What's with the Aggie yell leader in the OSU garb?

It's less pretty and more just nuts-looking, but I don't seem to like it any less for that. Glad to see them continue to pursue wild hairs.

You were thinking of buying an Alfa and that's all it took for you to be turned off to the brand? Methinks you dodged a bullet you weren't prepared for, friend.

135i - 10-20% Jalop? Not sure I agree with that, but I don't care enough about it to care.

Understanding the viewpoint of those in the industry adds perspective and provides a background and some understanding as to why you all feel the way you do. But my point the whole time is that, despite the responses of those saying "you've obviously never been to Detroit and don't know what it's about", to someone on…

Everyone else: We don't really get the allure of the NAIAS

Dude, at what point did I fucking saying anything about not having a car culture? I can't throw in enough goddamned qualifiers to make it clear that that is not my issue, but rather that the rest of the country doesn't relate to it or see it.

"That's the REAL problem with arguing either side of this - there isn't one."

Harris' entire point, which is that the NAIAS is heralded as this wonderful piece of car culture which he doesn't think it is. Call it a problem of perception or marketing or hype over reality, but that's the entire point. It's a mismatch of expectations and reality, of what it's hyped as to what it really is.

Not once have I made a single generalization or stereotype about the state of Detroit, and most of what you just said there enhances my point and, circling all of the way around, Harris' point.

It's not about being called The Motor City (proper noun), it's about the continued insistence that it's the center of all things automotive.

It's absolutely difficult to judge a place from far away, but that's going to be the case for any geographically concentrated "center" of something regardless of where it is.

And my point is that, though all of that may be true, more than anywhere, other Americans struggle to relate to Detroit. The center of industrial activity is may be, but it would be a pretty hard sell to convince me that the rest of the country would agree on Detroit as still the cultural heartbeat of the automotive…

I've revised this point elsewhere, but I'll sum it up here as well:

Which I think goes further to the point that the rest of the country's car culture feels very alienated and disconnected from the auto show environment at NAIAS and from the car culture in Detroit at large.

Then I wasn't clear with my words. I don't think at all that this is a chicken/egg debate about which came first; clearly, the industry came first and the culture came second.

I've not, but conversely, it seems that Detroiters seem to really struggle to view themselves as the rest of the car-consuming country (and continent after which its esteemed auto show labels itself) views them and how the rest of the country consumes cars. It's all about the industry in Detroit and from Detroiters…

What coincidence do you speak of? Is there some natural feature or formation or resource specific to the Detroit area that makes it uniquely suited for car production, or was it indeed just the coincidence and momentum of the birth of a nascent industry in no particular place that led to its growth in that area?

That's the point: it's not the Motor City, it was the Motor City. Sure, it retains the moniker and some of the frippery associated with being the Motor City, but the whole essence of its being deemed the Motor City wasn't simply that it was the hive of automotive activity in the country/world (which today it is not),…

Toyota, Nissan, and Honda all missed their sales targets after a year that saw the slowest growth for Japanese automakers in 24 years, as Bloomberg reports.