They don't call it the Motor City for nothing

By MICHAEL A. SCHUMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

Image problems aside, Detroit is a great place to take children who are wild about cars.

That's NASCAR superstar Dale Earnhardt's car in front of us, we were told. It was our job as pit crew to change two tires, wash the windshield and put in gasoline in record time. Were we up to task? Read on.

Meanwhile, in another building, the body of a Cadillac was lowered onto its chassis in a mock automobile assembly line as a crowd watched. Elsewhere, our children designed their dream hot rod, from the engine size down to the paint color.

We were seeing the sights in Detroit, a city known for crime, poverty, riots and . . . cars.

In fact, while we were spending three vacation days in the Motor City, USA Today ran an article about a California man growing marijuana for medical use, who was shown wearing a T-shirt with the message, "I'm so bad I vacation in Detroit."

On the Internet at the same time was a facetious look at the 25 shortest books ever written; No. 15 is Detroit -- A Travel Guide to a Fun City.

Detroit has an image problem.

It has been through rough times, but Detroit is still the city most of us think of when we discuss our favorite toys: automobiles. Detroit is not where the car was invented, but it is where the car came of age.

This city is where the world's first concrete road was built, in 1901, where the annual North American International Auto Show draws 700,000 oglers and 5,000 media representatives.

There are more than a dozen sights in the city and its environs relating to the automotive industry, from auto barons' homes to Diego Rivera murals. The most interactive of these are a quartet of attractions, including one set amid the spaghetti of freeways in the city proper: the Detroit Historical Museum, home of the extensive Motor City Exhibition.

It sits not amid the rubble from some past upheaval but in an area called the Cultural District, with neighbors such as the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Science Center and Wayne State University. The centerpiece of the Motor City Exhibition is the relocated assembly line segment, brought here from the city's Clark Avenue Cadillac plant, where every 15 minutes the body-onto-chassis drop is re-enacted, after an eight-minute video.

Children were drawn to a reproduction Model T, where they could turn a crank and listen to the motor start, then climb inside and turn the steering wheel.

As for adults, they could apply for a job -- in a different time -- on on an assembly line. The display offered the differences in work and skill demanded for the job in 1995, 1955 and 1913. Also factors in your hiring chances: level of education, and of course for many years, your ethnic background and gender.

For instance, an interactive computer exhibit permits visitors to apply for a job as Mexico-born, college graduate Carla Rodriguez -- in 1955. Rodriguez, it turned out, was a perfect fit for an executive assistant's position, filing for $1.75 per hour. But in 1995, she was offered the job of site locator for new plants, with a starting salary for a five- to six- day work week of $52,000.

Surprises were found here, too. In a gallery devoted to the history of auto advertising is a displayed print ad consisting of the following text:

What year did that ad appear? 1993? 1973

The ad is for the 1923 Chevrolet utility coupe, priced at $640 and labeled "the car for the girl in business."

Neighboring Dearborn, home of Ford corporate headquarters and the renowned Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, is also the site of the region's newest automotive adventure, Spirit of Ford. Like many corporations including Coca Cola and Hershey, Ford Motor Co. has opened an interactive showcase rather than the formerly popular industrial tour.

It is at Spirit of Ford, open since May 1999, where visitors play pit crew, which proves to be great fun. In our first try, we serviced Dale Earnhardt's car in 68 seconds -- nothing to brag about. We were given another chance and did the job in 55 seconds. The average for a trained pit crew is between 14 and 17 seconds.

Mixed reviews were in store when we designed our own cars from a variety of media: on paper, with clay and out of K'NEX plastic parts. We tested our K'NEX models on bumpy and smooth tracks, with a wide range of results.

Opting to trade automotive design for television, we took part in another exhibit, where we made a short car commercial using an array of figurines as props fronted against our choice of all-America tableaux, ranging from midtown Manhattan to the Arizona desert.

Spirit of Ford also has four theaters, with presentations ranging from a purely promotional introductory film to the lively Turbo Theater, where the seats jostle and bump viewers as they watch a film from the point of view of a car -- from its birth on the assembly line to its first run on the test track. As parts were being welded, sparks flew in the theater's darkness. We felt ourselves dip as we entered the paint pool and tilt with roller coaster angles as we were tested on hills and curves.

The final results rest on the main floor at Spirit of Ford, in a sort of showroom for the eccentric, with concept cars such as the Mustang Mach 3 and the Ford Indigo, which has winged doors.

Across the street more automobiles, many classics, some oddballs, are parked in a true automotive landscape at the Henry Ford Museum. The Ford Museum, which could rival the Smithsonian as "America's attic," with its adjacent attraction, Greenfield Village, are most likely the best-known visitor magnets in Michigan.

The museum largely tells the story of Americans' inventions but emphasizes the role of the automobile in America's social and industrial history.

A 1939 Ford convertible with a rumble seat is parked next to a reproduced roadside cabin, which replaced city hotels as choices of lodging for people on the go. However these cabins went the way of the rumble seat, evolving into motor hotels, then motels, as evidenced by a 1952 Holiday Inn replicated here, all cinder block walls and shag carpet.

The Ford Museum also tips its hood to the world of car advertising. While baby boomers will have their memories tickled with a black and white clip of Dinah Shore belting out the springy See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet, older visitors may smile at posters from vintage radio programs, such as Fred Allen's Allen's Alley. A brief broadcast presents Senator Claghorn, the bombastic Southern legislator, urging all to "watch Ford in '48 -- '48, that is."

Much space is devoted to the story of car manufacturing, told chronologically. This history begins with the humbling note that the first motor-vehicle production in the United States began in 1896 not in Detroit, but in Springfield, Mass., when the Duryea Brothers made and sold 13 identical gas-powered cars. A parade of black, bulky behemoths represent the proliferation of companies in the early 20th century: Reo, Overland, Nash, Maxwell, Chalmers, Studebaker.

The birth of the smallish "world car," and the first step toward the transformation of Japan from industrial backwater to automotive giant, was largely the work of an American. That fact is offered in a display in the nearby Automotive Hall of Fame, which relocated to Dearborn from the central Michigan city of Midland in 1997. In the 1950s, a statistical analyst named W. Edwards Deming was laughed at when he said Japan could invade the world's auto markets in four years. Deming went to Japan and taught carmakers there his 14-point system for quality management, such as, break down barriers between departments, and institute training on the job. Today, Japan awards the Deming Prize to its business leaders.

Here, as at the Detroit Historical Museum, visitors can design a car on a computer, and they can also work a mock assembly line, trying to arrange small metal posts by size using only their sense of touch. That is what Hall of Fame member Ralph Teetor, the inventor of cruise control, had to do: Teetor was blind, and had the challenge of not only inventing the system but also of convincing auto executives that the American motorist would really use something seemingly unnecessary as cruise control.

There are about 160 inductees to this Hall -- names such as Honda, Benz, Olds and Fisher -- and they are categorized as prime movers, innovators, visionaries, creative spirits and problem solvers. Visionaries, such as Corvette engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov, "love to think about the future," according to the displays. Innovators, such as Soichiro Honda and Harvey Firestone, "improve things that have already been invented."

-- Michael Schuman is a freelance writer based in Keene, N.H.

If you go

The Detroit Historical Museum is open Tuesday-Sunday and is closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day, and Good Friday afternoon. Admission is $4.50 adults and $2.25 for ages 65 and older and 12-18 years. Allow two hours for the Motor City Exhibition and two more hours to see the rest of the museum.

For more information, contact the Detroit Historical Museum, 5401 Woodward, Detroit, MI 48202; call (313) 833-1805; the Web site is http://www.detroithistorical.org.

Spirit of Ford is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is $6 for ages 13 and older, $5 for ages 62 and older, $4 for ages 5-12. Allow three to five hours.

For more information, contact: Spirit of Ford, 1151 Village Road, Dearborn, MI 48124; (313) 317-7474; http://www.spiritofford.com.

The Henry Ford Museum is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Admission is $12.50 for adults, $11.50 ages 62 and older and $7.50 ages 5-12. Combination discount tickets to the museum, Greenfield Village and Imax Theater are available. Allow two hours to see the exhibits relating to the automobile, a full day to see the entire complex.

For more information: Henry Ford Museum, 20900 Oakwood Blvd., Dearborn, MI 48124-4088; (313) 271-1620; http://www.hfmgv.org.

The Automotive Hall of Fame is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, from Memorial Day through October; closed Mondays the rest of the year and closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Allow three hours. Admission is $6 for those ages 13 and older, $5.50 ages 62 and older, and $3 ages 5-12.

For more information: Automotive Hall of Fame, 21400 Oakwood Blvd., Dearborn, MI 48124; (313) 240-4000. A Web site is being constructed.

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