It was Bad Birmingham, had one of the highest murder rates in the country for a while. Auto-manufacturing is mostly a P.R. opportunity. Mercedes is big, but the attention it got is way out of proportion. It has possibly made people realize they need to pay attention in school because this is high teach manufacturing as opposed to the yarn-mills which are all closing down and moving to Mexico. They all moved to the South in the 1930s to take advantage of the impoverished workers and dirt-cheap cost.
History repeats itself.