This photo shows the final inspection station on the Chevrolet assembly line, at the General Motors Fairfax Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Missouri, during 1956. The plant was next to the Fairfax Airport and was the former location of the North American Bomber Production Plant, where the B-25 Mitchell was manufactured during World War II. GM bought the former North American Aviation plant in 1945 and setup this Chevrolet facility.
This assembly plant was in operation until 1986, when a modern replacement plant Fairfax Number Two, was opened on the closed original Fairfax Airport.
The photo is courtesy of Joe Sonderman who has a Route 66 photo collection (scroll down) that we have been posting in a series. He has written many interesting books about Route 66, one covering Arizona you can see here.
Just (below) is a GM Motorama exhibit feature film from 1956, that starts out with a family stuck in traffic in a 1956 Chevrolet convertible. It then takes us to what GM predicted modern transportation systems and the automated turbine car were going to be like. Don’t miss it at it is well done and entertaining.
Naivety in spades with this promotional film. But at least people seemed happy. Growing up in that time it was all so exciting to me, like I’m sure it was to many others. Makes you wonder, but that was the idea.
The film is very 1950s corny.
Indeed, even for the 50′s
I drove in 1976 and all I got was this lousy Bicentennial Vega.
“Final Inspection and Adjustment,” eh? These were the guys with the big rubber mallets, right?
Yes and two x fours….
On the 56 Chevy assembly line photo. I’m a resident of the greater KC area and am familiar with both the current and former Fairfax plants as well as the Leeds GM assembly plant which mainly produced Chevy’s and mid-size GM cars in the 60′s. The Leeds plant closed sometime ago. I’m not aware of Fairfax (located in Kansas City, KS, Leeds was located on the MO side of Kansas City) ever producing Chevy’s in the 1950′s. They built mainly full-sized Buick’s Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs up to the opening of the Fairfax #2 which started out with the downsized 1988 Grand Prix. In fact, Fairfax in its early years was known locally as the B-O-P plant.
Steve, Thanks for your comment, Joe Sonderman believes that this was Fairfax but perhaps it is not.