Chrysler World Headquarters and Technology Center

The story

For most of the 20th century, Chrysler ran its empire from a sprawling, aging complex in Highland Park, where engineering, design, and management were scattered across roughly two dozen separate buildings. In the mid-1980s the company committed to fixing that by building a single campus. Ground was broken on the former farmland in 1986, and the program eventually ballooned from an approved $500 million to roughly $1.6 billion.

The Technology Center opened for business in 1991, pulling together employees from 28 different locations under a cross-shaped plan that grouped each vehicle line's engineers and designers together. A 15-story headquarters tower, 249 feet tall and topped with a 35-foot Pentastar-shaped window, was completed in 1996. With about 5.4 million square feet of usable space, the CTC ranks among the largest buildings in the United States by floor area.

The building outlasted the company that built it. Chrysler became DaimlerChrysler (1998), then the standalone Chrysler Group, then Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA), and finally part of Stellantis in 2021 -- and through every one of those turns, the Auburn Hills complex remained the North American headquarters.

What's There Now

Still the active North American headquarters of Stellantis (formerly Chrysler/FCA).

Everything that was here

• 1991–present · still open

  Chrysler World Headquarters and Technology CenterOther

  One of the largest office buildings in America rose out of 504 acres of Auburn Hills farmland, crowned by a 15-story tower with a window shaped like Chrysler's Pentastar.

  See the map in 1992 →

Did you know?

Nearby history