The Collapse of Norwood, OH: The Factory That Built Half of America's Cars Was Bulldozed in 90 Days

What if one of the most important factories in American history was completely erased — and nobody noticed? At its peak, the GM Assembly Plant in Norwood, Ohio built one in every seven cars sold in the United States. Not one in seven GM cars. One in every seven American cars, period. It employed over 4,000 workers, ran around the clock, and quietly powered the automotive backbone of the most powerful consumer economy on earth. Then, in 1987, General Motors shut it down. And bulldozed it. In 90 days. Today, a Costco stands on the site. There is no plaque. No memorial. Nothing. This documentary tells the full story — from the plant's founding in 1923, through the golden decades of Camaro and Firebird production, through the brutal 174-day strike of 1972 (one of the longest in GM history), through the oil crisis that killed the muscle car, to the cold Tuesday morning when a press release ended 4,000 lives in a single paragraph. It's a story about corporate abandonment. About what America does with the places and people it uses up. About the Black workers who built the plant but were last hired and first fired. About contaminated soil that GM cleaned to the minimum legal standard and sold at a profit. And about the final, devastating irony — that in 2009, the taxpayers GM abandoned were asked to bail it out. This is not just the story of a factory. This is the story of how industrial America works. And who pays for it. #NorwoodOhio #GMFactory #AmericanHistory #RustBelt #Deindustrialization #Camaro #GeneralMotors #UAW #LaborHistory #WorkingClassAmerica #MuscleCar #AmericanManufacturing #GMBankruptcy #ForgottenHistory #AutomotiveHistory #CincinnatiHistory #FactoryWorkers #RustBeltStories