Lost City Blues – A Story about the Collapse of Detroit
by Mark Binelli

This is just an excerpt from his story in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine - the part where he covers the annual Detroit Auto Show. Very funny, I thought.

I haven’t been to an auto show since I was a teenager; my main memories center around the bikini-clad booth models and getting to see the car from Knight Rider. In keeping with the New Austerity, though, this year’s show, according to advance buzz, will be decidedly toned down: a back-to-basics, “cars on carpets” approach, as one insider put it.
At the show, the traditional rituals are still taking place. If you’ve never been to an auto show, the main ritual involves adults climbing in and out of vehicles they will not be allowed to drive, which always seems deeply unsatisfying. (For related reasons, I’ve never liked strip clubs.) Inside a car you cannot drive, there’s not too much to do. Most people give the steering wheel a firm, ten-and-two grip and wiggle their spines against the unfamiliar seats; occasionally, they try the radio. Outside the vehicles, hardcore motorheads, almost all men, photograph the new models from various angles, occasionally popping a hood to snap a close-up of an engine. A new Mustang turned on its side attracts a throng of guys who stare at the underbody in awe, as if they’re peeking up a skirt. Sometimes the new-car smell is so pungent, I wonder if they’ve figured out a way to make it artificially stronger at car shows, like they seem to do with the smell at Cinnabon.
Perhaps to signal an added level of seriousness, this year the booth girls are almost uniformly brunette and wear the same basic business attire (tight black pants, tops and blazers, stiletto-heeled black boots), a look I’d call “Naughty Vice President of Marketing.” The crowds are relatively sparse, making the bright lights and forced cheer of the attendants feel creepy and desperate. In terms of square footage, the Big Three still dominate the main floor, but their displays have the least frills, with Chrysler making an especially depressing showing. In the past, Chrysler has been known for over-the-top stunts during the press preview: hiring cowboys to herd cattle down the streets of Detroit to promote the new Dodge Ram, or driving a Jeep off a stage and through a plate-glass window. But at this year’s show, Chrysler doesn’t even introduce any new models ready for market, and their cars are modestly arranged on a thin, gray carpet that is bunched in places. Older models, like the PT Cruiser, are given a wide berth by attendees, as if someone has spotted a dead body inside.
The foreign manufacturers, not chastened by any recent congressional prostration, allow themselves a little more flash. Volkswagen’s display is multileveled, white and gleaming, with an Apple Store brightness that makes your eyes hurt. Another company’s signage features a humanoid robot, which I assume is some sort of jokey mascot until one of the representatives explains that last year it conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army, one of the only companies still hiring in Detroit, has constructed a climbing wall in the food court, and camo-clad recruiters pace the floor.
In a telling sign of the times, so many automakers have dropped out of the show – Nissan and Porsche among them – that BYD Auto, a Chinese car company traditionally stuck in a basement annex, is able to move up to the main floor. BYD entered the Chinese car marker in 2005 and plans to begin selling in North America in 2011. The company started out manufacturing rechargeable batteries and makes extravagant claims for its electric cars – that their batteries run for 250 miles and can be recharged to half-power in 10 minutes – about which U.S. analyst sound skeptical.
The biggest change at this year’s show, everyone agrees, is the admission, however belated, of the limits of the internal combustion engine. It’s impossible to overstate how huge a deal this has been for Detroit. I remember a childhood trip to Auto-World, the ill-fated, automotive-history-themed ‘fun” park meant to save Flint, Michigan, and famously mocked in Roger & Me, the centerpiece of which was a three-story V-6 engine displayed in a rotunda like a giant statue of Buddha in a Bangkok temple.
But this year, every major car company is stressing its new ecowarrior bona fides, setting aside prime real estate for their hybrids and concept electrics. An inordinate number of these vehicles are unsubtly painted some chlorophyll shade of green. At the auto show, animated ads in the Lincoln display show the cars growing out of a leafy vine, as if future trips to an auto dealership will be more like picking organic produce at a farmer’ market. Toyota goes a step further, passing out little Prius-shaped flyers that actually have wildflower seeds embedded in the paper, so you can figuratively plant a Prius in your Earth Day victory garden. Toyota also passes out red paper RECYCLE THIS BAG swag bags. (Ford’s plastic, flag-bedecked bags, by contrast, recommend shoppers BUY AMERICAN.)
In the basement, an entire artificial forest has been constructed, and people wait in line to be driven around a track in one of a fleet of hybrid vehicles. It’s like the NPR version of Six Flags. I half-expect to see Terry Gross behind the wheel of my 2010 Ford Fusion hybrid, but it’s a chirpy Ford salesperson. We slowly drive off, shaded by the fake trees and creeping past a little waterfall. All of this is surely meant to be soothing, but something about the unnatural lethargy and the utter silence of the cars feels sinister, almost sharklike – a vision of a neutered, dystopian future where our robot cars won’t let us drive too fast or tailgate or listen to loud hip-hop with a lot of bass.
Like T. Boone Pickens slapping windmill arms on his oil derricks and suddenly claiming to be Al Gore, there’s something inherently unconvincing about the automakers’ showy new appeals to the Sierra Club demographic. In fact, probably not coincidentally, one of the most striking discrepancies at the auto show is the gap between green PR blitz and civilian interest. People mill near the hybrids with a detached curiosity, the same way you might check out the albino calf at a state fair but not necessarily write about it in your journal when you get home. Over at Ford, scrums of large men surround every F-150 pickup, testing out the tailgates with their feet and marveling at the new “smart” technology that will let you know if you’ve forgotten one of your tools at home. At Chrysler, the spokesmodel for an enormous four-door Dodge Ram is a dude with gelled, spiky hair, wearing jeans and an unbuttoned, untucked plaid shirt. He’s talking up the special features when I wander by. “That’s right, guys,” he says, “satellite TV!”