Between 1964 and 2002, a series of giant Goodyear billboards updated Detroit commuters every day on the health and fortunes of the city’s auto industry.

When the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. erected its first electronic billboard in Detroit in 1964, the Motor City’s auto production figures were a point of great pride for the community. Manufacturing volume that year topped 7.7 mllion vehicles, and the first sign, overlooking the vast Fisher Body 21 plant (below) at the intersection of the Chrysler and Edsel Ford Freeways, was soon joined by two more, one on the Lodge Freeway and another on Interstate 75.

Like the General Motors Building or the giant Uniroyal tire, the signs became familiar symbols of the auto industry and the city of Detroit. Thousands of auto workers passed by them on their daily commutes. Detroit native Aretha Franklin’s 1985 music video, Freeway of Love, opens with a glimpse of one of the Goodyear billboards.

But over the years, as auto production continued to migrate outside the city and outside the state, and the domestic manufacturers were wounded by competition from the import and transplant carmakers, the numbers on the Goodyear billlboards became less a source of pride and more a source of worry. Every year the signs had less to brag about. “They draw attention to the fact that the economy stinks,” A Goodyear representative told a New York Times reporter during the 1982 auto industry slump.

At some point the three signs were reduced to two in number, and in 1991 the billboards were redesigned to promote the Goodyear blimp and to include an electronic text message ticker. In 2002 Goodyear discontinued the signs altogether with very little fanfare, and one can’t seem to find anyone at the tire company who is able or willing to talk about them today. But even though they’ve been gone for 20 years now, Detroiters still remember them well.