Laepple Automotive Bets on a Vacant Detroit Die Shop

Laepple Automotive is stamping original spare body parts in a vacant Detroit die shop, two years after Michigan paid to keep the work out of Alabama.

The German body-in-white supplier leased 270,000 square feet at the old Mount Elliott Tool and Die plant on the city’s east side. Michigan’s filing put the project at up to $93.4 million and 173 jobs by September 30, 2029.

Michigan Paid to Beat a Faster Alabama Option

Staff at the Michigan Strategic Fund told the board on September 24, 2024, that Laepple Automotive US, Inc. was also weighing a competing site in Alabama. A partner already owned a building there. The company could have leased space, started sooner, and spent less capital.

Detroit won because the empty hall still had the bones of a stamping shop, and because the state closed the cost gap. The board approved a $3.5 million Michigan Business Development Program grant and a five-year, 100% State Essential Services Assessment exemption valued at up to $653,760 on $78,850,000 of eligible personal property.

Oliver Wackenhut, chief executive of LÄPPLE AUTOMOTIVE, had already named the physical reason. He wanted a big building with big overhead cranes, and he said those halls were not on offer in the South. Mount Elliott, he said, could take the work.

WHERE THE WORK ALMOST WENT

Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office framed the Detroit file as a U.S. headquarters at a historic plant, with 173 new jobs and $93.4 million in capital spending. The company’s own notice, posted the next day, spoke of up to 200 jobs by 2029 on the same floor.

The Briggs Shop That Last Cut Jeep Gladiator Dies

The address is 3675 East Outer Drive, a few blocks south of Eight Mile. Briggs Manufacturing built the plant in 1938 to stamp body parts. Chrysler bought it in 1956 and ran it as Outer Drive Stamping, then as a tool-and-die shop after Vernor Tool & Die moved in.

Die work there ended in 2018 after the Jeep Gladiator program. The halls sat empty for years. In 2024, METD Detroit, Inc. was buying the property, and Laepple planned to lease most of the 428,000-square-foot building rather than raise a greenfield shop.

On the east side the place is still read as a former Chrysler die shop. That reading is the bet. A German spare-parts firm is trying to put a second life into a hall whose last famous job was cutting dies for a Jeep pickup.

HOW THE HALL GOT EMPTY

1. 1938: Briggs Manufacturing opens the plant as a body-stamping shop.
2. 1956: Chrysler buys it and names it Outer Drive Stamping.
3. 2018: Die making ends after the Jeep Gladiator program, and the plant is idled.
4. September 2023: LÄPPLE AUTOMOTIVE starts U.S. spare-parts work in Alabama for an American electric-vehicle maker.
5. September 24, 2024: The Michigan Strategic Fund votes the Detroit grant and tax break.
6. May 4, 2025: The Detroit plant goes live on SAP S/4HANA, with production and logistics running.

Maureen Donohue Krauss, chief executive of the Detroit Regional Partnership, told the state the company had already brought older German plants back, and that her team had toured those halls. “We’re excited for them to do the same at the former Mt. Elliott facility in Detroit,” she said.

Three Lines Moved, and About 50 People Hired

The company said first equipment would go in during October 2024, with production due in November. The public record of what actually landed is the one-year note dated September 25, 2025.

By then the Detroit crew had moved three spare part production lines from the earlier U.S. site and ramped original spare parts for a leading American automaker. Headcount was about 50. A series job for a newly won client was still described as coming “in the near future.”

The SAP cutover on May 4, 2025, is the other hard date. LÄPPLE AUTOMOTIVE said production was stable that week, inbound and outbound logistics were live, and the Detroit team was drawing on a German S/4HANA go-live from January 2025. That is a running factory, not a press release about one.

What is missing is a 2026 headcount. The U.S. LinkedIn page still listed the company in the 11-50 employee band months after the one-year note. The careers site still advertised around 200 jobs by 2029, including laser and aluminum spot welding on body parts. Hiring copy is not a payroll.

LÄPPLE AUTOMOTIVE IN FIGURES

• 2023 automotive sales: About €457 million, inside a family group that reported €619.8 million, up 4.5%.
• People and sites: About 1,200 employees at five locations, still 100% family owned.
• German spare-parts book: Parts for more than 250 model series, with 7,000 tools stored for the work.
• Detroit floor: 270,000 square feet for spare parts first, with series work pitched as the next step.

The first U.S. chapter was not Detroit. A group release in July 2024 said a large spare-parts order from an American electric-vehicle maker put the company back into U.S. production, with Alabama starting in September 2023. The Detroit history page later called that order the trigger for the Mount Elliott site. NRTC Automation was the partner on the first American job and was named to stay on for the next ones.

They Already Did This to a German Mill

Wackenhut’s public case for Detroit was not a new assembly line. It was a spare-parts hub close to North American customers, using a craft the company already runs in Heilbronn and Teublitz: hoods, fenders, doors, and trunk lids, stamped and then finished in robotic cells that can be set up for any automaker.

Two large orders from an American vehicle maker were already on the books when the Detroit notice went out, with some of that work still running in Germany. The company said it makes spare parts for over 250 model series at the German plants. That book is the reason a vacant die shop is useful. Service parts keep coming after a nameplate dies, and the mix changes often enough that a rigid high-volume line is the wrong tool.

We need a really big building with big overhead cranes, and Mount Elliott is the perfect place which can facilitate this business. And honestly, these buildings are, at the moment, not available in the South.

Oliver Wackenhut, CEO, LÄPPLE AUTOMOTIVE

He also said the hall would help supply existing customers and that he wanted to “step in with the Big Three.” Michigan officials sold the same flexibility. Michelle Grinnell of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation said the robotic cells can be recoded for any original-equipment maker, which widens the customer list beyond one platform.

The plant, in that telling, is a library of tools and a set of cells, not a single-model factory. That is why a 2018 die shop can still earn its keep in 2026 without a new truck program of its own.

The $3.5 Million Grant and the 173-Job Clock

The grant is performance-based and runs through December 31, 2029. The term sheet asks for at least $80 million invested at the site by September 30, 2029, against a projected $93.4 million. It also asks for 173 qualified new jobs by that same date, counted above a statewide base of 18 people at Fibro Laepple Technology Inc., a separate training-center entity that was already in Michigan.

Qualified jobs had to be created on or after July 2, 2024, the offer-letter date, and held for six months. Average pay in the filing was $26.82 an hour plus benefits, above a regional median of $23.73. Longer term, the company told the fund it wanted a training bay in the building, first for its own crews and later for outside certificates.

WHAT MICHIGAN TIED TO THE MONEY

Fifty people after the first public year is not a broken deal on a five-year ramp. It is also not 173. The second customer, the series job, still has no name in the company’s own updates. Until that work is public, the east-side hall is a spare-parts plant with a headquarters sign and a grant clock.

Spare Hoods First, Series Work Still Unnamed

The product is unglamorous and, for that reason, durable. Presses hit sheet steel or aluminum into rough shapes. Robotic cells then trim, join, and finish the parts. The cells are built to swap jobs. Michigan’s memo said they can be programmed for any OEM. The German spare-parts page puts numbers on that flexibility: up to 60 different components per cell, more than 250 vehicle parts on the automated lines, 7,000 tools in the warehouse, and 3,000 devices on the floor, with 40 people whose job is to fold new parts into the system.

Finished service parts can be dip-painted, sealed, and packed to a customer’s box. The Teublitz plant even runs a classic-car stream back to 1954. Detroit’s first brief is narrower: original spare parts for American models, on 270,000 square feet, with series production promised once the second client is ready.

WHAT THE DETROIT CELLS ARE BUILT TO DO

• Stamp the skin: Hoods, fenders, doors, and trunk lids from sheet metal, the parts listed in the state filing.
• Finish in cells: Robotic unicells rework the rough stampings and can be recoded for a different maker.
• Ship as service parts: Paint, seal, and pack to dealer spec, the same aftermarket method used in Germany.
• Add series later: A newly acquired client was queued in September 2025; the name has not been released.

Quentin L. Messer, Jr., then chief executive of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, called the choice a foreign-direct-investment win under the state’s “Make It in Michigan” pitch. The more precise description sits in the board packet. Michigan spent public money so a family-owned German stamper would take the slow, expensive building with the cranes, not the ready hall in Alabama.

The cranes are working. Original parts are leaving the east side. The 173-job test, and the unnamed series order that would justify it, still sit on the 2029 side of the ledger.