Perhaps the median is $100k or so but I was amazed to see more than 25 pages on realtor.com of Detroit houses less than $1,000! Granted, none of them were beautiful, and I saw no Sub-Zero refrigerators or Wolf ranges, but that makes a Camry look downright pricey. I remember seeing a decrepit shack with toxic mold all over the place in Malibu and it was gone from the MLS in less than a month … for $600k. $500 in Detroit. No extra zeroes.

You are right that your million dollar homes are really, well, million dollar homes, but according to realtor.com there are essentially no single family homes in Detroit over $1 million. In fact, there’s only one, and it’s a former office and hardly counts. Admittedly, this changes radically in Grosse Pointe, where your $8 million homes look remarkably similar to Palm Beach’s $30 million ones … sadly without the nice weather or ocean views.

So maybe we high cost housing guys are crying not laughing. And we’re losing big on our real estate too, so maybe you should worry about us! Sympathy cuts both ways, etcetera.

The guy you responded to made a pretty good point, and accusing him of being a psychopath was overdoing it a bit. When you destroy foreign cars or threaten their owners, you make yourself look like people best shunned. The guy’s giving you a warning, which you should listen to: Destroy foreign cars, you make the rest of the nation look at you funny. Maybe that’s why there isn’t solid support behind the bailout throughout the nation.

There are two Americas, those who make American cars and those who don’t want to buy them.

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to change that.

Tough. I can’t blame you for being grouchy. And you get to suffer through dismal winters, too.

Sorry.

D

The Camry/house comment might have been a bit rough, but you’ve been knocking the south rather vehemently.

And there are a lot of African Americans in the south, so maybe you’re the racist.

Detroit should not be bailed out, it is that simple. This country is littered with boom and bust towns – the government did not interfere then and shouldn’t start now.

If you want to go into race: Poor blacks left their homes to go to the North to find jobs, back when there was a lack of good jobs in the south.

Now that the predominantly white workers of the historically racist big-3 and UAW face moving to find better work they want to be put on permanent government welfare instead.

>>>Not that would actually happen. It’d require leadership and vision in Canada’s brain trust, two qualities almost entirely lacking with it right now.<<<

Right now? How about ‘for goddamed ever’?

Off the topic this beating up cars thing pisses
me off.I’m a soon to be retired CAW member and I detest imports with a passion.However I draw the line at damaging someone elses property.I can understand the frustation,and the rough times folks are dealing with.

Going out to beat up cars doesn’t help our cause at all.All it does it confirm the low opinion that folks allready have of us.

I’ve been mucking about with a piece on what these companies need to do to make the most of their restructuring. Need to get it done…

Yeah, to put this hypothetical lashup under direct government control would be a disaster. Decisions would be made for exclusively political reasons, new plants would be built in darkest New Brunswick to keep some seats safely one party or the other, etc. In my fantasy, the Canadian-Swedish governments would act like an investor or a bank: they’d front the cash, and put a few ground rules (for example, a certain percentage of all manufacturing must be done in the host countries) and then let the management team do what it wants, hands off. If this new management team were to look at Ontario and it’s nearly bankrupt collection of parts suppliers, I’m sure they could cut some sweet deals without any need to coordinate with political powers.

Ontario and the Fed. are working on some sort of 3.3 billion aid package for the auto industry already, so there is interest in spending big money, at least in Canada. Having Manga get a contract for manufacturing trim for the new Volvo would accomplish the goal of giving them a check from the taxpayer, and would be a long term, not a short term solution to boot. That was my thinking, anyway.

I know they had an assembly plant in Nova Scotia that closed in the late 1990s. Pretty sure that Volvo assembled 220s in Canada as well.

To put it into perspective; this is like the Canadian government taking control of Chrysler, just too much of a political headache. Who would make the decisions?

That kind of think will just solidify the Detroit area’s image as a 3rd world wasteland. In a way I hope it happens more, it will kill any support that remains for the bail-out outside of Michigan.

And the more you propagate that image, the more folks will believe it, however inaccurate it is.

On the radio today they were saying that about 4% of people are sociopaths. I wonder who’s more of a sociopath, a vandal or someone who’d like to see more vandalism because it helps the political point they want to make.

Pissy autoworkers should think twice about messing with foreign cars around Detroit. Vandalizing a new Camry in the greater Detroit area means that you are messing with something that 1) is probably owned by someone carrying a gun, and 2) probably cost the owner more than their house.

I bet you thought that #2 was real funny. Go ahead, make fun of poor people. If they’re black, does that make it a twofer for you? FYI, median price of homes sold in in Metro Detroit in ‘08 was a little over $62K, down about 50% from ‘07 but still a bit more than MSRP on a Camry, even a V6 (speaking of which, I was talking with my aunt today and she mentioned she recently had to have her Toyota serviced due to engine sludge). That $62K avg includes a lot of low value properties in Wayne County. Oakland County was $111,000 and Macomb $80,000. So that Camry must be loaded with something illegal in its trunk if it’s worth more than a house around here.

You can crack wise all you want and kick the cripple if it makes you feel good, but my guess is that if you bothered to actually check out the Detroit area you’d find out that most of the area is not a 3rd World wasteland (just wondering, what ethnicities are there in the “3rd World”?) but rather a pleasant place with lots of nice neighborhoods and other amenities. We have a fine symphony that just hired Leonard Slatkin as musical director, replacing the acclaimed Neeme Jarvi, and the DIA was recently renovated and expanded and has a very good collection, including old masters, and of course the amazing Rivera murals. Now how’s that for diversity? A world famous piece of art created by a communist and commissioned by a wealthy industrialist.

Even in the city, there are places like Boston-Edison, Palmer Woods, and Rosedale Park with lovely, elegant homes. Oakland County is still one of the wealthiest counties in the country, plus there are the Pointes on the east side, Grosse Isle downriver, and Plymouth on the west side. At least around here a million dollar house is actually a million dollar house. A while back, Harry Bennett’s estate was up for sale. There were all sorts of secret entrances and tunnels on the property. I think the asking price was about $500K.

I do embroidery work for a number of M/Cs. Nice guys, at least to me. I’ll introduce you to them and you can let them know, face to face, how you feel about the folks who live around here. Most of the guys in the M/Cs are black. You don’t have a problem with that, do you? I’ve been trying to sell them on Kel-Tecs (I have small hands) but they prefer S&Ws and Glocks.

Is it Chicago? No, but I’m not sure that walking around the south side of Chicago is any safer than the east side of Detroit.

It’s easy to be a big man when you’re anonymous on the internet. You willing to post your narishkeit under your real name?

Ford’s already cut their dealer count by about 15%. Besides dealer buyouts and consolidations, the credit crisis and generally shitty economy are culling the weak dealers as well. I think I saw a prediction that another 2000 dealers (all brands) will go down in ‘09. The silver lining in the screwed economy is that it’s taking out dealers by a natural death so GM and Ford don’t have to spend money closing them.

I feel sorry for the companies that sell specialized software to dealers like Reynolds & Reynolds. OTOH, you should be able to find some great deals on used mechanics’ tool chests and Snap-On sets. I wonder if Snap-On, K&D and Matco will survive.

But seriously, I own a Honda Civic, but my next car will certainly be American for fear of some retard ruining my whip…

Those four cars will get more attention than the many more Hummers that have been keyed and vandalized by environmentalists. I guess some cars are more equal than others.

As defense analyst Colin Gray Writes in a recent book about the near-term possibilities of major conflict, “Another Bloody Century,” when considering optimism and pessimism, “optimism is apt to kill with greater certainty.”

– “Fear of China” by Robert D. Kaplan in The Wall Street Journal, on page A14, on April 21, 2006.

I figured you changed it from “whither” to “wither” after seeing another “whither Detroit?” headline.

“I’d better have a good sales report, or I’m going to live in an Econoline DOWN BY THE RIVER!”

Jim Farley.

I think the guy is great. He doesn’t seem to get the press he deserves.

The devil-make-care was a mistake, thanks to a Mother whose malapropisms are legendary. Well, at least in these parts.

Text amended. Literary sensibilities soothed. I hope.

But Strippo already made a much funnier comment about it than I was going to; and besides, I thought maybe the author used the wrong word intentionally, as a pun to illustrate the withering of the auto industry. Well done!

I was ready to roll with that until I got to the phrase “devil-make-care” – and I just couldn’t read any further. The expectation of more garbled phrases (what’s next – flushing out an idea? better late then never?) was just too distracting.

Sorry…