A cold winter rain is falling and a stiff wind is rattling a tent set up for the re-dedication of Ford Motor Co.’s ancient Rouge Center complex in Dearborn, Mich.
“Days like today, I wonder why my great-grandfather didn’t found San Diego,” sighs Ford Chairman William Clay Ford Jr.
Henry Ford didn’t stray far from his family farm when, in 1903, he set up the company that still bears his name. But these days, his great-grandson’s wish is starting to come true. Nearly four years ago, Ford’s Lincoln-Mercury division moved, lock, stock and drawing board, to Irvine.
In the coming months, the automaker plans to transplant its other upscale divisions,Jaguar, Volvo, Land Rover and Aston Martin,from the East Coast to Irvine. Collectively, the company’s Premier Automotive Group is set to be housed in a new high-rise going up along the San Diego (I-405) Freeway,just a stone’s throw from the U.S. headquarters of Ford’s Japanese affiliate, Mazda Motor Corp.
Call it Detroit West. With Irvine as its epicenter, Orange County is becoming one of the nation’s automo-tive hubs, with spillover into nearby Southern California communities. Automakers ranging from little American Isuzu Motors Inc. to Toyota Motor Corp. currently employ more than 2,000 people in their OC facilities. And Ford’s various brands alone should generate employment for several thousand more before the dust settles.
To that, observers estimate you can add thousands of additional jobs by taking in local suppliers, auto design studios and other support businesses. Consider Young & Rubicam Inc., Lincoln Mercury’s ad agency, which transferred much of its auto team to Irvine to provide support for its big-billing client. Including local hires, Y & R; now employs close to 400 in OC.
“We’re at the point we’ve gotten on the radar screen” of everyone in the auto industry, said Paul Hiller, managing director of Destination Irvine, the economic development arm of the Irvine Chamber of Commerce. “Our role is to make it as easy as possible for them to come out here.”
Considering the dollars generated by the auto industry, there’s been a decades-long bidding war for industry jobs. States such as Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky have invested billions in government-funded givebacks to convince automakers to set up shop in their areas.
Hiller and other California officials insist they’ve been stingy, by comparison, but they don’t deny handing out some state and local money for training and other assistance where it can clinch a deal.
“Irvine is pretty easy to deal with,” said Lincoln Mercury President Mark Hutchins. “They went out of the way to help us make our decision,and to make the transition as smooth as possible.”
There’s a notable difference between the automotive investments being made in OC as opposed to other parts of the country.
“They’re not moving any factories out here,” said Wallace Walrod, vice president of the Orange County Business Council.
The land is too costly, and despite the huge California car market, shipping costs to the rest of the country would be too high.
Instead, the region is turning into an automotive brain trust. The Premier Auto Group’s new headquarters in Irvine serves up one example, though nearly all the Asian automakers have established their own U.S. headquarters in OC or nearby communities such as Torrance.
With technology becoming a more integral part of the automobile, automakers appreciate the close access OC provides to Silicon Valley and the aerospace manufacturers of Southern California,many of them trying to broaden into commercial work.
“Orange Country is one of the top incubators of technology in the world,” Walrod said.
It’s also a place where diversity has bred a flourishing and creative car culture, Walrod said. To tap that energy, virtually every major carmaker,and more than a few minor ones,has posted some of their hippest and most creative design talent to OC and nearby environs.
California’s overall reputation as a trend-setting state certainly is part of the allure. Then there’s the nearby presence of Pasadena’s Arts Center School of Design, “one of the reasons for locating out here,” said Mazda Vice President Jay Amestoy. Many of the industry’s top talent trained at the Arts Center and have needed little prodding to go back to the industry’s California studios.
Some of the industry’s most creative concepts and production vehicles have emerged from these facilities in recent years, including the Plymouth (now Chrysler) Prowler, a factory-built hot rod developed at DaimlerChrysler AG’s Pacifica Design Center in Carlsbad. That facility also crafted the quirky Dodge Super8 Hemi, a retro cruiser concept vehicle making the rounds on this year’s auto show circuit.
Volkswagen AG, meanwhile, found inspiration for the reborn Beetle in California. That may be one reason why German automakers have been among the most enthusiastic in embracing OC and the Southland, which they see as not only a design mecca, but a place to shed Teutonic tradition.
“Stuttgart, (Germany, where DaimlerChrysler is based), is a small village,” said Karlheinz Bauer, who has spent three years in Irvine as director of the Mercedes-Benz advanced design studio. “It was useful to see a different culture. It was necessary for us to have a change and this was the place for us to go. From my perspective, I have more freedom (here).”
Mercedes isn’t the only automaker betting that distance will translate into a clearer perspective.
“Actually, we first decided we wanted to move out of Detroit, and only then decided to move to Southern California,” said Lincoln Mercury’s Hutchins.
With sales steadily eroding, there was a desperate need for Ford to make both brands more relevant to today’s buyers. In recent decades, Mercury had become little more than a shadow of the larger Ford division, while Lincoln had been unable to challenge the fast-growing luxury imports.
Back in Detroit, “you’d look to the left and see a Chevy,” Hutchins said. “You’d look to the right and see a Taurus. You’d think it was a wonderful world but then you couldn’t figure out why your share was eroding in the rest of the country.”
In Irvine, company employees have been greeted by a different reality, a market in which imports are the norm, especially in the luxury segment.
“You need to be out here and see all the BMWs and Mercedes to realize the world is changing,” Hutchins said.
“Since we moved out here, there’s been a different mindset, a different energy level,” echoed a Lincoln insider. “We’re able to make decisions quickly. We’re just so different from what we were back in Dearborn.”
In the automotive world, it can take years for a preliminary concept to work its way into production, so it’s likely to be 2003 or 2004 before the effect of the move works its way through the entire product line.
But the new Lincoln Blackwood provides a hint. Is it a pickup truck? Well, not quite. A sport-utility? Not that either. How about a full-sized luxury sedan? That’s getting close. The 2002 Lincoln Blackwood is a bit of all three, a new, high-end crossover vehicle aimed at creating a new niche in the luxury market.
“It’s a product we wouldn’t have done before coming to California,” Hutchins said.
That’s not to say OC’s automotive newcomers aren’t without complaint. Workers transferred from places such as Detroit quickly experience a different kind of sticker shock when they attempt to find anywhere near the level of housing they had before. And then there are those California freeways. A traffic jam on M-39 in Dearborn means things slow down to 45 m.p.h. and only occasionally crawl to a stop.
“No question, that’s a problem,” Destination Irvine’s Hiller said. But when you add it all up, he contends, “The quality of life for employees is unsurpassable.” n
Eisenstein is publisher of the online auto magazine TheCarConnection.com and has spent 22 years covering the auto industry.
