Auto Plant Tours Gone in Detroit : Closings, Industry Changes Leave Little for Visitors to See

British comedienne Tracey Ullman was in town recently looking for a slice of life of the Motor City--an auto plant tour.

For a look under the industry’s hood, she would have had better luck in Linden, N.J., or Bowling Green, Ky. Auto plant tours in Detroit have gone the way of car fins. The only tour a publicist could arrange quickly was too far from the city to fit into Ullman’s schedule.

The downscaling of the American auto industry following the energy crisis of the 1970s and the foreign import influx helped spell the end of many tours. Company executives deemed the public relations value of ferrying senior citizens and Boy Scouts through their plants to be expendable.

Today, there are no public tours of auto assembly plants within the city, officials of the Big Three auto makers say. Some tours are available at plants in nearby Flint, Pontiac and Ypsilanti.

That is a letdown for visitors to the automotive capital of North America. Ullman, for instance, was hoping to do research for her syndicated television program “The Tracey Ullman Show.”

“I think they’re surprised and somewhat disappointed,” said Mary Ellen McCormick, program planner for Detroit Upbeat, a company offering tours of the area. “So we attempt to show as much of the auto influence by showing the auto baron mansions and by driving past some of the plants. We’re very much up a creek with auto plant tours,” she said.

Plant closings in the area have left little for visitors to see.

Tours at General Motors’ Fleetwood Cadillac plant were discontinued before it closed in December, and tours at GM’s Fiero plant in Pontiac will end soon because that plant is scheduled to close this year.

Still Gets Requests

One of the area’s most popular auto plant tours used to be Ford Motor’s massive Dearborn Rouge complex. The tours were the idea of company founder Henry Ford. There, visitors could see raw materials entering one end of the plant and the finished product driven out the other.

“You could see the ore boats pull up and the steel being made and then go to the assembly plant and see it put together,” said Tom Kish, Ford special projects administrator.

Rouge tours were discontinued in the early 1980s, but that hasn’t ended requests for a look-see at the plant, which now produces the Mustang.

“I get people who call and say, ‘I toured your Rouge plant years ago and it was wonderful. Now I want to show my grandchildren,”’ Ford spokeswoman Judith Muhlberg said.

Ford is considering resuming tours at Rouge and at assembly plants near Detroit in Wayne and Wixom, Ford spokesman Jim Maxwell said.

Most Detroit visitors looking for an auto plant tour are directed to GM’s Buick City plant in Flint, said Colleen Robar, of the Metropolitan Detroit Convention & Visitors Bureau.

There visitors can see the Buick LaSabre assembled during a 90-minute walking tour that includes stops at the stamping area, trim shop, body shop and final assembly area.

About 50,000 people a year tour the plant, said Marcia McGee, of GM’s Flint Automotive division.