Non-football related stuff that really makes your day

[bimmer84]

Here is the R8.

[-Deborah-]

ooooh!!

[-Deborah-]

That's a sweet color, too.

[bimmer84]

Front. I liked the Mustang too. That color was really unique.

[bimmer84]

That color on the Mustang kind of looked like a pearly lemon sort of color to me in person. Very cool.

[-Deborah-]

Yeah it was like yellow and gold combined. Sorta. Really sharp.

[Panoptes]

I pretty much skipped the foreign stuff.

A great quality to have in an American citizen.

[bimmer84]

Neal Rubin
Line is blurred for 'Buy American'

Chrysler PT Cruiser, cream-colored, southbound Lodge. In the rear window, a red, white and blue bumper sticker: "Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign."

The car was made in Mexico.

North American International Auto Show, Mazda exhibit. At the front, two stylish Mazda6 sedans, one blue and one red.

The cars were made in Flat Rock.

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"Buy American" fits nicely on a lapel button, but as you'd expect with a two-word philosophy, there are some details to be worked out. Nowhere is that murkiness more clear than at Cobo Center, where James Powell of Rochester Hills had just taken the red Mazda6 for a test sit.

He's looking to replace a sedan so well-traveled that the odometer has passed 180,000 and the dashboard lights are burning out. It's a Honda Accord, and Powell will tell you, "My car's American. It's from Ohio."

The Mazda6 is a particularly interesting study, as well as a particularly handsome vehicle. It's made by UAW members in a factory that also churns out the Ford Mustang. Ford owns 13.4 percent of Mazda, and while that's 20 percent less than it owned 14 months ago, Ford remains Mazda's largest shareholder.

So: Is the Mazda6 American? Is the PT Cruiser? If not, where does the line fall?
Focus on content, not brand

That's a question for a book, not an auto show. But it's also a question plenty of car buyers ask themselves as they prepare for a down payment and a loan, and the answers are as varied as the customers.

Powell, 50, is leaning toward another Accord or a Ford Fusion -- a car adored by reviewers, and built in Mexico on a Japanese platform. He'll go with what his test drive and Consumer Reports tell him, but by his standards, the Accord is the more domestic of the two.

When it comes to the redistribution of his assets, he'd like to think that American assembly line workers are spending it close to home. No matter the car's nameplate; he said, at the top of the corporate food chain, "that money isn't staying at Meijer anyway."

At the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, chairman David Cole focuses on parts content, not brand. "You can find some Japanese cars made here," he said, "that have more domestic content than Big 3 cars made somewhere else."

"Putting labels on cars -- 'This is foreign, this is domestic' -- doesn't work," he said. From a practical standpoint, neither does putting borders on a map. For post-NAFTA car production, he said, Mexico is Canada is Kansas City -- the assembly site, as it happens, for the new, undeniably American, German-engineered-and-adored-in-China Buick LaCrosse.
Factory workers staff Mazda display

In lieu of perky actors and models, Mazda's auto show exhibit is staffed by earnest factory workers from Flat Rock. "I hope people don't think we're just hired to be here," said Julian Rios, 41. "I built these cars."

Duane Bomia, 52, works with Rios. "I get a sense of pride when I see our products running down the road," he said.

Their paychecks buy gasoline, groceries and Girl Scout cookies in Monroe, where they both live. Whether that makes the Mazda6 an American car, they don't know, either. "It's an American-built car," Bomia said.

Yakov Fradkin, 48, was next into the red Mazda6 after Powell. A Ford engineer from Farmington Hills, he wore a denim work shirt and a Ford baseball cap.

"I feel it is a Japanese car," he said. "I know it's built in the U.S. Still, it's a Japanese car by design and by its nameplate."

He wasn't taking sides. That's just the way he saw it.

"It's not bad or good," he said -- or by any means settled.

nrubin@detnews.com (313) 222-1874

From The Detroit News: http://detroitnews.com/article/20100...#ixzz0dU2Dpzvd

[Panoptes]

An educated American car buyer looking to buy "Made in America" can find it.

[-Deborah-]

I live in Ford country now and I see which companies help this area's economy the most. But, I really wasn't trying to rehash this debate that's been had here numerous times. We went to the Auto Show on a Saturday...it was packed. We (me and two Ford retirees) weren't going to fight the crowds to look at cars made by foreign auto companies when we were mostly interested in what the Big 3 were or weren't doing.

[bimmer84]

I admire Ford for doing it without taxpayer help. The new Focus is really sharp, and 305HP out of a 6 cylinder in the 2011 Mustang is fantastic. Bravo! Power and economy.

[bimmer84]

The 2011 Focus

[bimmer84]

Backside

[Sweatpants Murphy]

A good friend of mine took some pictures at the auto show and put them on his flickr:


www.flikr.com/photos/yeahimjosh

[-Deborah-]

BTW, Bim. I just got around to reading yesterday's paper. It said there was a fire at the show on Thursday right above the Audi display! They had to evacuate the show and move the $175,000 car nearby (I believe it's the one in your photo).