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clarebear | 11 years ago

My retired father-in-law who lives in a suburb of Detroit got a car that was not manufactured by the by the Big Three a couple years ago. He felt so much social pressure that he quickly returned it and got one that was. He told me that some "foreign" cars would be egged in his neighborhood. I put foreign in quotes, as big three cars are not always manufactured in the US and sometimes other cars are manufactured here. But if you are from Detroit, where the headquarters is and the profits go back to matters most, and tangibly matters.

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untothebreach|11 years ago

and friend of mine's father drives around Flint, MI in a Honda Civic with the license plate "GMLEFT." Needless to say, he has frequently had to deal with vandalism. The truth hurts.

phurley|11 years ago

I live in a Detroit suburb, a large number of the residents here are engineers, many for GM, Ford and Chrysler, but quite a few for Toyota, Hyundai and other foreign suppliers (like Bosch and Yazaki). I see many domestic, but almost as many imports here.

I think a lot of the stigma is gone, certainly there is considerable pressure for people to drive their employers vehicle to work, but at least in my (relatively upscale) neighborhood, I would feel no social pressure against, and I bet I would have a bunch of engineers come visit, if I dug up a 100k and put a Tesla in my driveway.

zenocon|11 years ago

Agree. I worked for one of these three companies for a span. While I was there, they did have a rule that if you're not driving their car, you can't park it in the covered parking lot. That was the extent of the backlash, and I've lived in this area most of my life. I think a lot of these stories and anecdotes about tires getting slashed, and people being harassed for driving foreign are not accurate today.

busyant|11 years ago

I agree that there's not a stigma for driving a foreign car around Detroit anymore.

Interestingly, my father worked for Chrysler outside of Detroit from the late 1950s into the 1970s.

And oddly enough, he drove a VW Beetle in the 1960s. As you can imagine, when things were good, he was just viewed as the eccentric guy who drove a puny foreign car (why would anybody in their right mind do that?).

In the 1970s (and 1980s) doing something similar was probably a moderately dangerous move.

I've been back many times during my life and in the 1990s and onward, I see plenty of foreign cars.

hueving|11 years ago

There is a big difference between the big 3 and dealers. In fact, wiping the requirements for this middlescum would help the big 3 as well.

mikeash|11 years ago

But does the Average Michigan Joe understand that?