Visitors to ford motor Co.'s new truck plant are shaken as a multi-ton metal-stamping press slams shut. Heat rains down from welding sparks, followed by the cooling mist of a paint shop. Too close for comfort? Hardly. At Ford's historic Rouge manufacturing complex in Dearborn, Mich., tourists will watch the assembly of F-150 pickup trucks from the safety of a mezzanine 16 feet above the factory floor. But they will also get a much more personal feel for the action through multi-sensory special effects spilling out of 360-degree screens in an accompanying video tour. The $14 admission price also buys a history lesson about the 87-year-old Rouge property, where Henry Ford once cranked out the Model A and battled union activists, and a display of Ford vehicles through the ages. The finishing touch: an 80-foot tower from which it's possible to look out over a 10-acre lawn that covers the complex' "living roof," as well as the surrounding crab-apple orchard, beehives, and solar panels.
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