By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
REGION – Detroit may be known as the “Motor City,” but the state of Massachusetts played a key role in the start of America’s rich automobile industry. Framingham’s Cushing Memorial Park recently hosted the Bay State Motor Festival featuring vintage vehicles for car enthusiasts to celebrate the state’s one-hundred-year history in automobile manufacturing.
Ken Lemoine, Executive Director of the festival and self-described ‘car-o-holic’ spoke about restoring a one-of-a-kind 1924 Bay State with television station WCVB, saying, “I looked for 30 years to find one of these cars. I gave up. And it found me.” Lemoine added, “You’re looking at the only remaining Bay State sedan known to exist. Massachusetts was the genesis of the automobile in America. Between 1893 and present day, we’ve made over 7 million vehicles here in Massachusetts. And of those, 4.7 million of them were made here in Framingham.”
Photo/Brett Peruzzi
State had dozens of car makers
The Bay State was manufactured by the now-defunct R.H. Long Motor Company, which was operational in Framingham from 1922 to 1926. The 1925 roadster and a 1924 sedan model one are the only two remaining Bay State cars known to exist. The R. H. Long Motor Company was founded by Framingham native Richard H. Long, a shoe manufacturer who used his factory to manufacture war supplies during World War I. He ceased car production in 1926.
There were at least 162 automobile manufacturers in the state from 1893 to World War II. From 1921 until 1931, Rolls-Royce America in Springfield assembled almost three thousand Silver Ghosts and Phantoms at their plant. The H.H. Buffum Company in Abington produced the Buffum from 1901 to 1906. The Crest Manufacturing Company produced the Crestmobile around 1904 and the Corwin Manufacturing Company manufactured the Gas-au-lec between 1905 and 1906 in Peabody. The Knox Automobile Company made cars in Springfield between 1900 and 1914. Those are just a few.
Photo/Brett Peruzzi
In the Greater Boston area, between 1903 and 1914, the Pope Manufacturing Company produced vehicles in Hyde Park, including the Pope-Hartford, Pope-Robinson, Pope-Toledo, Pope-Tribune and Pope-Waverly. In 1913, the Ford Motor company opened Cambridge Assembly where they manufactured automobiles until 1926.
Framingham was auto assembly hub
Framingham was also once the site of a General Motors assembly plant, employing 3,700 workers from all over New England. The plant, located at 63 Western Avenue, broke ground in 1945 and produced nearly 25,000 Buicks. In 1959, it became a Fisher Body plant, churning out nearly 700,000 Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Pontiac models and two generations of the A-Body Cutlass until production of the model ceased in 1988. Throughout the 1980s, Framingham Assembly produced the Chevrolet Celebrity, Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, and Pontiac 6000.
Framingham Assembly ran into a major problem during the late 1980s. General Motors wanted to buy a nearby 35-acre parcel of land to build a new paint and plastics production facility, but the town of Framingham refused to cooperate.
Governor Michael Dukakis used the state’s eminent domain powers to take control of the property for the construction of the $224 million expansion by General Motors. Columnist Alex Beam of The Boston Globe pointed out in a 1987 article that Tony Colonna, a local politician who wanted to have a new town facility on the site, was “the most powerful man in Framingham.” and allegedly used his influence to delay the project. Although rumblings of the plant’s closure were concerning and many GM employees found the job to be a tough one, earning on average $14 an hour, they did like being able to afford to raise a family and pay for their children’s college education.
However, the news they all dreaded came to pass and the plant closed on August 1, 1989. After the last car passed their workstations, around 1,000 disheartened employees walked out the door. One GM worker who spoke anonymously to United Press International said, “I’ve always felt that at this particular facility we made a good product. Obviously, they don’t feel that way or we’d still be open.”
Chuck McDevitt, who headed the Framingham United Auto Workers Union at that time, added, “‘Most of the people being laid off today will never work on a car assembly line or see the salaries they have today again.”
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