In 1913, a Detroit-area factory cut car-building time from 12 hours to 93 minutes
- The birth of the moving assembly line, at Ford’s Highland Park Plant
- Ford, GM and Stellantis are still headquartered here, in three different cities
- Detroit is growing again after 70 years of decline
- The Great Lakes State, 26th to join the Union (1837)
How Michigan’s digital economy grew
Ford Motor Company is incorporated
Henry Ford and 11 other investors start the company in Detroit with $28,000 in capital.
The 1913 assembly line, precisely
Ford’s Highland Park Plant, designed by Albert Kahn and now a National Historic Landmark, is where the moving assembly line debuted on October 7, 1913. Chassis assembly fell from 728 minutes to 93 — a documented, museum-verified 87% time cut, not a rough approximation. Price followed output: the Model T launched at $850 in 1908 and bottomed out around $260 by the mid-1920s, on a product whose competitors cost $2,000 to $3,000.
The Big Three, verified current
All three are still Michigan-headquartered, but in three different cities. Ford dedicated a new 2.1-million-square-foot World Headquarters in Dearborn in November 2025. General Motors moved into the redeveloped Hudson’s Detroit tower in January 2026, ending its decades-long run at the Renaissance Center. Stellantis, the 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Group, keeps its North American headquarters at the Chrysler World Headquarters and Technology Center in Auburn Hills.
How Michigan businesses buy websites
The automakers get the headlines, but most of Michigan’s businesses are the trades and shops serving Grand Rapids, Detroit’s neighborhoods, and towns across both peninsulas.
Trades and home services
Michigan’s two peninsulas cover a lot of ground — say plainly which towns and counties you actually serve.
Professional and B2B services
A precision-manufacturing state rewards clarity about exactly what you do.
Shops and hospitality
Clear hours and location, readable on a phone, matter as much up north as they do in Detroit.
How well do you know Michigan’s digital economy?
3 quick questions. Get all 3 right and you win a 10% off discount code. Every answer is somewhere on this page.
Michigan quiz · 1 of 3
In 1913, Ford’s moving assembly line cut Model T chassis-assembly time from about 12 hours down to how long?
Why FastSites works here
A state that invented the moving assembly line understands that speed and quality aren’t opposites. A clear one-page site, live in days, at a published price, brings that same discipline to a small business’s website.