Actually they were bought out by a larger company and the bulk of the facillity was no longer needed. The little company I worked for was American Motors and it was bought by Chrysler. Chrysler paid $2 billion for American Motors and made $2 billion in profits from just Jeep in the next year. Another similiar story concerns Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee. They had been there for over 100 years and management considered the union demands way too large to even consider. The union knew that they would get what they wanted in the end because they always did. Management said "Get reasonable or we will have no choice but to close the plant". The union knew that they would never close the plant no matter what. Guess what? Plant closed, end of discussion, even after the union came back a tried to settle with managements original offer. No dice. It does happen.