This 1946 photo shows Ford’s  River Rouge plant where the 1962 Fairlane would be built. (Ford)

Watch how a 1962 Ford Fairlane was built back in the day from this 10:54-minute that I found on YouTube. The video shows the Fairlane assembly line at Ford’s River Rouge plant.

The color video shows the pouring of molten steel into molds to the final vehicle check at the Ford River Rouge Complex assembly facility in Dearborn, Mich.

With some theatrical music and old-school news narration, viewers are steered through the assembly process from raw materials, the engine build, paint booth, suspension and final testing.

The closing comment: “Built to order by the men, the women, the mills and machines in this dynamic, industrial city: The Rouge.”

Rouge History

Ford Motor Co.’s River Rouge Complex was commonly known as the Rouge Complex, River Rouge or The Rouge, according to its page in Wikipedia. The sprawling complex was built in Dearborn, Mich., along the River Rouge.

Construction began in 1917 and finished in 1928. At the time, it was the largest integrated factory in the world, surpassing Buick City, built in 1904.

The titanic Rouge was able to turn raw materials into running vehicles. The complex measuresd1.5 miles wide by 1 mile long. The facility includes 93 buildings with nearly 16 million square feet of factory floor space.

It had its own docks in the dredged Rouge River, 100 miles of interior railroad track, its own electricity plant and an integrated steel mill.

“Today, the Rouge site is home to Ford’s Rouge Center. This industrial park includes six Ford factories on 600 acres of land. There also are steelmaking operations by AK Steel, a U.S. steelmaker.

See more videos here.