GalleryIntroductionThis webpage is designed to educate our visitors about the Detroit auto industry. Here you'll find all the possible reasons why the Detroit auto industry collapsed. Also, if you scroll up and click on the Detroit in the future button, it will take you to another page where you'll find out what Detroit would look like in the future. Also, the information that is given below is sort of a brief look into the reasons why the Detroit auto industry Collapsed, this is just to keep our viewer from getting bored but it still covers everything that is important in the History of Detroit auto industry. History The city of Detroit has had so many resources. The city basically started to grow towards the end of the 19th century. Detroit was not just known for making cars but it was also known for stove manufacturing, cigars making, pharmaceuticals, and food production. The city of Detroit had so many natural advantages for auto mobile production. During the 1950s, the city lost 363,000 white residents while it gained 182,000 black residents. In 1950, the population was 16 percent black, and by the time of the 1967 riot it had grown to a third. Today, about 82 percent of the city's population is black. "Race has basically been used as a tool to pit people against each other," he said. "There's a sincere, in-depth hate. Folks in the city have been taught to not trust those in the suburbs. Folks in the suburbs don't trust those in the city." By the 1950's Detroit had turned into the biggest city in the US and was home to almost two million people. During this time when Detroit's financial state was at its peak it suffered the loss of 130,00 employees. Numerous auto related workers left the city looking for any work in any work force. During this time we see the sparing innovation of " robotization" in which people were trying to save labor and use robots instead. The results were destructive, many companies ended up closing down. Ford's River Rouge Plant initiated jobs in the beginning of 1950's and although its operations were active today, it has a few thousand workers that shadow its world war two era. In 1956 the big three noticed a little slump in the sale, this is when people started buying the imported cars from Europe. The 3 big did not see the real trouble coming and they continued making luxirious cars. First when people started buying compact cars people used to call them with weird names but later they were called trendsetter. In early 1970 middle east raised the price of oil which then affected the people of Detroit because the three big were busy making big fuel consuming trucks and cars. The three big did not see it coming and they continued making fuel consuming cars. Later then Washington blamed Detroit for fuel crisis and air pollution problem. Since the middle eastern countries didn't give enough fuel to the U.S. and people couldn't afford fuel on the over sized vehicle, people then started buying small fuel efficient cars. Japanese were making the best fuel efficient cars at that time. The 3 big were concerned about air pollution and safety standards and were trying to satisfy the politician by showing them new and better designs. Japanese cars were not small and fuel efficient but also they were attractive to the consumers where as American cars were not attractive at all. This is why consumers went for foreign cars rather than Local cars. After failing so miserably, the 3 big tried to come up with something new in their own way. First, the GM invested $50 million trying to come up with an engine called rotary engine "(A rotary engine is an internal combustion engine, like the engine in your car, but it works in a completely different way than the conventional piston engine. In a piston engine, the same volume of space (the cylinder) alternately does four different jobs -- intake, compression, combustion and exhaust)" this is taken from google, but since the engineers were not too smart they failed to make it possible. Japanese at the same time try to build a rotary engine and they successfully made one which they later used those in Mazda's. The auto industry companies started to lay off their workers which later caused racism in the city. Two of the laid off workers killed a Chinese guy outside a bar stating that Chinese are reason why they lost their job. Detroit auto industry was now no more beneficial to Detroit. Instead of bringing money into the city it brought poverty, racism and deaths. To this day, Americans still think that it was Japan who got people laid off in Detroit, but only businessmen knew it wasn't fully them who did it. Cars parts were made in other countries but the cars were being assembled in the United States which means were not foreign foreign. In 1989, GM continued to make excellent sales and made $19 billions of profit but they still laid off their 50,000 workers all in once in 1989 and closed all their plants in Flint and reopened them in Mexico just to cut the labor. Today, only a few people know about the politics that these companies had done. On the other hand, the racial tension was increasing between white and black people. White people did not want to work with black people and black people did not want to work with white. This started a riot which caused workers not go to work. This also caused white population of Detroit to leave the city which then affected the government because the white population of Detroit were the highest tax payers since majority of them were rich. Talk about how world war II ruined the Detroit automobile. When world war II occurred the U.S as a whole stopped the cars production and started making tanks and other equipment that could be used in world war II. The auto industries were definitely not making money from these war equipment and this is why when world war came to an end the U.S was deserted especially Detroit since it was a home of car production. The U.S went to a great depression along with the car making companies after world war II. Later the government had to lend some money to the auto industries in order to get them started again. In conclusion, the city is now left with high crime rate, suicide rate increased, alcoholism rate increased. The people of Detroit left the city and moved to other states. Those who stayed in the city saw the city go empty and they are trying hard to bring back everything that Detroit once had. These people are so determined and still have hope for the better future of Detroit. |
Fun Facts
Detroit in early 1900
Summary of the video above:
|