Ford Motor Co. is changing the legendary names of many of the streets surrounding the new World Headquarters, including two named after iconic race car driver and designer Carroll Shelby, to reflect Ford’s modern era.
The automaker told the Detroit Free Press on April 10 that as it finishes construction of the new World Headquarters building on Oakwood Boulevard and starts renovating the remaining Product Development Center next door to make it World Headquarters South, Ford is renaming four streets on the 350-acre property.
When Ford moved its World Headquarters from the iconic “Glass House” along Michigan Avenue to the new Henry Ford II World Headquarters campus on Oakwood Boulevard last fall, the automaker transferred its long-held, but symbolic address, One American Road, to the new location.
“There are feelings about Carroll Shelby Way, but when we brought One American Road over, it was an opportunity to revisit the names of all the other roads,” Ford spokeswoman Caitlin Wunderlich told the Detroit Free Press.
She added in a statement: “Ford made the decision to rename several private roads to reflect iconic Ford products, as part of our broader strategy to infuse our employees’ work into our campus design.”
The street name changes
Ford worked with the city of Dearborn on the renaming of the following streets next month:
Ford said South Military Street and Dearborn Inn Drive will remain unchanged.
End of a legendary tribute
Carroll Shelby is best known for creating for Ford the AC Cobra and high-performance Shelby Mustangs and he is the only person to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a driver, team manager, and manufacturer. Shelby helped to develop the Ford GT40, which won Le Mans four consecutive times from 1966 through 1969.
The name change to Carroll Shelby Way comes 14 years after he died in May 2012. Crain’s Detroit Business reported that later that year, the city of Dearborn approved Ford’s request to rename two road segments on the Product Development Center’s campus in his honor.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind honor — no other street on Ford’s campus is named for a key figure in the company’s history,“ Automotive News said in a 2014 article. ”Even though Shelby’s relationship with Ford turned rocky for a time in the 1970s and ’80s, no one did more to burnish Ford’s performance cred than Shelby.”
Ford said, after Shelby’s death, by naming the boulevards after him, it would remind engineers daily of Shelby’s contributions when driving through the Product Development Center.
On April 9, Ford announced it has changed its plan to demolish the remaining portion of the Product Development Center at the new headquarters campus, but will instead gut it, remodel it and attach it to the World Headquarters building through a skywalk. That rehabilitation work will be completed by early 2029.
“We’re not going to demo a building and then start all over, ground up, and everything else,” said Jim Dobleske, CEO of Ford Land, Ford’s global real estate arm. “There’s a lot of capital associated with that. This will allow us to get even more results by leveraging the existing facility, and some of the great spaces, I’ll call it the great framework of spaces, that we have.”
Ford will also being construction next month on a new parking structure on the campus.
Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer for USA TODAY Co. who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ford to change the street names around new World Headquarters campus
Reporting by Jamie L. LaReau, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
