Detroit Grapples With a New Era: The Not-So-Big 3
By MICHELINE MAYNARD
New York Times
DETROIT, May 10 Fans of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team have booed plenty of opposing teams over the years at Joe Louis Arena, but last month they let loose at another traditional Detroit opponent: Toyota. What set them off was a new Toyota FJ sport utility vehicle that circled the ice during the second intermission of an April 11 game between Detroit and Edmonton.
The outburst showed how the Motor City is still having trouble adjusting to a new reality here: the Asian car companies that Detroit once vowed to vanquish have moved squarely into the front yard of the capital of American automotive dominance.
Toyota and Nissan and Hyundai of South Korea have opened gleaming technology centers and are hiring some of Detroit's most talented engineers and designers. They are also becoming more a part of the city's social fabric by supporting local charities, sponsoring teams like the Red Wings, and lending a distinctly Asian flavor to previously homogeneous suburban neighborhoods.
There are signs the city is making progress adjusting to the transition. Gone are the days when fans of the Big Three companies angrily vented their frustrations, as they did 25 years ago, by taking sledgehammers to foreign cars at special events. Nor does anyone still talk seriously, as Henry Ford II did in the 1970's, about pushing Toyota and Honda "back to the shores" of Japan.
Still, old attitudes die hard, and it does not take much for them to flare up. In a town where the United Automobile Workers union has long banned foreign cars from its lots, union members at Ford's local plants decided last winter to kick everything but Ford vehicles out of the choicest spots. Now, "non-Ford-family" cars and trucks are relegated to far-off parking spaces.
Workers at Ford, as well as G.M., have been badly shaken by their companies' slumps. The two automakers collectively plan to cut 60,000 jobs and close more than two dozen plants over the next few years. They have lost billions of dollars in North America in recent years, and their share of the market has dipped to its lowest point ever because of gains by Japanese and Korean automakers.
Just last week, for the first time, Toyota beat DaimlerChrysler in monthly car sales. It has already overtaken Ford in worldwide sales and, if current trends hold, it will overtake G.M. in the not too distant future. On Wednesday, Toyota reported a net profit of $12.1 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, making it the most profitable manufacturing company in the world.
That may be why no less than Ford's chief executive, William Clay Ford Jr., great-grandson of the company's founder, is now warning that blind patriotism to Detroit's old ways is dangerous.
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