on my way home from work everyday, and its really sad to see it sitting there like a ghost town. As far as the union being at fault vs. not at fault arguement, its not worth your time fellas. Its all been said, we've all heard both sides many times over, its best to just let it go before another interesting thread gets locked. Thanks for posting the pics Flint 67 gs.
Salient points indeed, each one. One more to consider. Why do the now "Little 3" keep making so called collector cars. Did they do much Advertising 40 years ago when they were made. Buicks anway.
What is the chance of getting a Brick from the old building as a memorial paper weight o No: . All but one of my Buicks came out of Flint. What a sad thing to see:ball: :ball: :ball: I am serious about the brick though.......:beers2:
[/quote] PLEASE BUY AMERICAN:idea2: or ALL our grandchildren will have careers at Mcdonalds ray:[/quote] Make sure it's made (or at least assembled) in America (the country, not North America in general). I almost crapped my pants at the auto show in Tampa last month when I looked at the Monroney on a $55k GMC Silverado and saw that it was assembled in Mexico. I don't recall Mexico pony'ing up it's citizens tax dollars to bail out GM.
