This blog will expand on themes and topics first mentioned in my book, "The Automobile and American Life." I hope to comment on recent developments in the automobile industry, reviews of my readings on the history of the automobile, drafts of my new work, contributions from friends, descriptions of the museums and car shows I attend and anything else relevant. Copyright 2009-2026, by the author.
The restart of museum operations will be in line with the requirements of the Federal Government and the State of Baden-Württemberg for protection against infection with the coronavirus. This includes, for example, a new guidance system in the entire building to ensure a minimum distance of 1.50 m between visitors.
"We also provide face masks and disinfectants," adds Achim Stejskal, Head of Heritage and Porsche Museum. "We carry out regular occupational safety training for staff relating to hygiene and conduct recommendations." Throughout the museum building, the number of visitors is limited by a controlled entrance. The opening hours remain unchanged – Tuesdays to Sundays from 9 to 18. Museum tours and didactic programs cannot be offered at the moment. The gastronomic areas will also remain closed. "We are extending the validity of the annual tickets by two months, by the duration of the museum closure during the Corona crisis", announces Achim Stejskal.
During the closure, the Porsche Museum brought forward maintenance and renovation measures that had been planned to take place this year. Thus, a start was made on the conceptual reorientation of the entrance to the permanent exhibition, the so-called "Prologue", which presents the early days of the company up to 1948. Due to this still ongoing renovation work, the admission price is temporarily reduced by half.
On the website www.porsche.com/museum the museum informs about the current measures as well as the successive restart of the visitor programs, which are fully aligned with the official requirements.
A 1958 Plymouth that looked just like this one proved to be the worst car that the Heitmann family ever owned. My father bought it used, and it was problematic from the start. It looked great! But it burned so much oil that the family joke was "fill up the oil, check the gas." That was certainly the case when we took this car on a vacation to Lake Placid. By the time we got back the NYS Thruway had enhanced levels of hydrocarbon fog. It also certainly fogged neighborhood mosquitos.
I did like the hardtop and a great radio to listen to Elvis tunes. It had a Powerflite push-button transmission, great two-tone paint, and featured the "Forward Look." I wonder now how this long and wide car fit in our small garage!
But as I look back I am sorry my father had to deal with this car. It was the first, and last, Chrysler product in our family. Back to Chevys!
On Saturday, 9 May 2020, the Mercedes-Benz Museum will be opening its doors to the public again. Initially, visits are only possible from Friday to Sunday. The Museum will continue to remain closed from Monday to Thursday. Frequently asked questions about the reopening will be answered on the website of the Mercedes-Benz Museum: http://mb4.me/opening.
Reopening is to proceed in accordance with officially prescribed hygiene rules. These include measures for maintaining a minimum distance of at least 1.5 metres between individuals, rules on sneezing and coughing etiquette and restrictions on the number of visitors. In addition, it is compulsory to wear face masks when visiting the Museum (also applies to children from the age of six upwards).
“I am very pleased that we are finally able to reopen our Museum. After this long period of restrictions, visitors will now be able to make weekend trips to the Museum again. Unfortunately, however, international guests, school classes and groups of travellers, who normally visit us during the week, are not yet permitted to come by. This is why we are concentrating on the period from Friday to Sunday. We are mainly expecting local visitors,” says Monja Büdke, Director of the Mercedes-Benz Museum.
The Museum lockdown was a preventive measure against the further spread of the coronavirus. In doing so, the Museum implemented the requirements of the Baden-Württemberg “Ordinance of the State Government on Infection Protection Measures Against the Spread of the SARS-Cov-2 Virus (Corona Ordinance – CoronaVO)” of 17 March 2020.
The Mercedes-Benz Museum has more than 160 vehicles and a total of more than 1,500 exhibits on show in a space covering around 16,500 square metres. The permanent exhibition tells the history and stories of mobility on nine levels – from the invention of the motorcar in 1886 right through to the future. The special exhibition entitled, “Stories of the G – 40 Years of the G-Class” has been extended and will now remain open until the end of September 2020 as things stand.
For car guys and gals, the older we get it seems the more we think of the cars that we remember when we were children or young people. Why, years later, do we continue to remember those vehicles, often recalling them with great fondness?
Perhaps, in part, because we associate them with people who made a difference in our lives? Who knows. But a recent memory on my part brought back a connection of over 60 years ago.
The little Methodist Church in which I grew up in rural backwoods southern West Virginia would typically get a new pastor every four years or so. When I was twelve years Reverend Harper T. Callison was appointed to our small church and I recall the day that he showed up with his very attractive red-headed wife and two small feisty, rambunctious little red-headed girls, all piled in a black 1961 Rambler Cross Country Station Wagon.
Since my parents were divorced and I had no contact with my father, Reverend Callison became somewhat of a father figure for me for the next four years -- from the age of 12 until age 16. He often lent me books from his personal library and at age 15 I'm reading Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr. Yes.
But it was the Rambler station wagon that I was fixated on. After getting my driver's license at age 16 one Sunday after church, Pastor Callison asked me if I wanted to drive the "wagon" as he called it. Practical, utilitarian vehicle that it was, nonetheless something endeared me to that Rambler and every time I see one restored at a car show I smile.
So......the rest of the story: Pastor Callison passed away in the early 1980s but, yesterday, I was able to make contact with one of his "red-headed" little daughters who is now 62 years old. She lives in Canton, Ohio, and in our e-mail exchange I casually mentioned that I still fondly remembered driving her dad's black Rambler Cross Country wagon back in the early 60s.
Here's her comment on the wagon:
"Its always wonderful to hear that dad was so important to someone and made a difference in their life. I, too. fondly remember that black Rambler station wagon -- probably because I was in the back the day my mother pulled out of a parking lot and the back tire flew off."
Ah, the cars of our lives. The cars that we still remember!
A cacophony of chaos surrounded UAW Local 276 Shop Chairman Ken Hines early Thursday as he rushed to a morning meeting with General Motors' Arlington Assembly plant's leaders.
It's one of many meetings Hines has had this week as he and plant leaders wrestle with how and when to safely reopen the facility in Texas, where GM builds its highly profitable full-size SUVs.
In fact, GM must address that issue at all its U.S. assembly plants, which GM idled in March amid the growing coronavirus pandemic.
"We’re in lockstep with other GM facilities in terms of trying to figure out a date and plan to restart," Hines told the Free Press. “We’re concerned about (safety) like the rest of America. But we’re trying to figure out now how we can ensure the workforce's safety."
Hines and other workers at Arlington worry that some areas inside the facility are laid out in such a way as to make social distancing nearly impossible for the 5,000 workers at the plant.
GM shares those safety concerns, admitting it has been difficult to redesign some areas in its facilities to allow for social distancing.
“There are areas there, and in all our plants, that have challenges,” said Kent Eaton, GM's North American manufacturing workplace safety boss. "But the safest place I felt in Arlington, was at the plant. I wish all those people at Meijer’s would follow the rules. But, I had no concerns at Arlington or about what we’re doing in any of the plants.”
GM's playbook
Eaton would know. He is part of GM's Global Safety Organization and he spent two weeks at Arlington testing and tweaking safety processes to adopt when GM restarts production.
Since implementing those processes starting in late March, the Arlington workers, mostly volunteers and contract workers, have been healthy. GM spokesman David Barnas said GM had "a small number of coronavirus cases (at Arlington) before its current extensive safety protocols were fully implemented, including face masks."
On Thursday, GM made public its 48-page Global Safety Playbook. The book was written by Eaton and the team in GM's Global Safety Organization. The playbook will help plant leaders prepare to return to work even though GM has not declared a restart date for its plants.
The playbook is a training guide relying on procedures GM used in its plants in China and at its current medical face mask production facility in Warren and critical-care ventilator production plant in Kokomo, Indiana.
It also contains some best practices Eaton learned in Arlington.
When GM, along with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Ford Motor Co., said it would idle U.S. plants on March 23, GM's Arlington did not shutter until early April.
The plant, located between Dallas and Fort Worth, ran for a couple of weeks, on a paid-volunteer basis so it could finish building the previous generation GMC Yukon, Chevrolet Tahoe and Cadillac Escalade SUVs.
Then, contract workers and GM skilled trades employees came in and have been retooling the facility to start building the redesigned 2021 models of those vehicles.
Meanwhile, Texas' stay-at-home order expired Thursday, allowing all retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls to reopen, allowing in 25% of their listed occupancy. Michigan's order is due to expire May 15.
That had some workers worried because if GM restarts Arlington in the next few weeks, it won’t be retooled and redesigned for social distancing.
“They have a new body shop and a new paint shop, so in those areas it’s more spacious,” said an assembly line worker at Arlington who asked to not be named for fear of losing his job for talking to the media.
This worker said the plant is being updated in sections with some areas more suitable to social distancing than others.
“But in the trim and chassis area, there’s no way you can do 6 feet," the worker said. "The jobs are so close in proximity and you’re walking back and forth in front of each other.”
'See them in action'
Eaton boarded a private flight in Detroit on March 23 with 10 GM engineers. They headed to Arlington to oversee the final production of the previous-model SUVs and to start the retooling process to build the redesigned 2021 vehicles.
Eaton had another motive: He wanted to test GM's early initiatives to protect workers from COVID-19.
“My thought going to Arlington was that I wanted to see them in action," Eaton told the Free Press.
Roughly 1,000 workers had raised their hands to finish the SUV production, a far cry from the plant's usual 5,000-man workforce, but enough to see whether protocols such as body-temperature screening, face masks, health screening questions, new cleaning process, limited job rotations and social distancing would work.
"We could witness them working versus us trying to envision how they would work," said Eaton, who met with the union's Hines every few days during his two-week visit.
"We looked at the high-contact areas of where people would gather when Arlington is at full speed and has 5,000 people in the plant and asked, 'Can we get them in and out safely?' " Eaton said.
Pop-up masks
The initiatives are modeled in part after GM's Kokomo, Indiana, plant where workers hand sanitize upon entering, have their temperature scanned, review health screening questions all before entering work to make ventilators.
Once inside Arlington, each worker was responsible for cleaning their work area and tools at the start of their shift.
A formal and informal validation process helps keep workers following safety initiatives, Eaton said. Therefore, managers walked the floor at Arlington, reminding people to keep their masks on or hand-sanitize.
"The biggest challenge was when people weren’t working," Eaton said. "Human beings tend to come together. If the line went down for a few minutes, we’d find six or eight people who work 30 or 40 feet from each other, come together. Or I'd watch people in the parking lot congregate.”
It will mean a lot of coaching, reminding and educating, which GM will do through direct mailings to workers, social media and training on the job when the factories restart, he said.
“We know people will take off their masks, they have to eat and drink; that’s when we exercise the other protocols," Eaton said. "So 6-feet distancing is more critical then and washing your hands when you’re going to eat — that becomes more critical.”
Also critical was that employees know when common areas have been cleaned, so GM started putting up signs in restrooms and break rooms that said the time the area was last disinfected.
"You’ve got to address people’s concerns. You’ve got to demonstrate," Eaton said. "If you do all your cleaning on the third shift and the first shift doesn’t know about it, it doesn’t do any good.”
One the biggest lesson came in improving how GM was implementing the safety steps. For example, the distribution of face masks to employees.
“We'd put together a great process and were high-fiving each other that 'we’ve got this,' " Eaton said. "Then we had 900 people report to work at once and we realized we didn’t have it down."
Eaton got more people to distribute masks and now has a "Kleenex-like dispenser where a mask pops up."
'In the air'
Beyond the actual safety protocols, Dr. Jeffrey Hess, GM’s corporate medical director, researched the virus itself and will educate workers on its true risks.
“This virus is mainly airborne,” said Hess. “So most likely it’s contagious when people come into close contact with another and share the same air space and inhale it.”
Catching the coronavirus by touching something someone else touched, say a vehicle traveling down an assembly line, is possible, but not likely especially if workers regularly wash their hands and avoid touching their face, Hess said.
“This isn’t absorbed through the skin," Hess said. "The real risk is what’s coming through the air.”
That is why wearing face masks and social distancing are the best ways to combat it. Hess said GM’s plants in South Korea have been running throughout the pandemic and “we never had a case there yet."
But he said all workers in South Korea wear face masks and they wash their hands consistently.
Still, the UAW has said early May is too soon to safely restart factories. UAW President Rory Gamble has said the only litmus test that should matter is whether a person would feel confident sending their child or family in to the plant. Hess said he's done just that.
“My son went to Kokomo. He's an engineer for GM. He called me and asked if I was concerned he was going and asked what he should do to protect himself," Hess said. "I told him all the protocols we put in place. I would never want anything to happen to him, but I was very comfortable with him going there.”
But for local union boss Hines, caution still rules and the meetings will carry on.
"We’re looking at the proposals and the CDC guidelines," Hines said. "Then, we’ll go from there."
