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Somewhere in the late Cretaceous Era at the Detroit Auto Show

2008_03_04_UofM_HistoryMuseum_Walking by Andy Tanguay
2008_03_04_UofM_HistoryMuseum_Walking
by Andy Tanguay

Jack Lessenberry writes about the frustrations of journalists at the bare cupboard of swag at this year’s Detroit Auto Show and the seeming idiocy of holding an event like this in sub-arctic Detroit in The fossil show in the Metro Times. He then says:

However, I actually think I might go to the auto show for the first time in years, and not just because I have been thinking of replacing the 1927 Bugatti convertible Wayne State issued me. No, I think this might be a really fascinating year, somewhat like a trip to the end of the Cretaceous Era, when the dinosaurs were on their way out, but not quite extinct. Most people’s attention would be drawn to the surviving giant lizards, still stomping and thrashing around. But I would go to see the primitive mammals.

They would have been mainly little rat-like things, nondescript, but they would have been the future, much like the hybrids and electric cars are now. My analogy isn’t perfect: The dinosaurs, scientists now think, died almost all at once, thanks to a meteor or a comet, sort of that era’s equivalent of a Republican-controlled Senate. Vehicles powered only by petroleum will be with us for some time. But it is not at all clear how long any of the Big Three will last; the experts don’t expect a stand-alone Chrysler will make it to 2010,

But there will still be cars of some sort, and the next generation of hybrids will be on display, as will further examples of the supposedly soon-to-be-available electric cars. Some of these things will flop. Others may not.

That’s an interesting take on a Detroit tradition that is fallen on hard times. And given that some of the mammals are made in Michigan, I don’t think that’s an altogether depressing take on the matter.

Speaking of dinosaurs…

…now even huskier!