My visit to the Detroit Public Library

[Carmine]

Went there to do some research on my "Dodge Sundance", the results of which I will reveal in that thread. In this one, I'll talk about the little side journeys you find when you start exploring...

A friend-of-a-friend told me that there was some info about my car in Detroit's National Historic Automobile Collection, which is held by the Detroit Public Library system. The actual collection is housed at the older downtown branch. On Tuesdays, they bring the info to the Woodward branch. You used to be able to go directly to the old branch, but I'm guess staff and budget cuts have put an end to that.

As it turns out, I think he was mistaking my car for that year's Polara Spring Special. At any rate, after I searched their '73 Dodge specific information, I started looking for information on the '73 Detroit auto show (which was held in November '72 back then, not January as it is now). I found local newspaper coverage which I will post in the other thread.

But... The most fun toy they had to play with were the PDF scans of every page of the Detroit Free Press from something like 1899-1999! They also had the NY Times, but only text versions of specific articles (not as fun, but still interesting). So first off, here are some shots of the building and the room inside the library where you receive the info from the staff. It's actually the genealogy research room. It smells like 1963, as does the rest of the library.(Built in 1863, major renovation 100 years later) Sort of bittersweet... It's sad that they barely spend a dime on this place, but that has also kept it a time-capsule. It's clean and functional; just old. Just looking at the architecture and danish modern furniture is cool.

In the photo below you can see the old-timey car artwork things that used to be on the 3rd floor, back when the NHAC was at the Woodward branch (probably in '63)

So in playing around with their computers, I started looking for my name in the Free Press & NY Times... then I remembered I kept it anonymous back then. (Haven't read them in 22 and 16 years). Found two interesting article from the era. Amazing and chilling how right this guy got it back then. You'll have to click the PDF...

 

[Carmine]

I'll have to do this one as a cut/paste... Notice how the NY Times writer injects "xenophobia", racism, etc. to try and shut down legitimate concern, and how the Daimler execs also use it to their advantage. The UAW leadership were clueless, out-witted morons back then as well. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Cutbacks by Daimler leave a bitter residue at Chrysler

Micheline Maynard

The New York Times. (Apr. 11, 2001): L, Business News: pC4.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com

When word emerged a month ago that Chrysler burned through $5 billion in cash last year, the radio talk show host David Newman wondered aloud what had happened. ''How can money disappear like that?'' he asked on the local powerhouse, WJR-AM. ''I simply didn't know, and I still don't know.''


But his callers knew where to lay blame: at Chrysler's German parent, DaimlerChrysler A.G. Speculation flew that management had siphoned away the money to help keep its Japanese partner, Mitsubishi, afloat and to pay for projects at Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart.


As the often xenophobic debate spread to the Internet and in the local media, Chrysler officials said the cash was depleted by declining auto sales, higher-than-expected rebates and an unplanned expense connected with vehicle introductions.


''There was no jumbo jet landing at Detroit Metro with pallets of money being shipped back to Japan and Germany,'' Chrysler's chief operating officer, Wolfgang Bernhard, said.


The episode illustrates the lingering resentment here over Chrysler's German superiors, who took control after the $39 billion deal that joined the Chrysler Corporation with Daimler-Benz in 1998.


DaimlerChrysler is about to hold its annual meeting in Berlin. The session follows a recent forecast that revenue will fall 13 percent this year and operating profit as much as 75 percent, dragged down by Chrysler.


The anti-German sentiment in and around Auburn Hills, Mich., where Chrysler is based, is complicating efforts by managers there to stem Chrysler's operating losses -- $1.8 billion last year -- and to make the company competitive again. ''Being German adds an additional challenge,'' said Mr. Bernhard, who, along with the Chrysler division's new chief, Dieter Zetsche, had been imported from Stuttgart.


The hostility, which stirs anew with each spate of bad Chrysler news, brings to mind the Japan-bashing of the early 1980's, when Japanese automakers took sales from American rivals. That fervor reached a peak of sorts in 1982, when a Chinese-American, Vincent Chin, was killed by patrons in a local bar who thought he was Japanese.


By contrast, no one has threatened metropolitan Detroit's more than a million people of German descent.


''No violence -- it's been more or less verbalized,'' said Eugene C. Strobel Jr., founding president of the German-American Heritage Foundation International.


The debate takes place in doughnut shops, on radio shows and on Internet message boards.


''Dump Schrempp Now!'' a posting on Yahoo's DaimlerChrysler board said last week, referring to the parent company's chief executive, Jurgen E. Schrempp. ''Where's my stockholder value -- from $108 to $45 -- that's real German engineering, ya?'' [sic] The American shares, which began trading in October 1998 around $82, are now a little shy of $50.


It was this sort of resentment that Mr. Schrempp had hoped to prevent with a strategy created ahead of the Chrysler deal. It included two corporate teams, three outside public relations firms, a memorial to World War II slave laborers and gifts to all employees of both companies.


In DaimlerChrysler's first year, more than 1,000 Chrysler employees signed up for company-sponsored German-language lessons or cultural awareness classes. But such enthusiasm soon disappeared, along with virtually all of Chrysler's American senior management, including Robert J. Eaton, the chairman who forged the deal with Mr. Schrempp, and Thomas Stallkamp, the first Chrysler president after the merger. The new managers' rapid move to cut 26,000 jobs, key to the turnaround plan, inflamed a raw wound.


''There are a lot of people who feel Chrysler would have been better off alone,'' a recently retired manager of a Chrysler parts supplier said. The deepest resentment was aimed at Mr. Schrempp, who, in a November interview in The Financial Times, said he had never intended the deal to be a ''merger of equals.''


Soon after, DaimlerChrysler ousted the second postmerger president, James P. Holden, and installed Mr. Zetsche and Mr. Bernhard. Though they are the only top managers sent from Germany, the moves generated dismay.


Mr. Newman, the talk show host, said he had been taken aback by the vitriol of his callers. Some even equated the new management with Nazis. ''I have a shiver of embarrassment about it,'' he said. He has encouraged callers to take a more civil tone.


Others have followed suit. The Detroit Free Press columnist Doron Levin has since written a conciliatory column, and he was upbeat about Chrysler in a speech to the Economic Club of Detroit.


The creator of ChryslerTakeover.com says he removes postings with ethnic disparagements from the site. But the man, who works in Chrysler's product-testing operations, and refused to provide his name for fear of losing his job, remains contemptuous of management. ''They are really playing right into the stereotype of the arrogant German manager,'' he said, by laying off workers en masse soon after they took charge.


Mr. Zetsche and Mr. Bernhard say they recognize the need to address such feelings. Among other efforts, they often eat in the employee cafeteria and regularly stroll down to visit managers in the enormous technical center, instead of summoning them to the executive tower.


Lately, support for Chrysler management has come from a perhaps improbable quarter, the United Auto Workers. Two decades ago, the U.A.W. barred Japanese cars from its headquarters parking lot. But last week, the union's president, Stephen P. Yokich, who sits on the DaimlerChrysler supervisory board, said he did not think that Chrysler would have survived its financial troubles as an independent company.


Nate Gooden, the union's vice president for DaimlerChrysler employees, added, ''I think the American people had the wrong perception when the Germans came over.'' Under the U.A.W. contract, workers who are laid off receive virtually full pay and benefits until the pact expires in 2003. And improving sales, Mr. Gooden said, might eliminate the need for some job cuts.


Mr. Bernhard and Mr. Zetsche agree that financial recovery is the antidote to what Mr. Zetsche calls the ''German passport issue.''


''When we get the first signs of success,'' Mr. Bernhard said, ''this stuff will die.''

 

[70bigblockdodge]

That is chilling and proves that there are journalist that actually know stuff.
Also shows that corporate management that is placed and not fully vested in the buildup of a company, will take the money and run just like a common thief everytime.

 

[live4theking]

Interesting reads, fleeced by Europe. How many of their countries have we defended and bailed out of horrible situations? Too many.

 

[Beep Beep Dave]

Thanks for posting. I would be interested in any Lynch Rd articles that you could find. I read one awhile ago about the day it suddenly closed.

Dave

 

[commando1]

Mercedes-Benz USA Reports Best Year Ever With 2016 Sales Of 380,752 Units
Mercedes-Benz USA Reports Best Year Ever With 2016 Sales Of 380,752 Units


Fiat Chrysler U.S. sales fall 10% in December
Fiat Chrysler U.S. sales fall 10% in December

And in perspective...
http://jalopnik.com/5532706/chrysler-europe---simca-and-rootes-including-hillman-singer-and-humber

 

[1978 NYB]

Any historical articles of Detroit are very interesting.

 

[commando1]

Any historical articles of Detroit are very interesting.

Hell, you can spend the rest of your life just reading about the real Henry Ford alone!! The man possesed a smidgen of just about every evil character trait imaginable.