April 4, 2017 • 43 mins
Sometimes old automobile factories are put to good use when the assembly line finally stops moving. We’re not talking about those places in this episode. Join Scott and Ben as they discuss the decrepit remains of some once-great car factories.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the Wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. I welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott. And then we are joined
as always with our super producers Dylan Fagan and Noel
Brown nicknames T B A although by UM just as
(00:26):
an aside Scott. We did have a really interesting conversation
with Dylan, who is rereading UM some history of of
Abraham Lincoln. Oh yeah, that's right, and it inspired him
to make some very specific uh nickname propositions and references
(00:47):
to us. Yeah what that? What brought that about? Now?
We had we had given him a nickname in a
previous episode a couple of because a couple of episodes ago,
and he's somehow, Oh no, I know what it was,
and I've got it out. This is kind of funny.
The power was out one night when I had to
approve one of our episodes, and I told him that
I was as a late late night email that I
(01:10):
had to send because I was approving this thing until
after midnight some night. But the power I had gone
out earlier in the night at our house, so I
had a candle there by the la. You know, we're
viewing this file and I said, I kind of feel like,
you know, this must be how Abraham Lincoln approved his
podcast back in the day, you know, by candle light
in the log cabin. And he thought that was pretty funny,
but he added his, uh, his little spin on it
and gave us some Lincoln associated nicknames. Yeah, yeah, and
(01:34):
I we we complimented him on these because his history
references were amazing, and he said that he was actually
I'll just read this part from him. So we said, yeah,
your history references are great and pretty funny. And Dylan said, thanks, guys,
I've just been rereading Team of Rivals and saw an
(01:54):
opportunity for references, much like Sam and P. Chase saw
an opportunity to introduce the nation's first paper currency during
his time as lincoln Secretary of Treasury. Nice fact drop
in there. This guy is like absorbing knowledge at at
an insane rate. It makes me scared of him. You know.
I feel like if he ever became a brainiac overlord
(02:16):
of some sort, he'd be really cool about it. I
think you're probably right. He would be such a laid back,
easy go and dictator agreed, So Stylan for President. Oh Man,
don't say that okay, man, okay, So maybe we should
get into to get into today's topic. How about that.
That's right. We are putting our sides aside and jumping
(02:40):
straight to the topic for the day. And this one
is this one has a little bit of a personal
slant for me, personal interest. What do you mean? Well,
as as you know, Scott, I live in in Uh
it sounds bad when I say it this way, but
hear me out. I live in an abandoned car factory.
(03:03):
I live. I live in what we call the Ford Factory.
It's not abandoned now. They turned it into you know, apartments,
not just like camping out the corner, just like squatting
under a sixty seven hood or something. That's right, I forgot.
So two historic buildings side by side, You live in one,
you work in one. Yeah, so the one that you
were in. What do they make there? I think it's
model as ever? Yeah? Yeah, made came out of there. Yeah,
(03:27):
well it was just so we're right by a series
a series of train tracks right now. They have been
converted to like a walking path. But the train tracks
used to run between these two buildings, and the buildings
were built alongside the tracks, so that they could easily
transport um large industrial items like you know, appliances or
(03:52):
in my case, automobiles. Yeah, worked out perfect, And it
made me think because it made me think back to
some of the discussion we had had before about how
difficult it is to start a car company, right, and
the the enormous costs in terms of um in terms
of money, but also in terms of time that are
(04:12):
involved in this sort of endeavor. And you you know,
having having uh a storied history in Detroit in Michigan,
you know just how big these things are. And a
lot of people who have never seen an automotive factory
have no idea about just the sheer scale. These things
are huge. We're talking about millions of square feet of
(04:34):
space of floor space and these things, and they occupy
hundreds of acres of property, so they're they're really really enormous.
And the thing is, you know, in their heyday and
their prime, these are these are fine tune machines. You know,
they crank out the product. You know, of course it's
the people making it all happen, but uh, the machines
as well, you know, all of it working together in
harmony to make everything work just right. And it's it's
(04:56):
it's a again, a fine tune machine. When the the
industry goes away, when the when the company moves out,
when the place becomes empty, if it's not immediately handed
over to somebody else to become you know, some new
um you know, I guess money making venture for them. Um,
oftentimes they become derelict very fast. It doesn't take long
(05:19):
before you know, people come in to take out them,
you know, to scrap the metal. They start breaking the windows,
they start living, uh living in there, they start squatting
in there when they're not supposed to be there, Unlike
you you you were supposed to be where you're Well,
I do I am paying somebody rent. I hope they
owned the place. Well that counts. But but yeah, I
mean like there's fires, there's you know, um you know
(05:40):
outside there. Typically it's you know, just kind of run down,
you know, the course of the landscaping, everything goes to hell,
and um, they just look really bad almost immediately. It
doesn't take more than about a year for a factory
to start to look like it's an abandoned factory. And
it is abandoned, but to start looking like it's abandoned, Yeah,
and so this, uh, this all brings us to our
(06:01):
topic today, which is abandoned car factories. What happens when
these giants of industry closed shop and you know, shut
the doors, soap up the windows. And this will also
be of interest to urban explorers. We got a lot
of urban explorers who listened to Car Stuff Another House
(06:23):
Stuff Works podcast, and one of these buildings might be
near you. There's a good chance, because they're all around
the world. Once we're gonna talk about today, So just
just see you're aware. We're following along with a list
that came from Gelopnick, and we're gonna add a couple
maybe at the end here there's something that we have
some experience with. I guess maybe, But these are the
(06:44):
ten most unbelievable abandoned car factories according to Gelopnic or
Gelopnic listeners or readers, I should say, rather, because they
wrote in with these suggestions. So here's the thing with this, though, Ben,
there's a lot of these have links that you can follow. Uh.
They go to other articles that have a wealth of
information and photos and everything. So I encourage you if
you want to follow along with this list from Jewlopnik
(07:05):
or at least check it out after this podcast. And
uh and look at some of these links, look at
some of the photos of the things that will describe.
We'll just give you kind of a rundown of the
top ten that they have. Um see, if you agree,
maybe add some of your own. Think about you know,
the factories in your area that you might also add
to this list. Car factories in particular have to be
car factories. And you know, it's just fascinating to see
(07:28):
what happens and how quickly it happens, and just you know,
the the idea that you know, the locals all have
an idea of what happened there and and you know
that's prime. But now it's gone, you know, the talent
kind of dried up or whatever. So they all got
their own story. Let's start with number ten, which is
the DeLorean plant in dun Murray, Ireland. And this guy
John DeLorean keep showing up in podcast lately, and you
(07:49):
notice that he was here last week too. Strange. So this,
as Scott said, it's in dun Murray, Ireland. We are
talking about the factory responsible for the manufacture of one
of the easily top five most iconic cars in film. Yeah,
(08:11):
the d m C twelve, the de Lorean, the sports
car that DeLorean built in that that started to happen.
Remember he was he had a long history with what
Packard and then General Motors and then went off to
do his own thing. Um In By nineteen seventy five
he had founded something called the DeLorean Motor Company and
again he was I think he was. He was headquartered
in Michigan, but this factory, the place that he was
(08:33):
going to build this was in Ireland. And that's kind
of a rarity too. By the way, there's not a
lot of cars manufactured in Ireland. DeLorean was one of them.
There was another one I posted recently on St Patrick's Day. Um,
there's a car. There's actually a car built there called
the Shamrock. Uh. I find unusual, but um. Again, the
Delorrian Motor Company was around from nineteen seventy five until
(08:53):
about two and went bankrupt. We did a podcast, an
entire podcast on DeLorean, and that was back in February
of two thousand and ten. I think there was a
rerun a little bit later on you can catch as well,
but go back to February to hear a full podcast
on all you know, it was all about John Lorien
in his car and his dream and I guess this
(09:14):
this factory is really something else to see. But the
main part of this factory that you want to check
out if you're there is the track. There's an abandoned
test track that it looks pretty haunted. As a matter
of fact, it looks a little spooky. Yeah, yeah, there's
uh in there. There are different things that are I
guess you say, ruins or vestiges of the factories. Heyda Um.
(09:37):
The test track is by far, you know, the most
visible noticeable thing, and you can get there. I mean
you can get there. We're not going to comment on
the legality. Oh yeah, we're certainly not going to advocate
breaking the law. Well, as the article says, you gotta
jump many fences to see this test track. But if
you happen to see, you will also see that there's
(09:58):
an alloy wheel fact dream part of the property, and
that um that you can still find moldings and cast
off components. But you know they they've fallen victim to
the elements, right and we know what happened to the machines,
We know what happened to the machines and want to
find out check out that podcast. You will have to
(10:20):
check it out shameless plug, Car Stuff show dot com.
Here's one of the things I think it's most interesting
about the dolor implant, apparently at separate entrances for Catholic
and Protestant workers. Did you read that? Yeah, I didn't
look for photos of it, you know, I I have
read about it, but I didn't, you know, seek out
and see if I could, you know, actually spot you know,
where the two doors were side by side. But there's
(10:42):
a similar thing in in uh. I guess Mason history,
right or not Mason history. What you gonna call it,
Mason culture, Mason re Mason culture maybe UM. In that
um they have separate doors, oftentimes for Scottish right bodies
and yourk right bodies, and they're labeled as such. So
you know that this the separate door idea is not
(11:02):
entirely new, but it's interesting that it was there at
the factory. So check it out if you have a chance,
send us some pictures. I don't know if that test
track is drivable, but you could probably walk on it.
Maybe walk on it. Yeah. Our next thing is, so
we're talking about the size. This will help us underline
the enormity of these things. They are in many in
(11:26):
many ways. In many instances, car factories are as large
as small towns. Yeah, and we're gonna talk about Buick City.
And now this is Buick City is in Flint, Michigan,
or it was in Flint, Michigan, and um, this is
this is on two hundred and thirty five acres and
of course you know, this is a huge auto manufacturing
facility or complex, I should say. It was owned by
(11:47):
General Motors in Flint, Michigan from nineteen o four until
about two thousand ten when they finally completely closed it off.
Of course, it was used for a Buick production. I
mean the term Buick City wasn't really coined until about five. UM.
The final cars that were built there were the Pontiac
Bonneville and the buhiclest Saber, but there were what there's
a wide range of vehicles that were built there over
(12:08):
that you know, the many many decades that it was open.
Um one of the this is one of the largest
factories in the world at one time. So there were
twenty four separate buildings that were on this you know,
two thirty five acre plot of land and until I
think it was when the Rouge River Plant opened up,
but you know ford Ridge River Plant, Um, it was
(12:29):
still it was the largest factory or automobile factory of
its kind of it's time. Yeah, yeah, and people people
noticed in the area. Scott had earlier mentioned how all
the locals will have in many cases a very personal
relationship with these with these buildings, with these structures, in
(12:49):
these sites, and in this area of mid Michigan. Uh,
A lot of people see the closure of the GM
or of Buick City as the catalyst or this turning point,
this tipping point in the history of the area. Yeah. Well,
so many people were employed by this factory. I mean,
I mean generations of families that have been you know,
(13:10):
workers at this factory from the you know, the very
beginning in some cases. So when something like that drives up,
of course it's going to have an impact on the
city that you know, it surrounds this thing that has
built up because of this thing. Really, um, so the
good news is I guess in this case, you know,
now it's just this great, big This isn't good news,
but it's it's it's surrounded by barbed wire and fence
and it's a big flat piece of concrete now you know,
(13:32):
completely knocked it down that you know, the whole two
acre two plus acres. But the American cast Iron Pipe
Company has announced plans to build a two hundred thousand
square foot facility on the same property. So I hope
that plan goes through it, you know, as they as
they hope it will, as they've they've drawn it out,
because flank could definitely use some revitalization at this point.
So moving on to number eight on the list is
(13:52):
the Fisher Body Plant in Detroit, Michigan. And this is
this is a really interesting one then because um well
they're all really interesting, but this one in particular because
this one has a long history with a lot of
different companies. It's not just General Motors as you might think.
Um So the Fisher body plant in Detroit, there's a
specific one in Detroit that we're talking about, is the
(14:13):
one on Peaquette Avenue on on Saint Antoine and Piquette.
And this is an Albert Kahan design building. Now it
was built in everything was around nineteen nineteen. But Albert
Khan is an American industrial architect and he was said
to be the like the premier architect of the time,
the guy that you wanted to design your building. He's
he's often called the architect of Detroit. So he has
(14:35):
his hand and a lot of the buildings that we'll
talk about today on this list. Um. And so this
building that you know was built in nineteen nineteen is
just one of many buildings that they had that Fisher
Body had owned. At one point they owned forty buildings
with a total of three point seven million square feet
of floor space. So this is kind of like the
final remaining piece in that in that puzzle. Um, this
(14:56):
this uh, this building, of course, is that it's well,
this this company, I should say, Fisher Body is a
coach building company. So d it's all the way back
to you know, wooden bodies on cars, right right back
when you would essentially just buy an engine and maybe
a chassis, yeah yeah, and then have a custom body
added on to that. Now it wasn't just you know,
individuals that were coming to them for bodies. It was
also manufacturers. And I said it wasn't just general motors
(15:18):
as well, because we're we associate this typically with general
motors cars. But um, you know that that iconic body
by Fisher logo and a lot of people know that
logo that was actually applied to GM Dorsills until about
the mid nineteen nineties, So that hung on a long
long time. But the companies that came to them over
the years, there were there were companies that were like
Abbott and Buick and Cadillac and Chalmers and Ford and Hudson,
(15:40):
uh Student Bag or Regal. There's you know, there's a
long long list and that's only a couple of the many,
many companies that would come to them for for body work. Um.
But this is a it's just again, it's an iconic building.
It is a it's a piece of history. It's something
that a lot of people would like to see, you know,
remains standing or used in some way. But the problem
is it's in a not so great part of Detroit
(16:02):
right now, and it's it's definitely fallen apart. It's covered
with graffiti, the windows are all broken out. You can
look at the photo online. I think it's actually um
a street view that you can get online, so you
can kind of go all the way around the building
and take a look at you know, what's left around
it. It It looks like a lot of vacant property around
it as well. So so bad news for the Fisher
body plant, but hopefully it'll turn into something good. And
(16:24):
we know what you are thinking, ladies and gentlemen. Possibly Uh,
Scott and I are using our amazing podcast telepathy powers
to figure out that some of you are going, oh man,
this is gonna be depressing and it's gonna be so
heavy on Michigan. Just wait because we're gonna take a
break for word from our sponsors, and then we're traveling
(16:45):
to New York and we're back and Ben, you said
we're gonna take a trip to New York for number
seven on our list? Is that right? Yes, sir, that
is correct. Uh. And they had a slight mentioned earlier
when we're talking about Fisher. We are looking at the
(17:06):
Student Baker building in New York City. Yeah. Now, the
current owner of this is Columbia University. And uh, here
here's the thing with this. This is located at six
fifteen West thirty first Street between Broadway and twelfth Avenue.
And this is the former Stude Baker Automobile finishing plant,
which you know they have this giant freight elevator within
(17:27):
this property. You'll see was constructed in nineteen twenty three
as brick construction with white porcelain trim, which I find
really cool. It's six stories tall, so it's a big building. Again,
take a look at the photos and you'll see this
white porcelain trim on the outside top edges and along
it looks like maybe I don't know if that's an
elevator shaft or if that is a smokestack, but really
(17:48):
really cool. And I think you can even see a
bit of a logo that they used, a blue logo
that's still visible near the top corner of the building
from back in like the nineteen nineteen thirties. Um, but
really really cool building. It's a real solid building. And
it was sold in seven, I think to the Board
and Milk Company, which used it as a milk processing
(18:08):
plant for a while, and then it became a storage
space essentially for uh, the American Museum of Natural History.
Than it has been offices, a couple of small manufacturing facilities,
and even at one time a doll company. A doll company.
That's a strange move, huh, Now, I mean, I guess
they need a lot of space, but you know, at
the time in this thing's life. Of course, I'd love
(18:29):
to see it when they're making product, you know. And
then one of the photos here is them making uh
you know the US Postal Service jeeps. Uh, you know,
the real boxy ones, the blue and white ones. Um,
really cool as somebody line shot there. But I think
the time that I would have liked to have seen
this the most outside of the production would have been
when they were the American Museum of Natural History storage facility.
(18:50):
Can you imagine what they would put in something like
that and they're really curious. That would be really neat
to walk around and to see what they what they
stuff out of the way, you know, when it's not
on display. It's like the most interesting episode of Hoarders ever.
Also pretty spooky, right if you're spooky that yeah? So um,
I think what I think it's now back to office
spaces again because somewhere in the nineteen eighties someone bought
(19:10):
the buildings. So um. Oh and one other thing we
should mention here, and this is not in New York,
but it's kind of a tangentially related thing and they
have a link to it that I followed, and I've
seen this before. Um, there's something called this is Student
Baker related. By the way, Um, there's something called Bendex
Park now that spelled b E N d I X
and uh, you know as in the auto parts manufacturer
(19:32):
Bendix Woods. And this is actually in It's not in
New York again, it's a New Carlisle, Indiana, but near
it's near the Student Baker test track. And if you
look at the aerial photos of that area, you'll see
the test wreck. And then just off to the side
you're gonna find an area called again Bennix Park that
has five thousand trees that spell out the words Student
Baker that you can read from above. So if you're
(19:53):
flying over here, you can see this. And they've restored
it recently. For a while it was kind of you know,
a few trees had died out and didn't white spell
out the full word, you know, they were they were
missing parts of the letters. They've restored it so that
now it's clearly it clearly reads Studebaker once again. But
really really cool thing to to check out, you know,
the aerial photos or Google Earth or whatever you want
to do. But again, it's New Carlisle, Indiana. You can
(20:15):
spot it online pretty easy. The next one on the
list is going all the way to Italy. We're going international, Ben,
We're going international. We finally, we finally made it, Scott.
We are traveling in fact, to the Alpha Romeo Portello
Plants in Milano. Yeah, this one was opened in nineteen
o eight and it was an eighty six thousand, one
hundred and eleven square foot factory and it was around
(20:37):
until about two thousand four when it was finally demolished.
But the but the real story here, Ben, is the
photographs that we saw before it was demolished. The factory
workers that left there. Whenever they walked out finally, whenever
it was the you know, the final final straw for
this this factory, they left a mess behind the bulldoz
and the bulldozers ended up just kind of covering it
all up. We'll never know what was really lost here
(20:59):
outside of what we see in those photos. Um, no
one went in to save all the stuff that was there.
There were there were cars that were unbuilt there, There
were usable machines, you know, usable factory machines were still there.
There were half finished prototypes that were still on the property.
Of course, lots of papers and things that have been
stored in offices for who knows what. I mean. It
could have been future product. It could have been anything. Really,
(21:20):
it could have been nothing, could have been something. But
again we'll just never know. We'll never know what was
lost in this situation unfortunately. Yeah, and I think, um,
it's now it's now, you know, because it's been raised
and you know, they made uh, something new on the property.
So now I think it's like a residential and commercial
property or you know, something like a mixed use area.
(21:40):
But again, that original factory has gone, and there's some
great photographs of what it was like then, and you
just can't believe the stuff. And they're overturned prototypes in
the in the factory. They're just lay there, yeah, laying
there underneath and you know, looks like an inch of dust,
just grime and stuff throwing everywhere, packing materials. It's it's
really a shame to see the way they left the
factory behind like that. But um, again lost to history.
(22:03):
And while we are in Europe, let's make our way. Uh,
let's make our way over to Birmingham, England, the site
of the long Bridge Plants sometimes called the long Bridge
mg Rover Factory, and this one is still there. You
can still go check this one out, But in this factory,
this is Uh. They said that when this factory shut
(22:24):
down it was almost like it killed the British car
industry itself because there were a lot of stuff made there.
There was the Austin's, Nash Metropolitans, British Leland products and
finally the mg Rover I think Morris cars were built there.
Just a lot of products came out of the long
Bridge plant in Birmingham, England. And there's a really controversial
(22:46):
issue with this because one thing that surprised a lot
of people was that at the time of its closure,
the long Bridge plant was incredibly outdated. They had they
had stuff that their assembly line was probably modern in
the nineteen fifties maybe, and they still used to drop
(23:10):
in to put the body and power train together. Uh.
The modernization and investment that would have had to happen
to the plant was apparently something that the government who
owned the plant was not not very interested in. Yeah,
I think I read a note that said they were
more the emphasis was more on getting people employed there.
(23:31):
They're trying to work on getting people in and having
them work, rather than updating the facility, and you've got
to have kind of a good balance of this, right,
you have to you have to spend money on the
the facility itself as well as the people inside. And
now I understand the thought process behind both, but there
has to be kind of a happy mix here, you know,
something that allows them to keep up with the Joneses maybe,
and the Joneses being other car producing countries. Really, yeah,
(23:56):
is that is that a good way to put that?
I don't know if that's a that's a fair way
to put that risk, It's it's a tricky balance, yeah,
it is. I mean the task was, you know, to
to to get this building up to speck so that
you know, it was a little bit more modern as
well as employee you know, uh, as many people as
they possibly could, you know, because it's good for the
economic local economy. But um, I don't know, maybe I
(24:18):
may I'm digging a little too deep on this one.
We should probably just let it go. But but but
the idea was that, you know, either way, they left
a lot of unfinished cars behind and it was way outdated.
And uh, it's a sad day when this one closed down. Yes,
and Scott remember how earlier, earlier, we said, you know,
this wasn't gonna be all Michigan. It's still gonna be
(24:42):
a lot of Michigan. Well that's because they're just so many.
I mean, I guess, per capita, there's so many, there's
so many, so many factories there, and one of these
the Packard Plant in Detroit, Michigan. Oh my gosh, Ben,
this is just continually bad news out of the Packard Plant.
Really right there. There moments there, moments where you get
just a little bit of hope, but then it dashed.
So this is a plant that was opened in nineteen eleven.
(25:03):
I think the building that the construction of this started
a few years prior to that. It's a huge facility again,
three and a half million square feet, and this is
all one property. Um distinguished I guess by this main
bridge that goes across between between factory buildings for the
product to travel between them. Um. Just it has been
abused over the years. I don't know officially when this
(25:25):
thing is shut down. I don't remember exactly the day,
but I will tell you that you know, over the past, um,
I don't know, a couple of decades, several decades, I
mean when I was there, it was already abandoned. Um,
it's fallen prey to you know, metal scrappers and people.
I'm one who did this. I played paintball there because
(25:46):
there was a company that had set up paintball um operation,
I guess in the main offices. It was a lot
of fun. But now looking back, and I don't know,
I don't know, I don't know how to feel about it,
because it was its disrespectful. Yeah, but I mean, but
but look where it is now. It's not any better
now twenty two years later. Um. So this was the
(26:08):
mid nineteen nineties and I'm playing paintball in there. Um,
but urban explorers photographers of course. Um, just crazy stuff
happens here. If you want to see some crazy, I'm
gonna say that crazy ass stuff then happens at this plant.
Did you know that there was an escaped tiger that
was there in for help for it just for a day.
But a British photographer had set up this this photo
(26:30):
shoot there because it's you know, like an urban ruined area,
very very popular with photographers. So this guy sets up
this tiger, the shoot with a tiger, a Siberian tiger,
and I guess they were like naked models on site
and everything. It was kind of a crazy shoot, right,
And this tiger escapes, gets it gets onto the fourth
floor staircase of one of these buildings, and they don't
know what to do, so they call him. This guy.
(26:51):
There's a story in a in a local paper I
think from Um, from this guy who was called by
a friend and he said, do you know anything about
these can you? Can you somehow? I don't know if
he's an animal handler or what, but they called him
and he said he had he had no tools with him.
He had a weed whacker and a tarp and he
came over and they caught this tiger. Can you believe that?
It's crazy? There their foot there's video of this happening.
(27:16):
It's not like it's some tall tale. It really happened.
There's a tiger in the packard factory in Um. In
twenty two nine. Uh, there was a dump truck that
was famously pushed out of a fourth floor window and
that's on video. It's really cool to watch. But again, vandals,
that's vandals, you know. I don't know, man, Maybe the
dump truck deserved it. Come on, this is it was?
(27:38):
It was. I mean, again, the mystery is like, how
did it get on the fourth floor to beginning, because
it's a full sized dump truck. But to watch it
plumb it out of the fourth floor, it's impressive and
it's it's kind of fun. But again, they shouldn't have
done it. They weren't allowed to be on the property.
A couple of things we do have to emphasize about this.
This is the largest abandoned factory of its kind, and
(27:58):
I think you mentioned that three point five million square
feet thirty five acres. And what's weird about this is
in some ways the little abstract here to go with me,
Go with me, and then keep me in check if
if I'm getting too weird with it. In some ways,
(28:20):
this factory kind of continued after it closed, but in
in a very strange way because once it was liquidated,
the UM pre war designs and the tooling were sold
to other parties around the world behind the Iron Curtain
and stuff so um in Russia they were building packard
(28:41):
clones using the same stuff they were, so it's almost
like they just moved the factory or pieces of it,
and they were under the Zill and ZIM name plates
and these designs lasted well into the seventies. So I
guess what we're getting at then, is that this is
like the skeleton of the the company. Really it's not.
It's not so much that we're desecrating the uh, the
(29:02):
Packard name, because that that really had gone away, with
the machines and the product and the all the all
the other materials. This is more like this. This, this
is like what's left behind that should have probably been
knocked down a long time ago but hasn't been. In fact,
been one last quick thing about this. How crazy this
place is. And honestly, this is the tip of the iceberg.
The fire department doesn't show up to fires that are
(29:24):
lit on that property anymore. There was a story many
years ago, now I'm gonna say four or five years ago,
that they were so frequently called to the um to
the Packer planned in Detroit that, you know, for a fire,
you know, somewhere in the factory property, that they eventually
decided that they were wasting too much time with fires
on this property and they can just burn themselves out,
so they don't even bother showing up anymore to the fires.
(29:47):
How do you like that? That's crazy? This place is.
This place is enormous. You've got to see it in
order to believe it. And it was sold to h
I think it's a Texan doctor who bought it for
like six million bucks and he was both to pay
the back taxes. I don't think he ever did pay
the back taxes. Um, so I don't know what's gone
on with it. But again, it's a crazy place. A
lot of really weird stuff happens there. And we're going
(30:09):
to get even weirder after a word from our sponsors,
and we're back. We are still staying in Michigan for now.
We are going to Highland Park. Forward Plants. This is
(30:31):
the last one on our list from Michigan, and the
top two ur elsewhere. But um, this is a Forward factory. Now,
this is actually the the well. This is the first
Model T production facility. So imagine this. This is where
the first assembly line was introduced. You know, where the
where the minimum wage was introduced, right where the minimum
wages introduced, where our favorite Madman savant himself, Henry Ford,
(30:54):
plays a crucial role in the invention of what we
recognize as the weekend. And this is what in the
hearts of American history. Now, thankfully this place was put
on the National Historic Register or for you know, being
a National Historic Landmark in Night, so it's been protected
ever since. I think there's always kind of that danger
that the property is gonna be sold or or you
(31:16):
know that the factory is going to be you know,
raised in some way, but or at least you know
most of it, because it's a pretty big building. It's
a huge factory. Again, it's another Albert Con design. We've
mentioned in many times. This is built around nineteen and
if you're driving down Woodward Avenue in Michigan sometimes you
can see this place. Uh it's I think it's being
used for storage right now. It's um, you can see
(31:39):
the boxes piled up in the windows and UM, you
can look, you can find you know, the doorways that
you used to see those old you know, the grainy
film footage of you know, the model ts rolling out
one by one by one, you know, super fast. Um,
you can see those doors in place, you can peek
in through holes in the doors that you know, well,
you can see the remnants of the first assembly line there.
(31:59):
It's really remarkable. It's an interesting building. UM. I hope
it never goes away, but I also hope they do
something with it, because it's fallen in fallen into disrepair
over the last i'd say twenty years. Maybe I've I've
been there several times. Nearby or right next door, there's
a place called the Model T Plaza, which is just
a strip mall. But but if you want to see
the factory itself, you can still go down there and
see that and read historic mark and plaque Ruther and
(32:23):
uh and you know, look around for those doors that
I mentioned. It's it's just a neat place. Yeah, but
it's not the weirdest, not the weirdest, and not the
weirdest by Ford as well. Right. Uh so let's stay
with Ford, but let's go to Brazil and Santa m Brazil.
Ford Landia was built by Henry himself with the idea that,
(32:45):
as we've mentioned before on this show, with the idea
that he could uh sort of integrate rubber production and
own his own rubber plantation and his own community. So
that's the strange part about this is this isn't this
is in the rain forest, right, Yeah, And it's a
whole city. It's a whole city, and uh, it was
built up with the idea that this is gonna be
(33:06):
uh again, there the rubber facility that would supply the
rubber for his product um, but it was also going
to be a place where people could live. People could
go to school, people could have, you know, their own hospital,
they could have their own church, they could have whatever
they want. Everything was going to be self contained in
this community, and it was gonna be run by Henry Ford.
They also were required to live according to his very strict,
(33:32):
hyper idealized version of what good American life is, almost puritan,
I mean, no dancing, no music, that kind of thing.
So yeah, he had some very strict rules if you
were going to live in ford Land, they could have
ice cream. I'm serious. I think they could play baseball
and have ice cream. Well that's pretty good, right, That's
not bad, not a bad trade off. Well maybe maybe
(33:54):
it was. I mean I'm not I'm not out there
cutting rugs anyway, so I'm not gonna miss it. But yeah,
it's it's a very strange um community, especially when he
was hiring locals and asking them to live a completely
different life. Yeah, and it wasn't long after this thing
was built that it was the idea was given up.
I mean, they decided that it wasn't gonna work. But here,
(34:15):
the really strange part is that people stayed. People stayed
for a long long time thinking that something was really
gonna happen. It was gonna turn around, that they were
going to reopen this place. It was gonna uh you know,
the sawmill was going to reopen, The rubber factory was
gonna open again, and they were gonna produce tires for
at least the raw rubber to send to Forward for
his his vehicles. So a really strange thing. It's almost
(34:37):
it's a ghost town now, so you can you go
out and check it out. But again it's in the
Amazon rainforest, so not a lot of people make it there.
You can. The good thing about you know, being able
to search on Google is that, um you can find
photos of this. You don't have to make the trip
down there to see it. But I would love to
see it in person someday, I really, I really would.
It's a long boat ride, I think, you know, once
(34:57):
you land at the nearest airport, but um, I've still
love to make that trip and see what's going on
in fort Landy. It's it's an interesting place. I think
it would be absolutely worth it. We are going to
conclude this list, but not necessarily today's show, with one
last stop, and that is Italy. Yeah. That was a
big surprise to me. I just figured that Detroit was
(35:18):
gonna be number one. I thought that Packard Factory was
going to be number one. But this is one that
I had forgotten about. This is the Bugatti factory in Italy.
Now in the town. Okay, I'll try the town pronunciation
here and you tell me how I do. Okay, Okay,
camp Pogliano. That's pretty good. I'm gonna try to camp
Pogliano close enough. Yeah, we might have got it with
one of those two. You know, at some point, man,
(35:40):
we're just gonna have to break down and learn Italian.
This is where the famed eb one ten was built.
And a lot of people, now maybe, okay, you know what,
I'm gonna take it back, Not a lot of people.
Very few people have probably seen this factory, because I
do recall somewhere and I even read it somewhere. I
didn't make a note here today, but I saw this
factory in a magazine a long long time ago, and
(36:00):
it had a lot of photos of unfinished product. Just
kind of left on the line. We're talking about Bugatti's
that were partially finished parts of cars, machinery, UM offices
that look like they were just abandoned at a moment's notice. Really,
you know, there were things like cigarettes laying on on desktops. Um.
Really really strange. I've seen these. I saw these photos
in a magazine and one of the commenters here on
(36:22):
Jelopnik also had a link to a few photos from
that magazine, and I neglected to write down the name
of where it came from and all that. But you know,
you can find it pretty easy if you just check
out this list. Um. But this factory is really fascinating.
Now they again built that EB one ten there. And
the crazy thing is like how the how the factory
was left. Initially it was almost like they had they
(36:44):
did have notice. But it's almost again like like in
the case with the Alpha Male factory, where people just
seemed to just leave things, just left it where it
was and walked out the door. I'm really really strange.
There were things in this in this Bugatti factory like, um,
you know near the lunch room, you know, the cafeteria. Uh,
they had the daily specials still written on a whiteboard
outside of the um the cafeteria with the days you know,
(37:06):
like soup and sandwich or whatever it was for whatever price,
it was still there. There was a there was a
a big viewing area that had um, you know, a
fully built car would looked like a Philly built car.
I was probably incomplete, but it had that in a
bunch of folding chairs set up as if they were
going to give a press conference. Um, there were unfinished product.
There was unfinished product on the line. As I said,
(37:27):
there were just stacks of computers everywhere. We're talking about
the old type with you know, the big monitors, So
those were lining the walls in one room. It was
just a really really strange situation. Papers everywhere, Um, you know,
some of them looked like they were last minute papers, like,
you know, like things that could have maybe saved this factory. Um,
you know, the last minute documents that were going back
and forth being facts between you know, the factory and lawyers.
(37:51):
Just really really fascinating stuff was left behind. And again
it's just a strange thing to think about. But there
were even marks on the floor for a prod that
they never built. Yeah, yeah, there was supposed to be
another model of the EB one ten. It was called
EB one twelve that they never built there, but there
were They were laying out tape marks on the floor
to say this is where we're going to build them,
(38:12):
and you know, suddenly, you know, the rug was yanked
au from underneath their feet. And of course Bugatti continues today,
it's just not in Italy, not in that plan. Yeah,
this weird plant is still left behind and it's still
I think it's still empty today. So we were talking
about this off air. We didn't want this to be
(38:32):
a huge downer podcast of so I found something that
I thought was an interesting piece of news, at least
for US factories. Well, it turns out that empty factories
and warehouses have become objects of like high regard and
high demand. Now people want these structures, and this is
(38:53):
a trend that we were seeing in that on both
sides of the coast here and all of us. Like
it makes sense in places that are i want to
say real estate poor, where like Land is at a
higher premium, it makes sense that in like England or
London especially, people would want to reuse every building they can.
(39:14):
Sure you're living one now and we're podcasting from one
right now right, And I think this trend is spreading
As more and more people live in cities, more and
more of these old buildings are going to be revitalized
rather than torn down their prime real estate. They're very
I mean extremely solid built, uh you know, pieces of property.
So and they often have features that you know, uh,
(39:36):
I guess maybe property managers would really appreciate, you know,
like things like extremely heavy duty freight elevators like our
building has. I'm not going to say that you could,
but you might be able to do, you know, lift
a car and those things. They're enormous, dude, let's try
and maybe maybe we should try it. But uh, but
you know, for there's no doubt that they were to
(39:56):
lift heavy appliances and machinery and things like that. So
I would guess that you could lift a car and
those things. UM, a lot of a lot of um.
Property managers find some of these attributes very value. Again,
you know, they're in prime locations. They've got a lot
of windows, we've got great views of the city. Um.
You know, it's it's again, it's it seems like it's
a smart use of the space rather than tearing down
(40:16):
the old stuff, reuse what's already there. So uh, don't
let these abandoned factories get you down, because ladies and gentlemen,
the odds are that they will not be abandoned for long. Yeah,
or they'll be released by like, you know, at least
again I should say, by um, you know, the Board
and Milk Company or the American Natural History Museum storage
(40:40):
dull tycoon. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, there's always a
use for stuff like this, right, People need space for
something all the time. So uh yeah, again, all these
factories probably could be put to use summer and can.
Like the packard factory, I think it's too far gone
at this point, right, Yeah, that might be. That might
be a different case. But again, check out the news
stories around that place. It's it's fascinating. And remember, if
(41:03):
you bring a tiger with you to a photo shoot.
I think we can agree this is the moral of
this episode. If you bring a tiger with you anywhere,
you gotta keep an eye on it. Man. Don't don't
let it out of the harness or whatever you've got
it in, right, I mean, that's a bad idea. Keep
your eye on the tiger and the guy caught it
with a weed whacker and a tarp. Can you believe that?
I mean, it's the same. It sounds very mgivriush and
(41:26):
to know the operation. It's a big tiger too. It's
not like a baby either, So if that's what you're thinking,
it's like a baby tiger, not because it's not some
tiny punk tiger. Check out the video. It's it's a big,
scary tiger. And so concludes our episode for today. As
Scott and I go off to hit the road or
I think first, I'm gonna be watching a lot of
weird stuff about Packard on YouTube. In the meantime, we
(41:49):
would like to hear from you about the industry surrounding
your neck of the Global Woods. Do you have any big,
creepy abandoned factories. Do you have any cool urban exploration
story let us know. We'd like to share them with
your fellow listeners, and we will not condone anything illegal,
but we will also protect your identity if necessary. In
(42:11):
the meantime, you can check out every episode Scott and
I've ever done. I would specifically recommend one on ford
Landia on our website Car Stuff Show dot com. Check
in with us on Twitter and Facebook to see some
of the stories that, for one reason or another might
not make it to the air. Don't forget DeLorean story
as well. Oh and don't forget yeah, DeLorean story as well.
And if you have an idea for topic we should
(42:34):
cover in the future, we'd love to hear it. You
can write to us directly. We are on car stuff
at how stuff work dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff works
dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Go behind the Wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. I welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott. And then we are joined
as always with our super producers Dylan Fagan and Noel
Brown nicknames T B A although by UM just as
(00:26):
an aside Scott. We did have a really interesting conversation
with Dylan, who is rereading UM some history of of
Abraham Lincoln. Oh yeah, that's right, and it inspired him
to make some very specific uh nickname propositions and references
(00:47):
to us. Yeah what that? What brought that about? Now?
We had we had given him a nickname in a
previous episode a couple of because a couple of episodes ago,
and he's somehow, Oh no, I know what it was,
and I've got it out. This is kind of funny.
The power was out one night when I had to
approve one of our episodes, and I told him that
I was as a late late night email that I
(01:10):
had to send because I was approving this thing until
after midnight some night. But the power I had gone
out earlier in the night at our house, so I
had a candle there by the la. You know, we're
viewing this file and I said, I kind of feel like,
you know, this must be how Abraham Lincoln approved his
podcast back in the day, you know, by candle light
in the log cabin. And he thought that was pretty funny,
but he added his, uh, his little spin on it
and gave us some Lincoln associated nicknames. Yeah, yeah, and
(01:34):
I we we complimented him on these because his history
references were amazing, and he said that he was actually
I'll just read this part from him. So we said, yeah,
your history references are great and pretty funny. And Dylan said, thanks, guys,
I've just been rereading Team of Rivals and saw an
(01:54):
opportunity for references, much like Sam and P. Chase saw
an opportunity to introduce the nation's first paper currency during
his time as lincoln Secretary of Treasury. Nice fact drop
in there. This guy is like absorbing knowledge at at
an insane rate. It makes me scared of him. You know.
I feel like if he ever became a brainiac overlord
(02:16):
of some sort, he'd be really cool about it. I
think you're probably right. He would be such a laid back,
easy go and dictator agreed, So Stylan for President. Oh Man,
don't say that okay, man, okay, So maybe we should
get into to get into today's topic. How about that.
That's right. We are putting our sides aside and jumping
(02:40):
straight to the topic for the day. And this one
is this one has a little bit of a personal
slant for me, personal interest. What do you mean? Well,
as as you know, Scott, I live in in Uh
it sounds bad when I say it this way, but
hear me out. I live in an abandoned car factory.
(03:03):
I live. I live in what we call the Ford Factory.
It's not abandoned now. They turned it into you know, apartments,
not just like camping out the corner, just like squatting
under a sixty seven hood or something. That's right, I forgot.
So two historic buildings side by side, You live in one,
you work in one. Yeah, so the one that you
were in. What do they make there? I think it's
model as ever? Yeah? Yeah, made came out of there. Yeah,
(03:27):
well it was just so we're right by a series
a series of train tracks right now. They have been
converted to like a walking path. But the train tracks
used to run between these two buildings, and the buildings
were built alongside the tracks, so that they could easily
transport um large industrial items like you know, appliances or
(03:52):
in my case, automobiles. Yeah, worked out perfect, And it
made me think because it made me think back to
some of the discussion we had had before about how
difficult it is to start a car company, right, and
the the enormous costs in terms of um in terms
of money, but also in terms of time that are
(04:12):
involved in this sort of endeavor. And you you know,
having having uh a storied history in Detroit in Michigan,
you know just how big these things are. And a
lot of people who have never seen an automotive factory
have no idea about just the sheer scale. These things
are huge. We're talking about millions of square feet of
(04:34):
space of floor space and these things, and they occupy
hundreds of acres of property, so they're they're really really enormous.
And the thing is, you know, in their heyday and
their prime, these are these are fine tune machines. You know,
they crank out the product. You know, of course it's
the people making it all happen, but uh, the machines
as well, you know, all of it working together in
harmony to make everything work just right. And it's it's
(04:56):
it's a again, a fine tune machine. When the the
industry goes away, when the when the company moves out,
when the place becomes empty, if it's not immediately handed
over to somebody else to become you know, some new
um you know, I guess money making venture for them. Um,
oftentimes they become derelict very fast. It doesn't take long
(05:19):
before you know, people come in to take out them,
you know, to scrap the metal. They start breaking the windows,
they start living, uh living in there, they start squatting
in there when they're not supposed to be there, Unlike
you you you were supposed to be where you're Well,
I do I am paying somebody rent. I hope they
owned the place. Well that counts. But but yeah, I
mean like there's fires, there's you know, um you know
(05:40):
outside there. Typically it's you know, just kind of run down,
you know, the course of the landscaping, everything goes to hell,
and um, they just look really bad almost immediately. It
doesn't take more than about a year for a factory
to start to look like it's an abandoned factory. And
it is abandoned, but to start looking like it's abandoned, Yeah,
and so this, uh, this all brings us to our
(06:01):
topic today, which is abandoned car factories. What happens when
these giants of industry closed shop and you know, shut
the doors, soap up the windows. And this will also
be of interest to urban explorers. We got a lot
of urban explorers who listened to Car Stuff Another House
(06:23):
Stuff Works podcast, and one of these buildings might be
near you. There's a good chance, because they're all around
the world. Once we're gonna talk about today, So just
just see you're aware. We're following along with a list
that came from Gelopnick, and we're gonna add a couple
maybe at the end here there's something that we have
some experience with. I guess maybe, But these are the
(06:44):
ten most unbelievable abandoned car factories according to Gelopnic or
Gelopnic listeners or readers, I should say, rather, because they
wrote in with these suggestions. So here's the thing with this, though, Ben,
there's a lot of these have links that you can follow. Uh.
They go to other articles that have a wealth of
information and photos and everything. So I encourage you if
you want to follow along with this list from Jewlopnik
(07:05):
or at least check it out after this podcast. And
uh and look at some of these links, look at
some of the photos of the things that will describe.
We'll just give you kind of a rundown of the
top ten that they have. Um see, if you agree,
maybe add some of your own. Think about you know,
the factories in your area that you might also add
to this list. Car factories in particular have to be
car factories. And you know, it's just fascinating to see
(07:28):
what happens and how quickly it happens, and just you know,
the the idea that you know, the locals all have
an idea of what happened there and and you know
that's prime. But now it's gone, you know, the talent
kind of dried up or whatever. So they all got
their own story. Let's start with number ten, which is
the DeLorean plant in dun Murray, Ireland. And this guy
John DeLorean keep showing up in podcast lately, and you
(07:49):
notice that he was here last week too. Strange. So this,
as Scott said, it's in dun Murray, Ireland. We are
talking about the factory responsible for the manufacture of one
of the easily top five most iconic cars in film. Yeah,
(08:11):
the d m C twelve, the de Lorean, the sports
car that DeLorean built in that that started to happen.
Remember he was he had a long history with what
Packard and then General Motors and then went off to
do his own thing. Um In By nineteen seventy five
he had founded something called the DeLorean Motor Company and
again he was I think he was. He was headquartered
in Michigan, but this factory, the place that he was
(08:33):
going to build this was in Ireland. And that's kind
of a rarity too. By the way, there's not a
lot of cars manufactured in Ireland. DeLorean was one of them.
There was another one I posted recently on St Patrick's Day. Um,
there's a car. There's actually a car built there called
the Shamrock. Uh. I find unusual, but um. Again, the
Delorrian Motor Company was around from nineteen seventy five until
(08:53):
about two and went bankrupt. We did a podcast, an
entire podcast on DeLorean, and that was back in February
of two thousand and ten. I think there was a
rerun a little bit later on you can catch as well,
but go back to February to hear a full podcast
on all you know, it was all about John Lorien
in his car and his dream and I guess this
(09:14):
this factory is really something else to see. But the
main part of this factory that you want to check
out if you're there is the track. There's an abandoned
test track that it looks pretty haunted. As a matter
of fact, it looks a little spooky. Yeah, yeah, there's
uh in there. There are different things that are I
guess you say, ruins or vestiges of the factories. Heyda Um.
(09:37):
The test track is by far, you know, the most
visible noticeable thing, and you can get there. I mean
you can get there. We're not going to comment on
the legality. Oh yeah, we're certainly not going to advocate
breaking the law. Well, as the article says, you gotta
jump many fences to see this test track. But if
you happen to see, you will also see that there's
(09:58):
an alloy wheel fact dream part of the property, and
that um that you can still find moldings and cast
off components. But you know they they've fallen victim to
the elements, right and we know what happened to the machines,
We know what happened to the machines and want to
find out check out that podcast. You will have to
(10:20):
check it out shameless plug, Car Stuff show dot com.
Here's one of the things I think it's most interesting
about the dolor implant, apparently at separate entrances for Catholic
and Protestant workers. Did you read that? Yeah, I didn't
look for photos of it, you know, I I have
read about it, but I didn't, you know, seek out
and see if I could, you know, actually spot you know,
where the two doors were side by side. But there's
(10:42):
a similar thing in in uh. I guess Mason history,
right or not Mason history. What you gonna call it,
Mason culture, Mason re Mason culture maybe UM. In that
um they have separate doors, oftentimes for Scottish right bodies
and yourk right bodies, and they're labeled as such. So
you know that this the separate door idea is not
(11:02):
entirely new, but it's interesting that it was there at
the factory. So check it out if you have a chance,
send us some pictures. I don't know if that test
track is drivable, but you could probably walk on it.
Maybe walk on it. Yeah. Our next thing is, so
we're talking about the size. This will help us underline
the enormity of these things. They are in many in
(11:26):
many ways. In many instances, car factories are as large
as small towns. Yeah, and we're gonna talk about Buick City.
And now this is Buick City is in Flint, Michigan,
or it was in Flint, Michigan, and um, this is
this is on two hundred and thirty five acres and
of course you know, this is a huge auto manufacturing
facility or complex, I should say. It was owned by
(11:47):
General Motors in Flint, Michigan from nineteen o four until
about two thousand ten when they finally completely closed it off.
Of course, it was used for a Buick production. I
mean the term Buick City wasn't really coined until about five. UM.
The final cars that were built there were the Pontiac
Bonneville and the buhiclest Saber, but there were what there's
a wide range of vehicles that were built there over
(12:08):
that you know, the many many decades that it was open.
Um one of the this is one of the largest
factories in the world at one time. So there were
twenty four separate buildings that were on this you know,
two thirty five acre plot of land and until I
think it was when the Rouge River Plant opened up,
but you know ford Ridge River Plant, Um, it was
(12:29):
still it was the largest factory or automobile factory of
its kind of it's time. Yeah, yeah, and people people
noticed in the area. Scott had earlier mentioned how all
the locals will have in many cases a very personal
relationship with these with these buildings, with these structures, in
(12:49):
these sites, and in this area of mid Michigan. Uh,
A lot of people see the closure of the GM
or of Buick City as the catalyst or this turning point,
this tipping point in the history of the area. Yeah. Well,
so many people were employed by this factory. I mean,
I mean generations of families that have been you know,
(13:10):
workers at this factory from the you know, the very
beginning in some cases. So when something like that drives up,
of course it's going to have an impact on the
city that you know, it surrounds this thing that has
built up because of this thing. Really, um, so the
good news is I guess in this case, you know,
now it's just this great, big This isn't good news,
but it's it's it's surrounded by barbed wire and fence
and it's a big flat piece of concrete now you know,
(13:32):
completely knocked it down that you know, the whole two
acre two plus acres. But the American cast Iron Pipe
Company has announced plans to build a two hundred thousand
square foot facility on the same property. So I hope
that plan goes through it, you know, as they as
they hope it will, as they've they've drawn it out,
because flank could definitely use some revitalization at this point.
So moving on to number eight on the list is
(13:52):
the Fisher Body Plant in Detroit, Michigan. And this is
this is a really interesting one then because um well
they're all really interesting, but this one in particular because
this one has a long history with a lot of
different companies. It's not just General Motors as you might think.
Um So the Fisher body plant in Detroit, there's a
specific one in Detroit that we're talking about, is the
(14:13):
one on Peaquette Avenue on on Saint Antoine and Piquette.
And this is an Albert Kahan design building. Now it
was built in everything was around nineteen nineteen. But Albert
Khan is an American industrial architect and he was said
to be the like the premier architect of the time,
the guy that you wanted to design your building. He's
he's often called the architect of Detroit. So he has
(14:35):
his hand and a lot of the buildings that we'll
talk about today on this list. Um. And so this
building that you know was built in nineteen nineteen is
just one of many buildings that they had that Fisher
Body had owned. At one point they owned forty buildings
with a total of three point seven million square feet
of floor space. So this is kind of like the
final remaining piece in that in that puzzle. Um, this
(14:56):
this uh, this building, of course, is that it's well,
this this company, I should say, Fisher Body is a
coach building company. So d it's all the way back
to you know, wooden bodies on cars, right right back
when you would essentially just buy an engine and maybe
a chassis, yeah yeah, and then have a custom body
added on to that. Now it wasn't just you know,
individuals that were coming to them for bodies. It was
also manufacturers. And I said it wasn't just general motors
(15:18):
as well, because we're we associate this typically with general
motors cars. But um, you know that that iconic body
by Fisher logo and a lot of people know that
logo that was actually applied to GM Dorsills until about
the mid nineteen nineties, So that hung on a long
long time. But the companies that came to them over
the years, there were there were companies that were like
Abbott and Buick and Cadillac and Chalmers and Ford and Hudson,
(15:40):
uh Student Bag or Regal. There's you know, there's a
long long list and that's only a couple of the many,
many companies that would come to them for for body work. Um.
But this is a it's just again, it's an iconic building.
It is a it's a piece of history. It's something
that a lot of people would like to see, you know,
remains standing or used in some way. But the problem
is it's in a not so great part of Detroit
(16:02):
right now, and it's it's definitely fallen apart. It's covered
with graffiti, the windows are all broken out. You can
look at the photo online. I think it's actually um
a street view that you can get online, so you
can kind of go all the way around the building
and take a look at you know, what's left around
it. It It looks like a lot of vacant property around
it as well. So so bad news for the Fisher
body plant, but hopefully it'll turn into something good. And
(16:24):
we know what you are thinking, ladies and gentlemen. Possibly Uh,
Scott and I are using our amazing podcast telepathy powers
to figure out that some of you are going, oh man,
this is gonna be depressing and it's gonna be so
heavy on Michigan. Just wait because we're gonna take a
break for word from our sponsors, and then we're traveling
(16:45):
to New York and we're back and Ben, you said
we're gonna take a trip to New York for number
seven on our list? Is that right? Yes, sir, that
is correct. Uh. And they had a slight mentioned earlier
when we're talking about Fisher. We are looking at the
(17:06):
Student Baker building in New York City. Yeah. Now, the
current owner of this is Columbia University. And uh, here
here's the thing with this. This is located at six
fifteen West thirty first Street between Broadway and twelfth Avenue.
And this is the former Stude Baker Automobile finishing plant,
which you know they have this giant freight elevator within
(17:27):
this property. You'll see was constructed in nineteen twenty three
as brick construction with white porcelain trim, which I find
really cool. It's six stories tall, so it's a big building. Again,
take a look at the photos and you'll see this
white porcelain trim on the outside top edges and along
it looks like maybe I don't know if that's an
elevator shaft or if that is a smokestack, but really
(17:48):
really cool. And I think you can even see a
bit of a logo that they used, a blue logo
that's still visible near the top corner of the building
from back in like the nineteen nineteen thirties. Um, but
really really cool building. It's a real solid building. And
it was sold in seven, I think to the Board
and Milk Company, which used it as a milk processing
(18:08):
plant for a while, and then it became a storage
space essentially for uh, the American Museum of Natural History.
Than it has been offices, a couple of small manufacturing facilities,
and even at one time a doll company. A doll company.
That's a strange move, huh, Now, I mean, I guess
they need a lot of space, but you know, at
the time in this thing's life. Of course, I'd love
(18:29):
to see it when they're making product, you know. And
then one of the photos here is them making uh
you know the US Postal Service jeeps. Uh, you know,
the real boxy ones, the blue and white ones. Um,
really cool as somebody line shot there. But I think
the time that I would have liked to have seen
this the most outside of the production would have been
when they were the American Museum of Natural History storage facility.
(18:50):
Can you imagine what they would put in something like
that and they're really curious. That would be really neat
to walk around and to see what they what they
stuff out of the way, you know, when it's not
on display. It's like the most interesting episode of Hoarders ever.
Also pretty spooky, right if you're spooky that yeah? So um,
I think what I think it's now back to office
spaces again because somewhere in the nineteen eighties someone bought
(19:10):
the buildings. So um. Oh and one other thing we
should mention here, and this is not in New York,
but it's kind of a tangentially related thing and they
have a link to it that I followed, and I've
seen this before. Um, there's something called this is Student
Baker related. By the way, Um, there's something called Bendex
Park now that spelled b E N d I X
and uh, you know as in the auto parts manufacturer
(19:32):
Bendix Woods. And this is actually in It's not in
New York again, it's a New Carlisle, Indiana, but near
it's near the Student Baker test track. And if you
look at the aerial photos of that area, you'll see
the test wreck. And then just off to the side
you're gonna find an area called again Bennix Park that
has five thousand trees that spell out the words Student
Baker that you can read from above. So if you're
(19:53):
flying over here, you can see this. And they've restored
it recently. For a while it was kind of you know,
a few trees had died out and didn't white spell
out the full word, you know, they were they were
missing parts of the letters. They've restored it so that
now it's clearly it clearly reads Studebaker once again. But
really really cool thing to to check out, you know,
the aerial photos or Google Earth or whatever you want
to do. But again, it's New Carlisle, Indiana. You can
(20:15):
spot it online pretty easy. The next one on the
list is going all the way to Italy. We're going international, Ben,
We're going international. We finally, we finally made it, Scott.
We are traveling in fact, to the Alpha Romeo Portello
Plants in Milano. Yeah, this one was opened in nineteen
o eight and it was an eighty six thousand, one
hundred and eleven square foot factory and it was around
(20:37):
until about two thousand four when it was finally demolished.
But the but the real story here, Ben, is the
photographs that we saw before it was demolished. The factory
workers that left there. Whenever they walked out finally, whenever
it was the you know, the final final straw for
this this factory, they left a mess behind the bulldoz
and the bulldozers ended up just kind of covering it
all up. We'll never know what was really lost here
(20:59):
outside of what we see in those photos. Um, no
one went in to save all the stuff that was there.
There were there were cars that were unbuilt there, There
were usable machines, you know, usable factory machines were still there.
There were half finished prototypes that were still on the property.
Of course, lots of papers and things that have been
stored in offices for who knows what. I mean. It
could have been future product. It could have been anything. Really,
(21:20):
it could have been nothing, could have been something. But
again we'll just never know. We'll never know what was
lost in this situation unfortunately. Yeah, and I think, um,
it's now it's now, you know, because it's been raised
and you know, they made uh, something new on the property.
So now I think it's like a residential and commercial
property or you know, something like a mixed use area.
(21:40):
But again, that original factory has gone, and there's some
great photographs of what it was like then, and you
just can't believe the stuff. And they're overturned prototypes in
the in the factory. They're just lay there, yeah, laying
there underneath and you know, looks like an inch of dust,
just grime and stuff throwing everywhere, packing materials. It's it's
really a shame to see the way they left the
factory behind like that. But um, again lost to history.
(22:03):
And while we are in Europe, let's make our way. Uh,
let's make our way over to Birmingham, England, the site
of the long Bridge Plants sometimes called the long Bridge
mg Rover Factory, and this one is still there. You
can still go check this one out, But in this factory,
this is Uh. They said that when this factory shut
(22:24):
down it was almost like it killed the British car
industry itself because there were a lot of stuff made there.
There was the Austin's, Nash Metropolitans, British Leland products and
finally the mg Rover I think Morris cars were built there.
Just a lot of products came out of the long
Bridge plant in Birmingham, England. And there's a really controversial
(22:46):
issue with this because one thing that surprised a lot
of people was that at the time of its closure,
the long Bridge plant was incredibly outdated. They had they
had stuff that their assembly line was probably modern in
the nineteen fifties maybe, and they still used to drop
(23:10):
in to put the body and power train together. Uh.
The modernization and investment that would have had to happen
to the plant was apparently something that the government who
owned the plant was not not very interested in. Yeah,
I think I read a note that said they were
more the emphasis was more on getting people employed there.
(23:31):
They're trying to work on getting people in and having
them work, rather than updating the facility, and you've got
to have kind of a good balance of this, right,
you have to you have to spend money on the
the facility itself as well as the people inside. And
now I understand the thought process behind both, but there
has to be kind of a happy mix here, you know,
something that allows them to keep up with the Joneses maybe,
and the Joneses being other car producing countries. Really, yeah,
(23:56):
is that is that a good way to put that?
I don't know if that's a that's a fair way
to put that risk, It's it's a tricky balance, yeah,
it is. I mean the task was, you know, to
to to get this building up to speck so that
you know, it was a little bit more modern as
well as employee you know, uh, as many people as
they possibly could, you know, because it's good for the
economic local economy. But um, I don't know, maybe I
(24:18):
may I'm digging a little too deep on this one.
We should probably just let it go. But but but
the idea was that, you know, either way, they left
a lot of unfinished cars behind and it was way outdated.
And uh, it's a sad day when this one closed down. Yes,
and Scott remember how earlier, earlier, we said, you know,
this wasn't gonna be all Michigan. It's still gonna be
(24:42):
a lot of Michigan. Well that's because they're just so many.
I mean, I guess, per capita, there's so many, there's
so many, so many factories there, and one of these
the Packard Plant in Detroit, Michigan. Oh my gosh, Ben,
this is just continually bad news out of the Packard Plant.
Really right there. There moments there, moments where you get
just a little bit of hope, but then it dashed.
So this is a plant that was opened in nineteen eleven.
(25:03):
I think the building that the construction of this started
a few years prior to that. It's a huge facility again,
three and a half million square feet, and this is
all one property. Um distinguished I guess by this main
bridge that goes across between between factory buildings for the
product to travel between them. Um. Just it has been
abused over the years. I don't know officially when this
(25:25):
thing is shut down. I don't remember exactly the day,
but I will tell you that you know, over the past, um,
I don't know, a couple of decades, several decades, I
mean when I was there, it was already abandoned. Um,
it's fallen prey to you know, metal scrappers and people.
I'm one who did this. I played paintball there because
(25:46):
there was a company that had set up paintball um operation,
I guess in the main offices. It was a lot
of fun. But now looking back, and I don't know,
I don't know, I don't know how to feel about it,
because it was its disrespectful. Yeah, but I mean, but
but look where it is now. It's not any better
now twenty two years later. Um. So this was the
(26:08):
mid nineteen nineties and I'm playing paintball in there. Um,
but urban explorers photographers of course. Um, just crazy stuff
happens here. If you want to see some crazy, I'm
gonna say that crazy ass stuff then happens at this plant.
Did you know that there was an escaped tiger that
was there in for help for it just for a day.
But a British photographer had set up this this photo
(26:30):
shoot there because it's you know, like an urban ruined area,
very very popular with photographers. So this guy sets up
this tiger, the shoot with a tiger, a Siberian tiger,
and I guess they were like naked models on site
and everything. It was kind of a crazy shoot, right,
And this tiger escapes, gets it gets onto the fourth
floor staircase of one of these buildings, and they don't
know what to do, so they call him. This guy.
(26:51):
There's a story in a in a local paper I
think from Um, from this guy who was called by
a friend and he said, do you know anything about
these can you? Can you somehow? I don't know if
he's an animal handler or what, but they called him
and he said he had he had no tools with him.
He had a weed whacker and a tarp and he
came over and they caught this tiger. Can you believe that?
It's crazy? There their foot there's video of this happening.
(27:16):
It's not like it's some tall tale. It really happened.
There's a tiger in the packard factory in Um. In
twenty two nine. Uh, there was a dump truck that
was famously pushed out of a fourth floor window and
that's on video. It's really cool to watch. But again, vandals,
that's vandals, you know. I don't know, man, Maybe the
dump truck deserved it. Come on, this is it was?
(27:38):
It was. I mean, again, the mystery is like, how
did it get on the fourth floor to beginning, because
it's a full sized dump truck. But to watch it
plumb it out of the fourth floor, it's impressive and
it's it's kind of fun. But again, they shouldn't have
done it. They weren't allowed to be on the property.
A couple of things we do have to emphasize about this.
This is the largest abandoned factory of its kind, and
(27:58):
I think you mentioned that three point five million square
feet thirty five acres. And what's weird about this is
in some ways the little abstract here to go with me,
Go with me, and then keep me in check if
if I'm getting too weird with it. In some ways,
(28:20):
this factory kind of continued after it closed, but in
in a very strange way because once it was liquidated,
the UM pre war designs and the tooling were sold
to other parties around the world behind the Iron Curtain
and stuff so um in Russia they were building packard
(28:41):
clones using the same stuff they were, so it's almost
like they just moved the factory or pieces of it,
and they were under the Zill and ZIM name plates
and these designs lasted well into the seventies. So I
guess what we're getting at then, is that this is
like the skeleton of the the company. Really it's not.
It's not so much that we're desecrating the uh, the
(29:02):
Packard name, because that that really had gone away, with
the machines and the product and the all the all
the other materials. This is more like this. This, this
is like what's left behind that should have probably been
knocked down a long time ago but hasn't been. In fact,
been one last quick thing about this. How crazy this
place is. And honestly, this is the tip of the iceberg.
The fire department doesn't show up to fires that are
(29:24):
lit on that property anymore. There was a story many
years ago, now I'm gonna say four or five years ago,
that they were so frequently called to the um to
the Packer planned in Detroit that, you know, for a fire,
you know, somewhere in the factory property, that they eventually
decided that they were wasting too much time with fires
on this property and they can just burn themselves out,
so they don't even bother showing up anymore to the fires.
(29:47):
How do you like that? That's crazy? This place is.
This place is enormous. You've got to see it in
order to believe it. And it was sold to h
I think it's a Texan doctor who bought it for
like six million bucks and he was both to pay
the back taxes. I don't think he ever did pay
the back taxes. Um, so I don't know what's gone
on with it. But again, it's a crazy place. A
lot of really weird stuff happens there. And we're going
(30:09):
to get even weirder after a word from our sponsors,
and we're back. We are still staying in Michigan for now.
We are going to Highland Park. Forward Plants. This is
(30:31):
the last one on our list from Michigan, and the
top two ur elsewhere. But um, this is a Forward factory. Now,
this is actually the the well. This is the first
Model T production facility. So imagine this. This is where
the first assembly line was introduced. You know, where the
where the minimum wage was introduced, right where the minimum
wages introduced, where our favorite Madman savant himself, Henry Ford,
(30:54):
plays a crucial role in the invention of what we
recognize as the weekend. And this is what in the
hearts of American history. Now, thankfully this place was put
on the National Historic Register or for you know, being
a National Historic Landmark in Night, so it's been protected
ever since. I think there's always kind of that danger
that the property is gonna be sold or or you
(31:16):
know that the factory is going to be you know,
raised in some way, but or at least you know
most of it, because it's a pretty big building. It's
a huge factory. Again, it's another Albert Con design. We've
mentioned in many times. This is built around nineteen and
if you're driving down Woodward Avenue in Michigan sometimes you
can see this place. Uh it's I think it's being
used for storage right now. It's um, you can see
(31:39):
the boxes piled up in the windows and UM, you
can look, you can find you know, the doorways that
you used to see those old you know, the grainy
film footage of you know, the model ts rolling out
one by one by one, you know, super fast. Um,
you can see those doors in place, you can peek
in through holes in the doors that you know, well,
you can see the remnants of the first assembly line there.
(31:59):
It's really remarkable. It's an interesting building. UM. I hope
it never goes away, but I also hope they do
something with it, because it's fallen in fallen into disrepair
over the last i'd say twenty years. Maybe I've I've
been there several times. Nearby or right next door, there's
a place called the Model T Plaza, which is just
a strip mall. But but if you want to see
the factory itself, you can still go down there and
see that and read historic mark and plaque Ruther and
(32:23):
uh and you know, look around for those doors that
I mentioned. It's it's just a neat place. Yeah, but
it's not the weirdest, not the weirdest, and not the
weirdest by Ford as well. Right. Uh so let's stay
with Ford, but let's go to Brazil and Santa m Brazil.
Ford Landia was built by Henry himself with the idea that,
(32:45):
as we've mentioned before on this show, with the idea
that he could uh sort of integrate rubber production and
own his own rubber plantation and his own community. So
that's the strange part about this is this isn't this
is in the rain forest, right, Yeah, And it's a
whole city. It's a whole city, and uh, it was
built up with the idea that this is gonna be
(33:06):
uh again, there the rubber facility that would supply the
rubber for his product um, but it was also going
to be a place where people could live. People could
go to school, people could have, you know, their own hospital,
they could have their own church, they could have whatever
they want. Everything was going to be self contained in
this community, and it was gonna be run by Henry Ford.
They also were required to live according to his very strict,
(33:32):
hyper idealized version of what good American life is, almost puritan,
I mean, no dancing, no music, that kind of thing.
So yeah, he had some very strict rules if you
were going to live in ford Land, they could have
ice cream. I'm serious. I think they could play baseball
and have ice cream. Well that's pretty good, right, That's
not bad, not a bad trade off. Well maybe maybe
(33:54):
it was. I mean I'm not I'm not out there
cutting rugs anyway, so I'm not gonna miss it. But yeah,
it's it's a very strange um community, especially when he
was hiring locals and asking them to live a completely
different life. Yeah, and it wasn't long after this thing
was built that it was the idea was given up.
I mean, they decided that it wasn't gonna work. But here,
(34:15):
the really strange part is that people stayed. People stayed
for a long long time thinking that something was really
gonna happen. It was gonna turn around, that they were
going to reopen this place. It was gonna uh you know,
the sawmill was going to reopen, The rubber factory was
gonna open again, and they were gonna produce tires for
at least the raw rubber to send to Forward for
his his vehicles. So a really strange thing. It's almost
(34:37):
it's a ghost town now, so you can you go
out and check it out. But again it's in the
Amazon rainforest, so not a lot of people make it there.
You can. The good thing about you know, being able
to search on Google is that, um you can find
photos of this. You don't have to make the trip
down there to see it. But I would love to
see it in person someday, I really, I really would.
It's a long boat ride, I think, you know, once
(34:57):
you land at the nearest airport, but um, I've still
love to make that trip and see what's going on
in fort Landy. It's it's an interesting place. I think
it would be absolutely worth it. We are going to
conclude this list, but not necessarily today's show, with one
last stop, and that is Italy. Yeah. That was a
big surprise to me. I just figured that Detroit was
(35:18):
gonna be number one. I thought that Packard Factory was
going to be number one. But this is one that
I had forgotten about. This is the Bugatti factory in Italy.
Now in the town. Okay, I'll try the town pronunciation
here and you tell me how I do. Okay, Okay,
camp Pogliano. That's pretty good. I'm gonna try to camp
Pogliano close enough. Yeah, we might have got it with
one of those two. You know, at some point, man,
(35:40):
we're just gonna have to break down and learn Italian.
This is where the famed eb one ten was built.
And a lot of people, now maybe, okay, you know what,
I'm gonna take it back, Not a lot of people.
Very few people have probably seen this factory, because I
do recall somewhere and I even read it somewhere. I
didn't make a note here today, but I saw this
factory in a magazine a long long time ago, and
(36:00):
it had a lot of photos of unfinished product. Just
kind of left on the line. We're talking about Bugatti's
that were partially finished parts of cars, machinery, UM offices
that look like they were just abandoned at a moment's notice. Really,
you know, there were things like cigarettes laying on on desktops. Um.
Really really strange. I've seen these. I saw these photos
in a magazine and one of the commenters here on
(36:22):
Jelopnik also had a link to a few photos from
that magazine, and I neglected to write down the name
of where it came from and all that. But you know,
you can find it pretty easy if you just check
out this list. Um. But this factory is really fascinating.
Now they again built that EB one ten there. And
the crazy thing is like how the how the factory
was left. Initially it was almost like they had they
(36:44):
did have notice. But it's almost again like like in
the case with the Alpha Male factory, where people just
seemed to just leave things, just left it where it
was and walked out the door. I'm really really strange.
There were things in this in this Bugatti factory like, um,
you know near the lunch room, you know, the cafeteria. Uh,
they had the daily specials still written on a whiteboard
outside of the um the cafeteria with the days you know,
(37:06):
like soup and sandwich or whatever it was for whatever price,
it was still there. There was a there was a
a big viewing area that had um, you know, a
fully built car would looked like a Philly built car.
I was probably incomplete, but it had that in a
bunch of folding chairs set up as if they were
going to give a press conference. Um, there were unfinished product.
There was unfinished product on the line. As I said,
(37:27):
there were just stacks of computers everywhere. We're talking about
the old type with you know, the big monitors, So
those were lining the walls in one room. It was
just a really really strange situation. Papers everywhere, Um, you know,
some of them looked like they were last minute papers, like,
you know, like things that could have maybe saved this factory. Um,
you know, the last minute documents that were going back
and forth being facts between you know, the factory and lawyers.
(37:51):
Just really really fascinating stuff was left behind. And again
it's just a strange thing to think about. But there
were even marks on the floor for a prod that
they never built. Yeah, yeah, there was supposed to be
another model of the EB one ten. It was called
EB one twelve that they never built there, but there
were They were laying out tape marks on the floor
to say this is where we're going to build them,
(38:12):
and you know, suddenly, you know, the rug was yanked
au from underneath their feet. And of course Bugatti continues today,
it's just not in Italy, not in that plan. Yeah,
this weird plant is still left behind and it's still
I think it's still empty today. So we were talking
about this off air. We didn't want this to be
(38:32):
a huge downer podcast of so I found something that
I thought was an interesting piece of news, at least
for US factories. Well, it turns out that empty factories
and warehouses have become objects of like high regard and
high demand. Now people want these structures, and this is
(38:53):
a trend that we were seeing in that on both
sides of the coast here and all of us. Like
it makes sense in places that are i want to
say real estate poor, where like Land is at a
higher premium, it makes sense that in like England or
London especially, people would want to reuse every building they can.
(39:14):
Sure you're living one now and we're podcasting from one
right now right, And I think this trend is spreading
As more and more people live in cities, more and
more of these old buildings are going to be revitalized
rather than torn down their prime real estate. They're very
I mean extremely solid built, uh you know, pieces of property.
So and they often have features that you know, uh,
(39:36):
I guess maybe property managers would really appreciate, you know,
like things like extremely heavy duty freight elevators like our
building has. I'm not going to say that you could,
but you might be able to do, you know, lift
a car and those things. They're enormous, dude, let's try
and maybe maybe we should try it. But uh, but
you know, for there's no doubt that they were to
(39:56):
lift heavy appliances and machinery and things like that. So
I would guess that you could lift a car and
those things. UM, a lot of a lot of um.
Property managers find some of these attributes very value. Again,
you know, they're in prime locations. They've got a lot
of windows, we've got great views of the city. Um.
You know, it's it's again, it's it seems like it's
a smart use of the space rather than tearing down
(40:16):
the old stuff, reuse what's already there. So uh, don't
let these abandoned factories get you down, because ladies and gentlemen,
the odds are that they will not be abandoned for long. Yeah,
or they'll be released by like, you know, at least
again I should say, by um, you know, the Board
and Milk Company or the American Natural History Museum storage
(40:40):
dull tycoon. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, there's always a
use for stuff like this, right, People need space for
something all the time. So uh yeah, again, all these
factories probably could be put to use summer and can.
Like the packard factory, I think it's too far gone
at this point, right, Yeah, that might be. That might
be a different case. But again, check out the news
stories around that place. It's it's fascinating. And remember, if
(41:03):
you bring a tiger with you to a photo shoot.
I think we can agree this is the moral of
this episode. If you bring a tiger with you anywhere,
you gotta keep an eye on it. Man. Don't don't
let it out of the harness or whatever you've got
it in, right, I mean, that's a bad idea. Keep
your eye on the tiger and the guy caught it
with a weed whacker and a tarp. Can you believe that?
I mean, it's the same. It sounds very mgivriush and
(41:26):
to know the operation. It's a big tiger too. It's
not like a baby either, So if that's what you're thinking,
it's like a baby tiger, not because it's not some
tiny punk tiger. Check out the video. It's it's a big,
scary tiger. And so concludes our episode for today. As
Scott and I go off to hit the road or
I think first, I'm gonna be watching a lot of
weird stuff about Packard on YouTube. In the meantime, we
(41:49):
would like to hear from you about the industry surrounding
your neck of the Global Woods. Do you have any big,
creepy abandoned factories. Do you have any cool urban exploration
story let us know. We'd like to share them with
your fellow listeners, and we will not condone anything illegal,
but we will also protect your identity if necessary. In
(42:11):
the meantime, you can check out every episode Scott and
I've ever done. I would specifically recommend one on ford
Landia on our website Car Stuff Show dot com. Check
in with us on Twitter and Facebook to see some
of the stories that, for one reason or another might
not make it to the air. Don't forget DeLorean story
as well. Oh and don't forget yeah, DeLorean story as well.
And if you have an idea for topic we should
(42:34):
cover in the future, we'd love to hear it. You
can write to us directly. We are on car stuff
at how stuff work dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff works
dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
CarStuff News
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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