FAREWELL SSR AND LANSING CRAFT CENTER

By Steve Purdy
TheAutoChannel Detroit Bureau

As I write these words a family is loosing its home - a big family of about 400 folks - and they’ve been together a long time. We’re going to see more and more of these families losing their homes as the US auto industry shrinks to match waning market share. But the family I’m talking about is a special one that has populated the storied Lansing Craft Center for many years making some of GM’s best specialty products.

Today the last Chevy SSR hot rod convertible pickup, in two-tone black and silver, quietly rumbled through final assembly at the Craft Center on its way to the GM Heritage Center, GM’s corporate museum, in Sterling Heights, Michigan. The last-but-one, in the same two-tone colors, is destined for a dealer auction, so start saving your pennies and watch where it goes. You may find some of the others of this last batch at your favorite Chevy dealer.

Way more than the 400 current workers gathered around a small makeshift stage since retirees (or should we call them alumni), spouses and a few friends were invited. A large screen played a video of short interviews with SSR owners and enthusiasts thanking the workers and lauding the sexy vehicle. There were smiles and hugs and a few tears much like we would expect at a large graduation ceremony. The atmosphere was not funeral-like nor was any animosity in evidence. Near the rear of the crowd I spotted a tall skinny fellow with a scruffy beard and droopy mustache, camouflage baseball cap and pony tail. There was something unnatural about the inverted shape of his mustache. Then I realized his chin was scrunched up and quivering as one of the SSR owners on the screen thanked him and his colleagues for building their dream car. Though he appeared a bit too macho for such emotions he was not immune to the melancholy wafting through the crowd.

Brief speeches by the plant manger, Rick Heithaus, and his bosses, manufacturing manager Larry Zahner, and Joe Spielman GM VP of manufacturing, reassured the family that they are highly respected within the company and they did the best job possible, satisfying all the folks who wanted an SSR. It’s just too bad there weren’t more people wanting the vehicle.

Lots of interesting history went into making the Craft Center what it is. The patch of wetland upon which this plant sits was called Bogus Swamp in the early part of the last century. It was home, they say, to a local counterfeiting operation here on the western edge of Michigan’s capitol city. It became a factory in the teens and over the years has seen a lot of manufacturing, from its beginning as a foundry, to making Briggs airplanes in the 30s. Ransom E. Olds bought the plant in the early 40 but left it idle until 1943 when it was completely rebuilt in just 8 month and tooled up for WW II production of artillery shells. GM bought the factory in the late 40s using it for machining differentials in the mid 60s and a variety of innovative projects including experimental scrap utilization project in the 70s.

In the late 80s GM turned the foundry into the Reatta (name later change to the Lansing) Craft Center in an innovative attempt to build automobiles in an entirely different way, without the traditional assembly line. Instead, automated carts took the car from station to station where teams of workers did a variety of jobs before sending it on to the next station. Of course the workers from United Auto Workers Local 1618 had to make that happen with flexibility of contract rules and a sincere desire to be innovative themselves – not something unions had been known for previously. The car was the graceful Buick Reatta. Thus began the Craft Center and the Craft Center family.

The Reatta was a lovely, high-quality, little two-seater. My pretty blonde drove her soft white one for 11 years and loved it dearly. With the Series III 3800 V6 engine of about 160 horsepower and automatic transmission it was meant to be a personal luxury car and it appealed primarily to up-scale, middle-aged female customers. It was panned in the enthusiast press for not being sportier, faster and more agile, but it wasn’t designed to be a sports car. The Reatta lasted from the 1988 model year into the ’91 with a convertible being introduced in ’90. The Reatta was not the sales success GM had hoped and in ’91 another innovative product needed a home.

Each time the Craft Center lost a product a new one was found. This time the Impact and EV1 electric car was on GM’s front burner. From ’91 to ’96 the EV1 was developed and revised but the public wasn’t quite ready for the sacrifices an electric car required. After all, as one engineer put it, the EV1 was a very fast and agile car with what amounted to a 500-pound fuel system with a range the equivalent of about 4 gallons of gasoline, even less if the AC was running.

Simultaneously, in the mid 90s, the Craft Center, in partnership with ASC (formerly American Sun Roof), took the popular, low-priced Chevy Cavalier and Pontiac Sunfire and made them into convertibles. Then, from 2000 to 2002 the Cadillac Eldorado high-line coupe graced the production floor.

Finally, the SSR, or Super Sport Roadster, first delivered to customers in May of 2003, became the Craft Center’s crowning glory. Initial marketing thrust included the SSR pacing the fabled Indianapolis 500 with Herb Fishel from GM Racing at the wheel. Is it a roadster? Not in the usual sense. Is it a sports car? Most sports car aficionados would say “not really.” Is it a pickup truck? Well, sort of. Is it cool? I say, “Yes, waaaaay cool.” Though it lasted in production just less than 3 years and less than 25,000 total units, Chevrolet and General Motors deserve a lot of credit for having the courage to produce this retro-themed, innovative, halo car.

Essentially a hot rod with a warranty, the SSR comes with the same 6.0-liter V8 that powers the Corvette and the GTO. With about 400-horsepower, six-speed manual or automatic transmission and all the performance one could want. The innovative retractable hard top slides vertically into the well behind the cockpit and in front of the practical pickup bed, which is covered with a hard cargo cover. Styling is meant to evoke an image of an early 50s Chevy pickup brought into the modern age and hot rodded. It is bold, brash and certainly unlike anything else on the road.

ASC was a partner in this venture as well. The trailblazer chassis was shortened about six inches by ACS. Many of the other substructures were also been done off site. ASC dressed the engine, assembled the steel body panels, put together the engine compartment, assembled the unique folding hardtop “stack” and did many other tasks. In fact, ACS made 3000 of the 7000 welds it took to do this vehicle. The Craft Center folks put it all together with impeccable quality and pride.

With speeches and videos finished one more item of business remained: to give away one of the three identical “Pacific Blue Metalic” SSRs lined up near the stage. Days earlier three names had been drawn at random from the roster of Craft Center employees. Those three were called to the stage by master of ceremonies, Don Pierce (Craft Center veteran, UAW activist and natural entertainer) who made a game show out of the presentation. The three lucky fellows simultaneously stuck their hands in a bag grabbing one of the three numbered balls within and then each, in order of their ball number, chose one of the three SSRs, two of which were rigged not to start. With contestants seated in the vehicles the signal was given to start them up, and as planned only one burst to life. The winner was Roger Chase, another plant veteran, who had already decided to take retirement beginning in a few weeks.

With “Happy Trails” playing on the sound system the diaspora of the Craft Center family began. UAW Local 1618 chairman, Mike Knox, and plant manager, Rick Heithaus, have not given up on finding a new product though. After all, that unique plant has a history of innovation, excellent labor-management relations, and impeccable quality. Though the plant is too small to do the new Camaro, perhaps another rear-drive, low-volume specialty vehicle will come. But will it be too late? The family will be spread out through other GM plants, on to retirement or off to other ventures.

There will be family reunions, in fact one is already being planned for August, but it will never be the same.

The SSR enthusiasts are as fanatic about their marque as any you’ll ever find. Check out their Web site at ssrfanatic.com.

© Steve Purdy, Shunpiker Productions