Lansing Firm Buys Central Specialty

Article from the Ypsilanti Press 06-22-1964

Supplied to Bob Pipes by Derek Spinei at the Ypsilanti Historical Society, Aug 2009

Sent as copies of .jpg files and was converted to text format by Bob Pipes

The Motor Wheel Corp. of Lansing and the King-Seeley Thermos Co. of Ann Arbor announced jointly this morning that Motor Wheel has purchased King-Seeley's Central Specialty Division in Ypsilanti. The price was not disclosed.

King-Seeley will continue operations at the foundry until early next year, with Motor Wheel beginning operations there on a gradual basis in the near future before assuming complete control.

Central Specialty, the third largest employer in Ypsilanti and the fourth largest in the area with more than 450 employees, has operated since WWII as a division of King-Seeley.

Motor Wheel officials said in Lansing that only a skeleton crew will be retained. They said that as new business develops it hopes to expand its staff to 100 or 200 employees.

Originally the company had planned to purchase also the old Sudzee Soap Co. building on N. Huron River Dr., but upon further investigation decided it was not necessary.

The transaction involves buildings with total floor space of 290,000 square feet and 21 acres of land, as well as foundry Equipment, according to John H. Gerstenmaier, Motor Wheel president, and A. Neil Gustine, King-Seeley president.

Gerstenmaier said the company will produce brake drums for passenger automobiles not presently within Motor Wheel's production capabilities. Motor Wheel is a subsidiary of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co, of Akron, Ohio.

Central Specialty announced last December that the plant would be sold because it had lost a long-time contract to produce power tools for Sears Roebuck and Co. The contract, which the plant had had since the early 1930s, apparently was given to the Emerson Electric Co. of St. Louis, Mo., which manufactures fans, motors and appliances.

The power tools manufactured for Sears made up nearly 70 per cent of production at the Central Specialty plant. The plant also produces gray iron castings for the automotive industry.

King-Seeley officials said today that no plans have been made to transfer the foundry employees to other company plants.

The Central Specialty Co. was: established in Detroit in 1911 and moved to Ypsilanti in 1919. General jobbing and automotive castings were the products manufactured until 1915, when the Detroit Piston Ring Co, asked the firm to make piston rings for it.

In 1919 it moved to its site at 720 Norris St. at Forest St., its present address. By 1930 it had become one of the largest piston ring producers in the country, producing rings for Charles Lindbcrg's "Spirit of St. Louis" which made the world's first trans-Atlantic flight.

In 1928 the firm was sold to the Ypsilanti Foundry Co, and in 1944 became a division of King-Seeley Corp.