History & Timeline

When Henry Ford developed the Rouge, between 1917 and 1928, his vision was to achieve "a continuous, nonstop process from raw material to finished product, with no pause even for warehousing or storage." As history now knows, Ford succeeded on an epic scale, rolling out 4,000 vehicles a day and employing more than 100,000 at its peak.

Today, the Rouge has undergone a sweeping transformation to become a model of 21st-century sustainable design. Here’s the story behind how the automobile as we know it came of age and how Henry Ford’s pioneering industrial complex has been reborn as an international showcase for modern manufacturing and advanced, sustainable environmental design.


The History of the Ford Rouge Factory

Henry Ford wanted it all when he built the Rouge complex. Autonomy through control of every aspect of production from raw materials to finished product. What today is often called “vertical integration production.” Why depend on supplies to transform my raw materials into steel, rubber and glass, he asked, when I can do it myself? Why worry about the cost of electricity to run everything, when I can build my own power plant and generate what I need?

And he did.




The driving vision behind the sweeping size and scale of the complex, of course, was Henry Ford and his ambition to build cars that ordinary citizens could afford and to create a way to make more of them faster than anybody else. Read on to learn more.

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