Then and now Detroit

[Quentin Hall]

Found this fascinating photo comparison  of  Detroit. Click on the pics to see the change.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/ng-interactive/2014/apr/11/rise-fall-revival-detroit-in-pictures-photography-then-now

[mistertudball]

Interesting pix; thanks for posing.  I guess the only upside to Detroit's situation is the city can't get much worse, eh?

[C.R. Patton II]

Hello Quentin

Thank you for sharing.  Interesting perspective.

This is my interior view.  A little more than 100 years ago ANY man that was homeless, immigrant, illiterate, non-english speaking could come to Detroit to become middle class.  The industrial era was escalating.  Mass employment, peripheral companies and population explosion.  Unfortunately the region leaders were over reliant that the automobile boom would never wane.

[R Schroeder]

Corporations don't pay taxes + ship jobs over seas = Detroit.

[R Schroeder]

Never meant for it to be political in any way.
I'm talking about a tax base. Without a tax base the city will go under. Without good paying jobs the city will out under.
Do I believe the government has to many taxes - yes.
Do I believe they are out of touch - yes.
But, the problem is not collecting enough tax.
In our state most of the big companies pay NO state taxes. They are also keeping there Federal taxes due , off shore. They were given this deal , by the state to keep jobs here, but no they eliminated 6000 people from where I worked for more profits.
That is a loss of 48 million in Federal taxes, and 21 million in state taxes. That is only one of many companies that closed there doors. Not to mention the loss to S.S.
Once you start losing the tax base from companies and workers, your city is going down hill.
That's all I meant.
I wasn't getting into the rich people shouldn't pay more taxes , or any of the other political reasons we all have. Just pointing out, that without good jobs ,and FAIR taxes, you doomed.
Roy

[Jay Friedman]

In my opinion, a major reason for the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs in the US has been trade agreements signed with countries whose economic level is lower than ours.  I think the idea was that with trade agreements that lowered tariffs (customs duties), each country would import more from the other country and at that same time be able to export more to the other.  But while this looks good on paper, in reality a significant number of US manufacturing firms found they could move their factories to the lower economic level country to take advantage of lower wage rates and then export the same products from the other country back to the US which no longer had high tariffs on these items. 

We are all aware of the fact that so many fewer items for sale here are "Made In USA" anymore, with the result that jobs making stuff with a high value added content (manufactured goods) and which pay middle class wages, have disappeared to a great extent.  This leaves factory workers, many of whom did unskilled work, without a job or only able to get a low paying job.  (Except for a small number of tool and die makers, even putting Cadillacs together doesn't require highly skilled workers.)

[Quentin Hall]

       I guess there is always the potential to look at it in the worst possible light. But just like many of the cars that our members have found; abandoned  and unwanted and unloved;  then through sheer guts and determination ( and plenty of money) have restored to a gleaming, former self.
       This applies not just to our cars but to everything in society. Whether you do this metaphorically or physically, politically or locally or individually, we all contribute in some way to the fabric of a society.
   I always get slightly emotional when I look at old pics and sentimentality sometimes overrules common sense. Sometimes you have to look at a job squarely in the eye and weigh up whether it is not just achievable, but also worthy of the effort to achieve it.
   Nevertheless, the very nature of things , good or bad, is that time waits for no man.
         

[RobertM]

Oh how the mighty have fallen

I grew up in Detroit.  In fact, from '65 to '81, my father worked in the Chrysler plant at Hamtramck.  He left Chrysler just before Iacocca took over, thinking he was headed for layoff.  Since then, we have lived in Connecticut, and I have always pined to return.  I've never been able to be a New Englander; the Midwest is still in my heart.  The city itself is, as you see, in a complete shambles.  Homes are auctioned off by the thousands, with hardly any takers. The city declared bankrupt this past July.  I guess if I'm moving out of Connecticut when I retire, Detroit unfortunately won't be my final destination.

[Thule]

i have spent countless hours reading about the rise and fall of detroit,

there is so much to be learned from both the rise and the fall, what a shame what happened to this once grate city.
i live in a country that is heavily based on a few big industry, and rise and fall by how they do, and how badly the tops rob it from the inside. 

yes i do agree, america needs to get there production back to the country,

[Martin Michaels]

It's sad to see but look in any parking lot and count the domestic cars against imports its almost always by a large margin more imports.Then take the amount of imported pieces on domestic cars well it's a shame we are where we are.Buy AMERICAN is alful hard these days.   

[R Schroeder]

Martin, my Honda's were built in  America.
My Chevy's were built in Canada.
Most of the American cars built today run drive trains built in Japan.
You cant win............ha
Roy

[gary griffin]

I live near Seattle and a few decades ago when Boeing was our primary source of jobs, they were in a big slump and there were billboards saying

"Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights."

We have recovered and our economy is based on High tech business including Boeing but Boeing is a much smaller percentage of our economy, and they have opened plants in many other areas also.

[Martin Michaels]

Roy ,I know we live in a different era now. What is the  percentage of a vehicle is made in house to how much is outsourced?

[D.Yaros]

I am an avid walker.  On my walks I constantly run across car parts.  Recently I spotted a modern day Chevrolet center cap.  It is about the size of a silver dollar (showing my age?) and has the Chevy bowtie logo on it.

The point is, I pick it up and examine it to find that on the reverse it reads "Made in Italy"!

[R Schroeder]

Martin, on the window sticker of a new car it will show that ratio.
Roy

[Quentin Hall]

I remember going wide eyed to NYC 25 years ago and seeing the beautiful cast iron manhole covers proudly bearing the words New York City. Made in China. I went to the Empire state and bought some NYC postcards and when I got back to the hotel realized they were made in Australia.
     More and more we will learn where our stuff comes from.  One cities decline is another cities uprising.

[gary griffin]

 This is a very complex question.

Lack of customer loyalty was probably the start of the problem. Originally import cars were luxury items and very few were imported for other reasons. We had the best assembly lines and procedures in the world,

When our auto industry failed to respond to the need for economy cars first Europe and then Asia came forward and filled the need. Our response initially was the Corvair, which was a inadequate response. From there on it got even worse think K car for example.

  Another big factor was unions I am  pro union and have belonged to unions all of my life but they are never perfect focusing on workers pay and benefits and not the future of the business as a whole.  UAW was a good example as they  fought for benefits that were not consistent with the survival and growth of the industry.  Lee Iaccoca was so wise when he placed UAW representatives on the Chrysler Board of directors because labor needed to know the challenges the industry was facing.

  Workers were another big factor by not self controlling their plants. It was an axiom that do not buy a Monday built car, the radio will be in the glove box and the rest of the car will be defective in every way you can imagine.  In my trade fellow workers cautioned us against sloppy work and our union has a "Craftsmanship committee" which can require a worker to fix his (Or her) mistakes on unpaid time. UAW had no inkling of the poor craftsmanship they were harboring.

  Mechanization, I recently saw a video starting with a roll of sheet metal and followed through to a finished Kia. There were a lot of robots and very few assembly workers.  This is the future of the auto industry. I saw a Ford engineer explaining how computers were designing cars for wind resistance and it became apparent that eventually all style and beauty will be fully  compromised to achieve better economy. It is nearing that point now. The biggest variable in the economy equation is wind resistance and our beautiful classic cars will be failing the test as they are not very aerodynamic.

  Outsourcing also plays an important factor. Many components are outsourced. As I recall it started with the transistor radios coming from Japan, and now I would guess even the cars built here are 50% to 60% foreign components.  I doubt it is possible to buy a true American made car unless we include Mexico and Canada. In searching for a lawn mower I found the Honda was American made and the John Deere was produced in Japan.

  Cars are better and last longer now. I love the commercial that shows a Cab company buying surplus police cars and painting them and expecting another 200,000 miles out of them. Not an unrealistic expectation. Ford has doe a particularly good job with their V-8 that is in every Ford, Mercury, Lincoln and light truck that has a small V-8 has the same V-9. I need leg room and reliability and have purchased seven Town Cars in the.last 35 years and all were lease returns or rentals with low mileage from 11,000 to 21,000 miles each. I figure my cost per mile was less than driving a new VW and never had a mechanical problem averaging over 100,000 miles per car.  Not very exciting or innovative cars but great basic transportation.   I know some will not agree with my FMC vehicles and have even been kidded about it at a CLC function locally. Almost all classic car owners have what I call "grocery cars" that we drive daily and I chose Town cars decades ago and have never been sorry.

   Our auto industry will struggle and regrettably will probably never return to it's full glory of the past. We are trying to catch up with the foreign producers and even they can not keep up with each other. First it was Germany and even England to a small degree and then Japan. Raising costs of labor pushed production to Korea and eventually it may end up in India.

  With out getting into the human and political parts of the equation I am afraid our auto Industry is in need of a lot of innovation and rebuilding of customer loyalty and will never employ even a small percentage of he workers they employed in the past.

[Thule]

great post gary.

the downfall of american cars is a subject i often think about, here in iceland we where more american when it came to cars than our fellow scandinavian/europe countries, but after the late 70's the american cars almost disappeared.
since then most of the us cars we see here are SUV's and pickups.  the japanese cars mostly took over as "normal" cars and the german high end cars took the place once taken by cadillacs and lincolns,

me myself am a huge mercedes/bmw fan, but i always have emotions towards the old american cars. and have waited for the big americans 3's to get a grip and start to make decent cars again, but for the last 20 years for me the problems has bin that the quality of the american cars just has not bin good enough, the normal cars like K series, stratus, neons and suchs cars are just miles away from what we get in the japanese cars,
here in iceland we get euro spec cars. but we have always imported cars from america in a gray market, in the 80's the us spec cars usually where better equipped and nicer than what we got, but in the 90's it turned around and the us spec'ed car like mmc galants for the us marked, and rival toyotas started to get much cheaper interiors and all over seemed to be a much cheeper production than the euro spec models.

if you compare a 90's cadillac to a 90's mercedes S class or 7 series bmw, i am afraid the caddy looses that comparison. they dont look like cars from the same century.
i love the 80's deville and later cadillac brougham, few days ago i saw one parked out my mother in laws house, and went to check it out, my wife thought is was a nice old caddy and asked if it was as old as my car, when told her this car was somewhere around 1990 model year she could not believe it, because 7series bmw's we once owned where so much more modern, i try to tell her that this actually was and old design, and in a way the only true caddy they made during those years. but when you think of it, as much as i liked the caddy, they where competing for the same buyers, for the same amount of money, the next caddys that followed almost killed cadillac of in europe, and most people here think that they look like a car made by someone that has an identical crisis, and is still trying to make what made them famous, when something else has taken over the marked.

last years though i've seen many good signs from the american cars. as much as i dislike cars like the 300c and chargers/magnum, they still where a huge step forward from the cars they replaced, and they sold really well over here, and i think it is because they are what people want from american cars, they are big, proud, rear wheel driven and have a v8. since than we have seen some more nice american passenger cars. the cars that are gaining most reputation here are probably the cadillacs. the CTS-V really woke up some people that really disliked cadillacs and saw a car that compared well to some high end german cars. the ATS has bin getting good reiviews in the euro car magazines,  if cadillac wants to get back the share of the marked they have lost to the germans they have to compete with them,  i personally think that they should make cars like the elmiraj concept car.  and stop making half ass cars.

i know i seem hars on cadillacs of the 80's-00's. and i am sorry for that,i dont intend to insult anyone, but really want one of my childhood heroes to get there former glory.