American Motors Headquarters (Plymouth Road)

01 / The story of this place

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Built in 1927 by the architecture firm Smith, Hinchman & Grylls for the Kelvinator refrigerator company, this sprawling complex on Plymouth Road became home to Nash-Kelvinator after a 1937 merger and, from 1954, to the newly formed American Motors Corporation, created by merging Nash-Kelvinator with Hudson Motors. George W. Romney, later Michigan's governor, ran AMC from these offices from 1954 to 1962, championing the compact Rambler against Detroit's Big Three automakers. AMC's corporate headquarters moved to Southfield in 1975, but the Plymouth Road complex stayed in use as an engineering center, continuing under Chrysler after it absorbed AMC in 1987, and later as the Jeep and Truck Engineering Center until operations ended in 2009. Left vacant and vandalized for over a decade, the buildings were demolished between late 2022 and early 2023; a logistics developer has since redeveloped the site.

1. Built in 1927 for Kelvinator; became Nash-Kelvinator, then American Motors headquarters in 1954
2. George W. Romney ran AMC from here from 1954 to 1962
3. Continued as Chrysler's Jeep and Truck Engineering Center until 2009
4. Demolished in 2022–2023; the site is now a logistics development