INSIDE THE HENRY FORD
FORD ROUGE FACTORY TOUR
FACTORY RECHARGED The tour reopens, a plant is retooled and an all-new facility is announced IN NOVEMBER 2020, the Ford Rouge Factory Tour reopened briefly to guests after a monthslong shutdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While visitor capacity was limited, all of the tour’s features were on the menu, from the multisensory Manufacturing Innovation film experience to the assembly plant walking tour and observation deck offering an up-close view of the Dearborn Truck Plant’s 10.4-acre living sedum roof. As Cynthia Jones, The Henry Ford’s general manager of innovation experiences, said, “We reopened the plant tour in a focused, guided method that was safe for our guests.” While the tour was shut down in the spring and summer, its visitor center was repurposed, serving as a training site for new Ford Motor Co. hires who were ramping up for the 2021 model year changeover at the Dearborn Truck Plant. In late 2019, Ford announced the pending launch of its new Ford F-150 hybrid at the plant, which had recently undergone a multimillion-dollar retooling. As part of that update, the entire plant now operates using renewable energy, which equates to
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dramatic reductions in carbon emissions. Last summer, Ford also announced it was building a new facility on the massive Ford Rouge Complex that will assemble both an all-electric version of the Ford F-150 and manufacture electric batteries. Production at the new plant, a visually contrasting glass-and-steel structure, is scheduled to begin in 2022. The hybrid and all-electric Michigan-built F-150s are part of Ford’s overall $11 billion investment in electric vehicles, a story of sustainability and mobility that The Henry Ford is eager to share with its factory tour visitors. Much of the materials, resources and presentations on the tour will obviously be updated to reflect the future-forward environmental efforts of Ford Motor Co. and to showcase the trucks set to be built within the Rouge Complex. “Ford is literally investing in sustainable design, realizing that even in the truck segment, where many customers may be laser focused on towing power, there is now a demand for balance between fuel economy and traditional truck features,” said Jones.
LEGACY LINEUP The hybrid and all-electric Ford F-150 will join a long list of landmark vehicles manufactured in facilities on the historic grounds of the Ford Rouge Complex. As Matt Anderson, The Henry Ford’s curator of transportation, pointed out, several of these vehicles are on display in the Ford Rouge Factory Tour’s Legacy Gallery, including the Ford Model A (below), Ford V-8, 1949 Ford, Ford Thunderbird and Ford Mustang. Other vehicles that once called the Ford Rouge Complex their manufacturing home base: the 1939 Mercury, the Ford Fairlane and Country Squire station wagon of the 1960s, as well as the Mercury Cougar, Comet and Capri of the 1970s and ‘80s.
PHOTO FROM THE HENRY FORD ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION
DID YOU KNOW? / A portion of the Dearborn Truck Plant’s renewable energy comes from DTE Energy’s wind farms in central Michigan, the same farms that feed the grid helping power Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne.