By
Paul Niedermeyer– Posted on July 15, 2020
In around 1987, AMC was building Chrysler M-Body cars in its Kenosha plant. As had been the case at Nash and AMC almost forever, the body plant was across town from the assembly plant, hence bodies have been trucked through town…almost forever.
Here’s some from an earlier time:
And it wasn’t just Nash.
Hudson did this too, sideways, even.
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Paul Mittermaier
Posted July 15, 2020 at 2:15 PM
I believe AMC’s main Body Plant was actually in Milwaukee (large complex on East Capitol Drive), and they were shipped to the Kenosha Assembly plant, which was probably a 40 minute drive on a good day. Doesn’t sound super-efficient, but it worked for decades! I know several old-timers who worked at the Body Plant.
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Bias PlyPosted July 16, 2020 at 4:08 PM
That is my understanding as well. Imagine those pristine new car bodies being trucked down to Kenosha on a nice salty Wisconsin winter day. They got a chance to start rusting before they were even assembled.
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Teddy
Posted July 15, 2020 at 2:29 PM
Sure doesn’t sound efficient through a 2020 perspective, but the car carriers look neat. Guess the cars would be cleaned before the various parts attached and I assume those Diplomats are already painted.
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CJinSD
Posted July 15, 2020 at 2:31 PM
At least they’re painted. It took them a long time to figure that part out on the other side of the pond.
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Eric703
Posted July 15, 2020 at 2:40 PM
Here’s a 1961 picture from inside the body plant of Rambler bodies waiting to be loaded onto the truck for transportation to the assembly plant:
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Posted July 15, 2020 at 2:58 PM
At least by the M body era the hoods and front fenders were being painted as part of the bodies instead of separately. I have long noticed the way the paint on old Studebakers’ hoods and front fenders is far less durable than what is on the rest of the bodies – which appear to have been painted like those Nashes and Hudsons – sans doghouses.
The guy at Hudson who suggested loading them onto the trucks sideways – I hope he got a bonus!
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StevePosted July 17, 2020 at 5:48 PM
The guy at Hudson who suggested loading them onto the trucks sideways – I hope he got a bonus!
That could be done in Detroit, because the city made certain streets extra wide to accommodate the body trucks. Cadillac bodies were still being trucked several blocks until the Clark St plant was closed in the 80s.
Fancy a new Chrysler? These bodies are arriving at the old Jefferson Ave plant, now the site of Jefferson North, which builds Grand Cherokees, from the Briggs Mack Ave body plant, which is now the site of the two former Chrysler engine plants which are being rebuilt as an assembly plant to build more Grand Cherokees.
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G. Poon
Posted July 15, 2020 at 3:55 PM
I have to think the Chrysler-AMC deal was already in the works when those 1987 M-bodies were getting their ride to Kenosha. The deal was consummated in March 1987.
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Hardboiled Eggs and Nuts
Posted July 15, 2020 at 4:20 PM
I can just imagine the Japanese auto executives saying “They do what?”
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not4onePosted July 16, 2020 at 9:08 AM
So true…it looks like a quality control disaster waiting to happen. From where I sit (knowing next to nothing about auto manufacturing) it seems like a microcosm of the thinking that just let the Japanese walk right through the 80’s taking market share.
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TheMann
Posted July 15, 2020 at 4:21 PM
Looks like some soon-to-be Police cars, maybe, because of the colors.
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nlpntPosted July 15, 2020 at 6:41 PM
At the other end of the spectrum, iirc silver, white and dark blue were all popular Fifth Avenue colors.
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Scoutdude
Posted July 15, 2020 at 5:23 PM
The one of the Hudsons sideways brings to mind the Toyota truck beds that were made in California and trucked north to meet up with the trucks at the Port of Tacoma. More than once on a trip to or from CA I’d see trucks with a similar style trailer loaded full of beds, often in pairs. It wouldn’t be unusual to see multiple sets of trucks on a trip. This was of course done to circumvent the Chicken Tax. My guess is the reason for concentrated groups was that the stock piled them at the plant in CA and then sent a stream of trucks with beds to meet the ship with the needed number.
I want to say the trailers were set up to carry 5 tiers of beds.
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Bob B.Posted July 16, 2020 at 9:07 AM
Back in the late 80’s I worked nights in Hawthorne and used to see 2-3 truckloads of Toyota beds heading north on the 405 most every night.
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dmanPosted July 16, 2020 at 9:18 AM
Were all California-built mini’s married to the beds in Tacoma, or just for certain regions? I’m wondering if that was the source for the Tacoma name for the mini-truck replacement. I always thought Tacoma was an unusual choice for a model name; no offense to residents, but it’s not a famous or exotic location like Biarritz or even Tahoe or Silverado.
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ScoutdudePosted July 16, 2020 at 7:43 PM
I thought I read many years ago that yes it was in part due to the fact that was the port of entry for at least a good portion of the pickups that had followed and was technically the point of final assembly for those trucks.
Being from the Seattle area, I thought it was a terrible time because the Aroma of Tacoma was still quite strong at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aroma_of_Tacoma To me it said our truck stinks. The crime rate was also near its peak around that time.
Since then they have done a fair amount of reduction of the industrial smells, but of course not much can be done about the organic ones. The city has undergone a revitalization too. Many of the vacant crumbling buildings at the city core have been repaired or replaced and lots of business have filled them. Many of the houses that you couldn’t give away in the 90’s have been brought back to their glory and command good money.
Bob B.
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Erik
Posted July 15, 2020 at 5:30 PM
The Nash truck is fantastic.
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G. Poon
Posted July 15, 2020 at 7:58 PM
According to a friend who worked at AMC 1959-1969:
“Bodies were made in Milwaukee and then in the ‘50s the Simmons mattress factory closed (went down south where the labor was cheaper) and AMC took it over as a body plant. That was the ‘lakefront plant’; the main factory where bodies and engines were built and there were two final assembly lines was in the middle of town. If I’m not mistaken, when I was there bodies were built in all three locations. I worked in both Kenosha plants.”
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BuzzDog
Posted July 15, 2020 at 9:18 PM
It still amazes me that AMC was able to assemble M-body cars – and sell them to Chrysler at a profit – for less than Chrysler was able to assemble them themselves.
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cjiguyPosted July 15, 2020 at 10:27 PM
Really? Wow that is interesting, if you think. Capacity issue?
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G. PoonPosted July 16, 2020 at 1:16 AM
I’m not sure that AMC did it for LESS, but Chrysler wanted the St. Louis plant (where that rear-drive, transverse torsion bar platform had been built from the start as the F-body Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare) to be converted to produce minivans. I understand that at first the M-body was to be discontinued but the cars were still very popular, the Dodge and Plymouth in fleets, and the Chrysler Fifth Avenue as a luxury car with sales of 100,000 for three years running. With the tooling all amortized long before, the profits were also very high. The buck and gate system by which the F-Body had been built at St. Louis was relatively easy to transfer to another plant, with Chrysler providing all the components and AMC doing assembly.
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principaldanPosted July 16, 2020 at 6:33 AM
I recall having read that Chrysler considered AMCs assembly quality to be very good. You can deride the quality of the individual pieces but AMC did a great job of screwing it together.
cjiguy
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Dan Cluley
Posted July 15, 2020 at 10:42 PM
I think GM continued to do this in Lansing until the Fisher Body plant closed around 2005. Bodies were built at the Verlinden st plant, and final assembly was the old Olds plant about 5-10 minutes away. The trailers were enclosed, but didn’t have doors on the rear, so you could see half finished N body noses rolling through neighborhoods every few minutes.
At one point Kaiser had an assembly plant on the west coast, but the bodies were all built at Willow Run. They had special A frame racks built, so they could ship bodies on railroad flat cars. I think it was 12 shells in two rows, firewall down and bottom to bottom.
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derKommissarPosted July 16, 2020 at 7:57 AM
They did indeed. I remember the same sights.
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polistra
Posted July 16, 2020 at 2:14 AM
Nash semi! The tow-truck version of that Nash truck is familiar, but I’ve never seen a semi-tractor version. Raises yet again the question of why Nash didn’t try to market the truck domestically, since they were already manufacturing it in quantity.
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JimdandyPosted July 16, 2020 at 7:10 AM
I’ve been trying to grasp the theory of operation for the M trailer, but it hasn’t clicked yet; specially for the two bodies in the belly.
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Jimdandy
Posted July 16, 2020 at 7:11 AM
I’ve been trying to grasp the theory of operation for the M trailer, but it hasn’t clicked yet; specially for the two bodies in the belly.
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GearheadDave
Posted July 16, 2020 at 7:47 AM
Ferrari does this today. Bodies are built and painted at Scaglietti (a Ferrari subsidiary) in Modena and trucked across town to the final assembly hall at Ferrari’s sprawling industrial campus in Maranello.
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Glenn
Posted July 16, 2020 at 10:57 AM
I believe Ford did this with the Econoline van between Lorain and Avon Lake, Ohio plants
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Roger Carr
Posted July 16, 2020 at 1:28 PM
A common practice in the UK as well, especially for BMC and Rootes. Rootes bodies were often pressed, assembled and painted at, for example, Pressed Steel in Cowley or Rootes’s pressings operation in London and trucked to Coventry for assembly. Triumph were similar, from Fisher and Ludlow in Birmingham to Coventry
Pressed Steel at Cowley (now the MINI site) pressed and assembled for many, from Hillman to Rolls and Jaguar, and the takeover by BMC in 1965 was a major factor in the amalgamation of the industry and contributed to the decline of Rootes.
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xr7
Posted July 16, 2020 at 6:59 PM
Some of this also goes on with the heavy truck business, cabs and hoods built in different plants and trucked to the assembly plant.
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Steve
Posted July 17, 2020 at 6:00 PM
And another truckload in the 70s.
Chatted with a guy who worked at the plant in the 70s. They were still trucking bodies from Milwaukee. There was a storage lot a few blocks from the assembly plant where the body trucks would wait until signaled by a light system to deliver to the plant. He said that they did get some days off in the winter, when the weather was too bad for the body trucks to make it from Milwaukee.
I toured Kenosha assembly in 75. At the head of the line was a large room full of bodies on dollies, A couple guys would select the next body to be finished, and push the dolly to the head of the line. A person at a computer terminal at the head of the line would punch some codes into the computer system so the right parts would be fed to the line in sequence, as they were running Matadors and Hornets mixed on the line.
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Steve
Posted July 17, 2020 at 6:19 PM
The Alliance body used a different assembly system than the AMC and older Mopar products, aka “modern”. A new body assembly and paint line was set up in the Lakefront plant for the Alliance program, and adopted to produce the Omni/Horizon after Chrysler took over.
A month before Assembly ops in Kenosha were shut down in 88, a guy in plant maintenance went through the entire Lakefront body line with his camcorder.
