Highland Park

The name Highland Park doesn't refer to a Scottish Castle, but rather to the home of the Ford Motor Company. The facility was opened in 1910 in the small city of Highland Park, Michigan, near motown itself Detroit.

Groundbreaking in its day, the 62 acre Highland Park was spacious and much imitated by production plants that followed. The world famous Ford Assembly Line was put into practice at Highland Park in 1913 enabling Ford to produce many more cars than the old fashioned way which resembled job production.

The factory installation also houses a foundry, scores of offices and a power plant.

Eventually Ford moved car production away sometime in the late 1920s, but the legend of Highland Park was well and truly established. Assembling tractors continued though at HP.

From inception, the four-story Highland Park factory was organised from top to bottom. Car assembly began on the fourth floor, where body panels were hammered out, down to the third floor, where workers placed tyres on wheels and painted the car bodywork.

After assembly was completed on the second floor, the brand new cars such as the Model T drove down a ramp past first-floor offices. Ford’s car production increased by 100 percent, from 19,000 in 1910, to 34,500 in 1911, to a staggering 78,440 in 1912.

Ford was obsessed with every person in the USA having a car. He kept on lowering prices to the customers as he himself made savings on production costs. Ford actually slashed his own profits in order to keep sales rising. The Model T was selling in 194 for $99, when five years earlier it had been going fo $220. Market skimming in action?

However, sales kept rising through the roof, hitting a remarkable 248,000 in 1913 and in 1914 his market share of the American market was a near monopolistic 48 percent.

Currently Highland Park is the home of the Henry Ford Museum.