Detroit Snack Bar Dreamer

I headed out to Detroit for a few days having bought a new coat, to visit some automotive companies. Unfortunately unlike the heads of “The big 3” I didn’t get to travel in a private jet, nor did I get to be entertained by my shiny new doorstop Archos player. However overall the trip wasn’t too bad and soon arrived in snowy Motown where the temperature was around -10C.

All the automotive companies I visited had their campuses connected by mazes of underground tunnels to prevent folk having to outside as they moved between meetings. The whole thing took on an air of a 1960’s spy movie set and I kept expecting to see Austin Powers whirr into view on an electric golf cart. However Detroit of course can’t and won’t make electric vehicles so that was out of the question. (see “Who killed the Electric car” if you don’t believe me). Interestingly enough neither of my colleagues in the ARM Detroit had seen this movie which I found quite shocking.

All of the car companies proudly sported “No Camera’s beyond this point” signs in their receptions. We had to have the lenses of our camera phones ceremoniously taped over before we could enter the inner sanctums and we were told on leaving that we should not take any pictures of anything until we were completely off the site and on a public highway. Then and only then could we take pictures of… well the automotive offices in the snow. How exciting! I was excited and could scarcely control myself during each visit. With super human effort I managed to keep my real camera in the pocket of my coat and not whip out to take pictures of the endless grey underground corridors, grey people and grey clocks. Yes, clocks. For some reason Detroit is obsessed with clocks and put them up all over the underground corridors, presumably so the employees can tell when its time to go back to the surface.

I concluded that the whole “No Pictures” thing was Detroit being far too pretentious. If they were really serious they would search their visitors with metal detectors, xray their bags and use tamper resistant tape, just like real companies such as Samsung- who are actually very serious about such things.