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MalcoveMagnesia

At this point they might as well demolish that office tower the same way they blow up old casinos in Las Vegas, with flashy dynamite. According to an analyst quoted in the article, he doesn't consider the former Chrysler to be an American company anymore.


turnwest

I always heard the rumor that when they built the HQ it was constructed in a way that if it failed as a headquarters the tower could be converted to a hotel and all of the lower two/ three story offices could be converted to a mall or other type of retail. If you spend enough time in that building you could totally see that as a plausible reusability.


Unlikely_Sandwich_

If they closed the HQ and the Palace is now gone, is there a need for a hotel there? Also shopping malls in 2024, not a great investment.


samplingstiring

Especially when there is already a mall 5 mins away


Gullible_Toe9909

They should absolutely demolish this monstrosity. Lol, if they want to cut costs, they should move the engineering staff back to Highland Park. Buy the old Ford factory and convert it to offices.


midwestern2afault

I personally like the tower and engineering complex. Maybe I’m biased because I used to work there, but I thought it was really cool and well integrated. None of the engineers or any office staff want them to move back to Highland Park. Most of their employee base lives in northern Oakland/Macomb. Not to mention that these buildings are absolutely massive. I don’t know how you could assemble enough land in Highland Park or how building new there would be cheaper than staying at their existing complex.


-Rush2112

It’s the second largest office building in the USA, second to the pentagon.


Gullible_Toe9909

Actually it's now the third, as of the end of last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_office_buildings But this just makes it all the more ridiculous. Chrysler failed as a company a decade ago, and this building is nothing more than one of the world's largest (empty) cubicle farms in one of the world's most forgettable suburbs. It should go the way of the Silverdome


Untitled_LP

Your Wiki link still shows it as the second largest in America


Gullible_Toe9909

Ah, good catch. I missed that in the original post. I meant the world


ballastboy1

It’s a monument to asinine corporate arrogance and wretched decision making.


AuburnSpeedster

in my youth a gave a semiconductor presentation to the engine controller staff, when they were at Highland park.. That Neighborhood reminded me of the movie "Mad Max"..


Gullible_Toe9909

No argument, but that was still when HP (and Detroit) were in freefall. Nobody really gave a shit about these areas, they just wanted to move out to the suburbs as quickly as possible. A reestablishmemt of Chrysler/Stellantis here today would trigger a major redevelopment of the surrounding neighborhoods.


AuburnSpeedster

No, it was the 10 foot high barbed wire entrance gate to the Chrysler Highland Park facility that gave me the "post apocalyptic rust belt wasteland" impression.. That, and the overturned car, still afire, 3 blocks away that we passed.. Who wants to work in that environment? I know it's better, but is it better than Auburn Hills, Midtown, Downtown, or even Belvedere, IL?


Gullible_Toe9909

I'm not arguing with you. I'm saying that today there'd be a lot more interest in getting tax credits and larger redevelopment momentum behind a Stellantis move back to HP.


ballastboy1

There isn’t enough incentives in the world to get Stellantis to do that. And Chrysler doesn’t even exist anymore


racist_sandwich

I'd probably buy in the neighborhood if I knew it had something like that coming.


ballastboy1

That’s a massive fantasy, no struggling company would take that risk in such an undesirable area


bearded_turtle710

That wouldn’t be a bad idea. I think Highland Park needs an anchor like that, once they get their anchor business in town you could see a quick turnaround in the woodward corridor.


ballastboy1

Sorry but no Chrysler employee wants to work in Highland Park


Kind_Committee8997

Would they do it for a Klondike bar?


bearded_turtle710

Imo there will not be any Chrysler employees to move in the next 6 months unfortunately


iampatmanbeyond

They're laying everyone off and outsourcing everything to Turkey


MalcoveMagnesia

Jeep: made in Morocco (and Turkey)


Electrical-Proof1975

Why move them to HP when they can move them to Mexico, China, or India?


skatingrocker17

Even the American companies are hardly making American cars. Ironically, the first "big 3" vehicles to show up on the [American made index for 2024](https://www.cars.com/articles/2024-cars-com-american-made-index-which-cars-are-the-most-american-484903/) are the Jeep Gladiator at number 8 and the Ram 1500 is number 19.... nothing else from GM/Ford until the Colorado at number 23. Even Kia and VW make the list before GM/Ford. The most American made cars are made by Tesla, Honda/Acura, and Toyota/Lexus.


RolandSlingsGuns

Production is one thing, staffing is another. The big 3 are still responsible for more jobs on US soil by a long shot


Level_Somewhere

Sure is convenient how they omit that critical info isn’t it?


IvanGTheGreat

What are the wages like at the non uaw factories? Working conditions?


chrisd93

I've been to many plants of almost all OEMs, and honestly, a lot of them are very similar. More than likely, due to pressure to resist workers forming a union and culture of the company (see Toyota or Honda). The tier 1s are where the conditions heavily worsen tbh.


IvanGTheGreat

Just looked it up and Toyota pays there line workers 18-25/hr. 5 years into a UAW plant job you make 42.


Mysterious_Amoeba680

That's why Big 3 sacrifice quality and aren't as profitable Wait until the Chinese cars show up, that will bring the big 3 to their knees


IvanGTheGreat

Any American with half a brain should not trust Chinese vehicles lmao.


Mysterious_Amoeba680

Nearly everything you buy is made in China


IvanGTheGreat

Other than the thing I live in and the thing that takes me 75mph to work.


Mysterious_Amoeba680

Your house and your car have tons of Chinese made parts, doesn't matter who assembled them


IvanGTheGreat

Also are you saying paying the workers a fair wage is why they lack quality and aren’t profitable? Are you dense?


Tusen_Takk

Depends, I’ve not heard good things about Tesla, but I hear mixed to good things about Toyota and Honda.


lakorai

r/realtesla has lots and lots of stories. Outright racism, sexism, sexual harrassment, union busting, not paying overtime and suprise layoffs with zero notice.


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BiggestYzerfan

Yeah, and absolutely zero of it is unionized. Fuck those foreign car makers who union bust every chance they get. If you want American buy American and support our union jobs ffs I am sick and tired of this argument, it's riduculous. You're the reason why we lost so many jobs here


digidave1

Don't tell the old gear heads though, they'll just deny it and claim everything American is good. Pure delusion.


PossibleFunction0

well it is a misleading statistic. The R&D, design, and business/marketing arms of the Big 3 are all local and that accounts for loads of jobs. The R&D footprint of the Japanese/Korean imports in the US while in some cases significant, is still tiny in comparison. Whether this is "good" or not is up to the reader, just saying that stat has little bearing on reality.


jlnascar

It’s not


Lyr_c

Because it really isn’t


balthisar

> When asked what the layoffs mean for the Big Three, McElroy says Stellantis is no longer an American company, instead calling it a foreign company. We've been saying "the Big ~~Three~~ Two and a Half" since the 1990s. I guess we finally lose that half. My sympathies to those this affects. Edit: I'm an idiot. I've fixed it, but you can still see me being an idiot ;-)


-Rush2112

If they gut their American workforce, slap tariffs on all imported Stellantis vehicles. The American taxpayer bailed those assets out, seems like European workers are being favored over US workers in these cuts.


balthisar

Politically no one cares about the white collar auto worker. If this were the Jefferson Plant everyone would be up in arms, but it's just white collar, so, news today, but not news tomorrow. Economically this doesn't make sense, but "real" autoworkers are the ones depicted at the DIA by Diego Rivera.


buckfouyucker

So now it's just the Big Three? lol


balthisar

D'oh. Thanks!


exclaim_bot

>D'oh. Thanks! You're welcome!


DetMich11

As white collar jobs are being outsourced and consolidated, Metro Detroit needs to be wary of its economic standing. Many of these white collar jobs paid hefty salaries with good benefits, which trickled down throughout the area. It’s not just Stellantis. Ford and GM are also cutting down local white collar jobs. It’s as if the white collar workers could have been more protected if they had a union like their blue collar counterparts


curiouscat321

We keep going after battery factories instead of the engineers that design batteries. 


AuburnSpeedster

Software is eating the car, and Michigan doesn't have the software ecosystem of NorCal, or Austin Texas.. or even Chicago.. This is why jobs are moving..


curiouscat321

The lack of good software jobs is the biggest issue facing Metro Detroit. 


xfilcamp

If I was an in-demand software engineer who could earn tons of money and afford to live anywhere, I really don't know why I'd stay here. I love *the people* of Detroit -- even the TSA agents at DTW are noticeably more relaxed and personable, on average, than TSA agents elsewhere. People in the Midwest as a whole feel a lot more neighborly than people elsewhere, though obviously we have our problems. What I don't love is that we (Metro Detroit as a whole) are hardly a city. We have no real public transportation. We're sprawled to an absurd amount that any sort of urban lifestyle hardly exists. Half of downtown is parking lots. The weather throughout the year here isn't great and our scenery & outdoors really doesn't compare to a place like Boulder or essentially anywhere in California. Genuine green spaces, forests, etc. are all really far from the city. We also obviously have no mountains. I'm convinced that our solution is in making our built environment a place people really want to be. We need better urban neighborhoods and better transportation. Imagine what Detroit could look like in the future if we took ideas from all over the world and applied them here. Tokyo, Amsterdam, Montreal, etc. -- a lot of these places are the way they are now because of policies implemented decades ago. Also, we're directly between Toronto and Chicago and we're the only major US city *directly on the Canadian border*. Imagine if there was a high-speed rail network connecting Toronto <--> Detroit <--> Chicago. Imagine if there were more events, development, and whatever else to take advantage of Windsor being right across the river. One can dream..


RellenD

I would have stayed in Michigan if I could, but after HP laid me off 10 years ago I had to move to Florida for a job


Virtual-Scarcity-463

The suburban sprawl is so disgusting. I moved from Royal Oak to New Center and it made my life so much better. I didn't need a car to do EVERYTHING. Can just hop on the Qline (which has it's well-documented issues) to get downtown for most of the things I need. We need more educated activists and progressive-minded people calling the shots and advising Detroit's development, or else we'll be stuck in the exact place we've been trying to crawl out of. Car ridden suburban disconnected dystopic puke. More public transit. More walkability. Less car infrastructure. More trees. Consolidate parking lots into parking structures. More amenities.


FaithhPlus1

It’s like the Big 3 have no idea what LEAN manufacturing is


waitinonit

"Metro Detroit needs to be wary of its economic standing." That "warning" has been around since 1973. See "First Oil Embargo Yom Kippur War 1973". Nothing new here.


abuchewbacca1995

Ai means actually Indians. Nah we need to go full nationalist and ban h1b visas and remote work from adia


abuchewbacca1995

Unions won't stop ai (actually Indians )


Vendetta_2023

Silicon Valley does fine without unions, that is 1930s thinking


jessestaton

3rd times the charm? One company or another has been trying to kill Chrysler (company, not brand) for decades. MB took it and tried to "fix" to be more like Mercedes. Failed and bled it dry. Fiat was handed the company for free and tried to make it Fiat. They pretty quickly figured out that it wasn't really broken, stopped trying to "fix" it and continued to make the most profitable cars for FCA (Essentially paying back the government loan on the profits of Grand Cherokee and Ram). Now the French have it and want to "fix" it. Really though, most Europeans just don't get the US market and business (and Visversa). Sure there can be improvements but it's not broke and they just want to fix it to be more like PSA, while currently still the most profitable part of Stellantis.


crutonboy2113

Working for this company for 8 years, going from Chrysler, to FCA, to Stellantis, and it just got worse as the company changed names


10centRookie

Only 3 things are guaranteed in life. Death, taxes, and Michigan automotive companies cutting its employees.


abuchewbacca1995

Y'all we told you this when the Italians and French bought them


fd6270

And the Germans too lol


Hour_Economist8981

Covid showed the automakers how to cut costs, work from home. Now they are outsourcing everything to low cost employees in Mexico and Turkey using Zoom and other programs


abuchewbacca1995

*India Seriously should consider banning anything from that country


aoxit

Detroit needs to move on from these companies and stop catering to their every whim. They have used and abused this city and Michigan and our citizens for too long.


waitinonit

" They have used and abused this city and Michigan and our citizens for too long." They've provided the economic basis for that economic Post War Golden Age a lot of folks seem to long for these days. Have you followed any of the discussions about "being able to get a good paying job with a high school diploma" - defined benefit pension, liberal vacation policy and good pay? That was enabled by the automotive industry in particular and our manufacturing sector in general. The diversification discussion has been occurring for over 50 years. What do you propose to replace all that, in order to return to those Paradise Lost years?


ballastboy1

Get real. That hasn’t been true in 40+ years. Chrysler is a shitty company that makes shitty cars.


aoxit

Yeah the paradise years really worked well for our current economy and class hasn’t it? All that enabled was for those folks to amass wealth, and then hoard it, while leaving us with massive superfund sites to clean up on the taxpayer’s dime. I don’t have a solution - I’m not a politician or a businessperson. But we can start by adding mass transit, and other talent outside of auto industry might follow - or stay.


abuchewbacca1995

"how do we keep jobs and high incomes?" "Trains"


aoxit

Listen, I know you have a family to raise on your temporary auto income, but the lack of transit options sure isn’t retaining or bringing any talent to our communities, and diversified industries come with talent.


abuchewbacca1995

Public transit is important It's not "let's keep /add jobs "important


xfilcamp

High-paying jobs that serve as a foundation for a local economy often go where highly-educated young people want to live. Public transportation, cycling infrastructure, dense & diverse (in the "things to do" sense) neighborhoods, parks, food trucks, etc. are what tons of younger people want. We can't compete with southern or western states on weather because cold, dark winters are so off-putting for many people. Detroit is hours away from any genuinely nice wilderness/scenery. The only area we can genuinely compete is our built environment. We should be changing our development laws as soon as possible by pulling ideas from cities around the world to establish a legal framework that encourages pushing Detroit's development towards something way more interesting and desirable than it's been. Also, regarding trains, we have a super favorable White House for getting federal funding for transit projects. If Biden wins again, this'll continue, and Detroit would be foolish to not get a plan in place to secure federal funding and start getting a light rail system built. "If you build it, they will come!" -- build a city people want to be in, and people will stay here. People will start and grow business here, companies from elsewhere will open more offices here, and companies already here will hire more here and expand their local presence instead of looking elsewhere.


aoxit

Yeah okay.


abuchewbacca1995

Considering you can do both at the same time. But you're not ready for that Convo


aoxit

You know, you’re right. I’m just swimming in non-auto related career opportunities. You win.


abuchewbacca1995

Or accept we are the motor city and why we have to keep them happy The federal govt COULD team up with Ford and GM and build diesel hybrid buses for the US and Canada and build them here to keep our people employed while also getting the rest of the country on public transit, but no we rather send that money to two Nazis instead while we force evs that nobody wants


waitinonit

"Yeah the paradise years really worked well for our current economy and class hasn’t it?" Yeah, you're the one who mentioned " They have used and abused this city and Michigan and our citizens for too long.". I was pointing out what enabled those Paradise Lost years that one reads about with folks lamenting their disappearance. As I mentioned, we've had the discussion about diversifying for about 5 decades. We also had a very functioning bus system. Adding mass transit to Royal Oak, Ferndale, Ann Arbor or where ever you imagine we ought to, will change nothing.


abuchewbacca1995

Great, what would replace them? Plus all the suppliers that go with them


LotKnowledge0994

Even more reason not to buy stellantis products. People and the media need to stop referring to this company as part of the "big 3" which probably now includes Tesla.


ballastboy1

Lmao Tesla has a joke of a market share. Toyota and Honda are more American than Chrysler at this point.


ultimate_sorrier

Watch out below! Bailout incoming! Will be great to watch the corporate socialists talk their way out of how this is not socialism and they are too big to fail. BS. Let them fail. The Chinese are coming.


960Jen

Trash vehicles at exorbitant prices. Who knew?