I thought I would snap a few quick photos of the former Pontiac Motor Division complex as it looks today. A lot has changed since Justa or I worked at the complex. If you are a member of POCI and you read Smoke Signals regularly, you see Dmitri Toth's articles about the place. What you probably don't know is that Dmitri is still working there as skilled trades! He has been there over 50 years! So he has lots of stories to tell....

Anyway here is the layout of the complex from Google Maps

FIrst of all - the dirt brown area on the far left, next to Baldwin Road is the what is left of the old Pontiac Assembly/Fiero plan. Other than the L-shaped build at the top, everything else along Baldwin has been torn down.

The USPS Michigan Metroplex facility is where the old Pontiac foundry and engine plant stood.

Continuing counter clockwise, at 777 Joslyn (formerly 1 Pontiac Plaza), the old Pontiac HQ building. John DeLorean is said to have canceled a car program to pay for it in order to compete with the HQ's that Buick and Oldsmobile had. It is said that Delorean and his secretary flew to Italy to select the marble for the building. Sadly, I am hearing this building is scheduled for demolition this year, perhaps even before the POCI convention.

The next building go north, with the curve front was the transmission engineering building when I was there. GM had consolidated all domestic transmission engineering under one roof (except for Allison Transmission - which was sold a little later on).

The last building going north is the old Pontiac Engineering building. This building was once covered in ivy. It isn't anymore. This was the Engine Engineering building when I was there. All engines except the Duramax were consolidated and designed there. It also housed our engineering data center, CNC and prototype shop, and engine/transmission test dynos. The dyno wing was undergoing major investment and renovation when I left to return to Flint. These dynos can test any powertrain - ICE, diesel, hydrogen fuel and EV. I have heard through the grapevine that much of the engineering is no longer at the site (it's now in Warren) and it is used primarily for prototyping and dyno testing.

Turning onto Beverly and then Glenwood is a facility that was not there when I was there, GM Performance and Racing Center. So I have no stories to tell you about this faciltiy.

10 hours ago, Frosty said:

What you probably don't know is that Dmitri is still working there as skilled trades! He has been there over 50 years! So he has lots of stories to tell....

50 years!?

Yup. Besides Dmitri, I knew two other people that worked for GM for 50 or more yesrs.

The first was a secretary at AC Spark Plug. She started working right out of high school at 17/18. She retired at age 70.

The second was my paternal grandfather working at Buick for 51 years. Family story is he and a buddy were walking by the plant when a foreman yelled out “Either of you guys want a job?”. This was around 1920. In 1971, two weeks before he retired, he drove the 2 millionth Buick Skylark off the assembly line.