1959 Ford Galaxie

Throughout the 1950s, car designers in Detroit stretched and expanded their vehicles in all dimensions while applying ever more extravagant chrome decoration.  Every piece of trim and every bodywork moulding was designed to emphasise the sense of horizontality. This brochure depended on the talents of illustrators to bring the car to life and inspire some excitement in the reader.  Photography still had its limitations - an accomplished illustrator could subtly glamourise the product with discreet exaggeration and an imaginative way with colour.  A wedding theme runs through the imagery and we see the menfolk drool over the external finish while the women are swooning over the spacious interior.  There’s a touch of Hollywood about the wide-screen visualisation that places the viewer inside the vehicle while the ethereal bridesmaids dance in attendance.  Detroit was a city of ad agencies that specialised in serving the auto industry and the illustrators they engaged would often go on to stellar careers elsewhere, armed with the depth of their experience in keeping one step ahead of the camera with their transcendent visions of automobile perfection. By launching the car as the Galaxie, Ford was capitalising on public interest in the space race - galactic space is the infinity of space. The name survived for 15 years until it was retired in 1974. 1959 Ford models would go on to win a gold medal at the Brussels World Fair for styling elegance - an unusual accolade for Detroit industry.

 

Usines Renault

For many decades, two of France’s major car manufacturers operated factories in the west of Paris. Citroën built a factory at Javel on the left bank of the Seine near Pont Mirabeau. Founder, André Citroën was an early visitor to Ford in Detroit and enthusiastically adopted Ford production methods. New cars rolled off the assembly lines from 1915 to 1975. No trace of the factory remains and the site is now occupied by the Parc André Citroën. Just over 3 miles further west was the Renault Billancourt factory, situated on the Île Seguin, an island in the river Seine. Louis Renault bought the island in 1919 and after raising the ground level by 6 metres a massive 5-storey assembly plant was constructed between 1929 and 1934, by which time the factory was the island rather than on the island. The facility shown in these postcards is what it replaced. Photographs show the new building appearing to float in the Seine like a clumsily formed passenger liner. At its peak almost 10,000 workers were employed and production ended in 1992 by which time the green field Renault factory at Flins (25 miles north west of Paris), established in 1952, was large enough to absorb the additional volume of production.

Louis Renault was a partial convert to Fordism. Like Ford he diversified production to include commercial vehicles, luxury cars, aero engines and railway equipment. Like Ford he built his own coal-fired power station in the interests of self-sufficiency and was obsessed with controlling every aspect of production. Unlike Ford, he constructed a wide range of vehicles in the same factory and dedicated assembly lines were only introduced in 1950 when the factory at Flins was opened. During the Occupation, production was commandeered by the German war machine and the factory’s conspicuous position in the river Seine made it an easy target for the RAF in 1942. Louis Renault was an abrasive, domineering character and an implacable enemy of trade unions. He had an audience with Hitler in 1938 and was heard to denounce his rival, André Citroën in grossly Anti-Semitic language. Renault cooperated fully with the Vichy regime and his factories supplied the Wehrmacht with copious volumes of vehicles and weaponry - after the Liberation he was arrested and charged with collaboration. Still awaiting trial, he died ignominiously in Fresnes prison in autumn 1944.

Aspiring professional photographer, Robert Doisneau was employed at Billancourt at the age of 22, from 1934 to 1939 as an in-house advertising and publicity photographer - a gallery of his images can be seen here. Some of his photos were choreographed for advertising purposes but most are highly accomplished exercises in the documentary tradition. They cover the whole range of activities from the forge to the foundry, from the factory floor via the staff canteen to the sanatorium. By Doisneau’s own account (Renault in the Thirties, Dirk Nishen, 1990) this was not the sinecure I fondly imagined. One of three “strolling photographers” on the payroll, he had to lug around 20 kilos of kit, including an 18 by 24 plate camera. Snapshots were not an option and most assignments involved considerable planning. A major lesson learned was never to photograph the workforce when they were on a snack break. Another lesson was to stay on good terms with the fork truck drivers whose assistance was invaluable in pursuit of elevated vantage points. Doisneau was not the only unexpected employee at Billancourt. From late 1934 to summer 1935 the young French philosopher, Simone Weil worked there incognito to experience proletarian labour at first hand. She worked in the drilling department and quickly discovered the tyranny of piece work. It was a punishing way for someone so notoriously frail as Weil to identify with working class life. By way of relaxation her next adventure was to sign up for the Spanish Civil War and enlist with the anarchist Durutti Column.

Since the factory closure in 1992 the island has seen various development schemes come and go. Demolition of the factory was rapid and left behind an island scraped raw on which nothing stood or grew. Thus far the only completed building is a concert venue, Cité Musicale which opened in 2017. Jean Nouvel and Rem Koolhaas have presented masterplans but little else seems to have happened. For almost a century the Île Seguin was an industrial citadel and the departure of the factory represented an immense opportunity to develop it as a social community asset. Unfortunately the investment priorities of late capitalism don’t favour the kind of imaginative approach that might have led to a permanent enhancement in the lives of all local residents. Inflated land values are the ultimate determinant and the future looks to be one of piecemeal commercial development as and when the figures can be shown to produce an acceptable return.

Choosing a new car – 1928

1928 was the last full year of boom time prosperity in the US economy before the Wall Street Crash the following October. It was the decade in which the auto industry was consolidating into three major players – General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. Madison Avenue was hard at work persuading motorists to buy new cars while manufacturers were introducing a plethora of new models and special features to attract new business. The link between choice of vehicle and social status was embedded in the public consciousness. This is a selection of models on sale in 1928 as advertised to the readers of mass circulation magazines. Some brands would not outlast the Great Depression (Stearns-Knight, Pierce-Arrow, Marmon) but more than a few can still be found on sale today.

Transparent Factory, Dresden

Dresden's Transparent Factory (Die Gläserne Manufaktur) was built in 2002 for Volkswagen to a design by Gunter Henn, just less than a mile from the city centre in a corner of the Großer Garten at Straßburger Platz. Not strictly a factory, more of an assembly plant. No foundry, no metal bashing, no casting or forging. All the heavy work takes place 80 miles away in the city of Zwickau where VW inherited the former Trabant factory after the demise of the DDR. Vehicle components and chassis are shipped to a logistics centre in Dresden and onwards by a 150 ton CarGoTram that runs on the city’s tram network.

The principle assembly building extends along Stübelallee where a handful of workers, clad in white lab-coats, can be observed supervising the automated production line. For several years the VW Phaeton was “hand-built” on the premises but since 2017 production has moved to the e-Golf, VW’s first all electric vehicle. Rather than being conceived to take advantage of economies of scale, this factory seems like a vanity project, intended to generate publicity through high visibility and to function as a statement of faith in the commercial potential of the old DDR territory. A Visitor Centre and a Restaurant are provided to attract the curious to step inside. The great glass rotunda where finished vehicles are temporarily stacked certainly succeeds as a spectacle and the operation offers a brightly lit window into the workings of the motor industry. But the extent to which it’s profitable is for others to calculate.