Dearborn, June 13: Henry Ford's great grandson stood on Thursday near a historic factory where the pioneering carmaker once employed more than 100,000 people, as Ford Motor Co. kicked off celebrations of its 100thanniversary. Chairman and Chief Executive Bill Ford Jr. visited this grimy Detroit-area suburb to show off the modern, environmentally friendly assembly plant that will open here next year, when it fires up production of the all-new F-150 pickup truck.

Looming nearby, on the US auto industry's equivalent of hallowed ground, was the massive Rouge Industrial Center which opened for car production in 1927. It soon became, as Bill Ford put it on Thursday, "the icon of 20th Century manufacturing."
Built on a marshland, the Rouge was once the largest private manufacturing complex in the world at its peak in the 1930s.

Celebrated in a pair of murals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera, which adorn the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts, iron ore and other raw materials shipped up the Rouge River went in one end of the Rouge and cars came out the other.
It was a process that took about 33 hours and harnessed all aspects of automotive production in one place, making the Rouge one of the most enduring physical symbols of Ford. Bureau Report