Greenfield Village is one of the most unique outdoor museums in the world and it’s also considered the largest.  It was originally developed by Henry Ford as a showcase for the homes and small enterprises that developed during the early part of the 1900′s and changed the world. You can walk along the original footsteps of the people who became giants in industry.  Names like Webster (dictionary fame), the Wright brothers, Edison, Firestone, Abraham Lincoln and Henry Ford himself.

It was recently upgraded to bring it to the standards of a world-historical showcase. As part of “The Henry Ford” (whatever that is supposed to mean) the land is also home to the Henry Ford Museum which is in-and-of-itself a destination for folks all around the world.

Of course, since we live less than 20 miles away, we almost never visit it. But that’s no excuse as we learned during our recent trip there.  Much has changed since our last visit–all for the better.

ROAD COURSE
Location: Metro Detroit, USA

Starting location:
City of Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, USA
Latitude: 42ø24′27.84″N
Longitude: 83ø 0′22.06″W

Ending location:
City of Dearborn, Wayne County, Michigan, USA
Latitude:   42°18’17.93″N
Longitude:   83°13’59.58″W

Road:
12 miles of highway

Best time to drive:
April to October

Posted maximum speed limit:
113 km/h decreasing to 72 km/h (70mph to 45mph)

Passing on the road:
Very busy.  No lane discipline.

The police:
Michigan isn’t raising taxes.  The government is just raising money by increasing their local speeding ticket quota–for the state, county and each city that you drive through.  It’s a tax without the need for legislation.  Everyone wins!  Except you.  Be very watchful for the speed limit changes on these roads.  Drive 5 mph over the speed limit, and it’s a nice expensive ticket.

Fun notes about the course and What to See:
Whenever we visit it’s always shocking to see how humble an origin these 1900′s entrepreneurs started from with the results being the huge enterprises we know today.  Walking through the homes/work places, the amount of failures required to become successful is also clearly evident and the hardships that were endured by entire families to create and build upon a success finally achieved took decades, sometimes entire lifetimes.  But that was the price paid by these entrepreneurs to leave the brutal work of farming and build upon the new found materials, science and processes that were being developed during this time period.

All of the historical people that Greenfield Village embraces would have been amazed to see how easily we move around the world today.  I think Edison especially would have been amazed at how his industry was the foundation for technology that we take for granted today–such as the Internet.

Henry Ford remains the dominant factor throughout the village, not so much because of his work in the field of automobile manufacturing, but because he was the one who had the vision to move his friend’s and colleague’s homes and workplaces to a central location where future generations could marvel at their achievements.  As Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum continue to expand, his commitment to preserving his friend’s legacies will truly come to light.

AUTOMOBILE
Type of automobile: General Motors, Chevrolet Corvette C5 Z06, 6 speed manual transmission, 4 wheel disk brakes, 5.7liter V8 normally aspirated gasoline engine.

Notes about automobile:
Plus:405 horsepower and just about everything else!
Minus: The seats could be better as could the selection of the interior materials (especially the plastic).

HOW TO GET THERE
Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County International Airport (Airport designation: DTW) is located just west of the course.

WHERE TO STAY
There are numerous hotels in metro Detroit.

WEBSITE
www.thehenryford.org

Bottom line: It’s relatively easy to build an expensive high performance car (example:  The Musk Mobile).  The real engineering and manufacturing occurs when folks take sophisticated technology and create a car for the masses.

Kudos to both Lutz and Letterman for setting the record straight.

David Letterman had Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors on his show during 2009 April 29.  Letterman has shown his serious misunderstanding of other electric cars, especially the GM EV1 and the upcoming Chevy Volt. Musk, in his smartass way, eggs on Letterman which is a shame considering that this is the CEO who dumped millions into Tesla Motors with his team of Silicon Valley “engineers” before realizing that he had been had? Now he’s hired Detroit automotive engineers to get him out of the mess. With all of their hard work, Tesla expects to start making money sometime in the future on their $100,000 car. They’re presently losing money on every car sold. You’d think that Musk would rein-in how smart he believes that he is in light of the actual facts of his own firms difficulties.

Letterman, as to be expected, is clueless. He misstates the Chevy Volts range as “40 miles” when in fact the Volt can travel much further–the 40 miles he states is simply its full electric range. Since it’s a hybrid, range will not be an issue–even for Letterman’s implied 20 mile long east-coast driveway (see the Youtube video).

While I applaud Musk, his investors and customers for financing the development of an electric car, it’s always been relatively easy to build high performance cars where money is little or no object. The real engineering challenge is building an electric car, or any car for that matter, that is affordable for regular people. Tesla isn’t even in this game. With their money losing supercar, they’ve proven that being competitive in the automotive industry is very difficult–even for a startup without any financial legacy issues.

If electric cars are to be in our future, GM and Toyota will be the ones that have the engineering prowess to bring them to the masses.

See Bob Lutz’ (GM Vice Chairman) blog regarding GM’s retort to Letterman: http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/archives/2009/05/stupid_human_trick.html

Before you dismiss the entire idea, hear me out–especially all of you who love a good conspiracy theory.

With the sad downfall and bankruptcy of Chrysler last week, one of the most interesting aspects of the Chapter 11 reorganization is Fiat’s part in it.  Fiat’s game plan in a potential Chrysler deal is to basically pay nothing, assume no liabilities and come out of all it with a management position in the company, a chunk of stock and an in-place distribution network through the remaining Chrysler dealership structure.

But is that all?

There’s been considerable discussion about small car technology transfer from Fiat to Chrysler in order to juice Chrysler’s vehicle lineup.  What about technology transfer the other way?  Could Sergio Marchionne’s (Fiat’s cagey CEO) interest in the linkup actually be all about extracting critical information to bolster Fiat’s global vehicle lineup.  Especially the thin lineup of their Ferrari division?

It sounds outrageous, I know.  But, Ferrari has always been about racing.  Enzo Ferrari always cringed over the thought of designing and building cars that weren’t directly involved in racing.  He reluctantly began to build street cars in order to support his racing habit–an understandable reason.  As Ferrari morphed into a top Formula One (F1) racing car manufacturer, their expenses mounted due in part to the insatiable appetite for money by the Bernie Ecclestone/Max Mosley team (see the John Phillips article in the 2009 June issue of Car and Driver magazine for a taste of Mosley’s “license fee”).

Ferrari’s response:  Diversify their product line so that they can sell more vehicles at a good profit resulting in the ability to send more money to the factory racing group.  And Ferrari has already taken the first step with its move away from the rear/mid engine performance cars to more family friendly fare such as the Ferrari “612 Scaglietti” and “California.” Finally, Ferrari has cars to compete with the likes of BMW family of sedans as well as the Ford 500/Taurus.

But what types of vehicles have some of the highest volumes and margins:  The minivan of course (now known as “cross-over vehicles” and “SUVs”).

And this is where it gets interesting:  Chrysler invented the entire minivan concept and remains a key player in this fascinating vehicle genre.  I know that you’re laughing now, but please, think about it.  Which other automobile companies have moved into the performance minivan segment that we would have never have guessed just a few short years ago?

None other then BMW and Porsche.  For BMW it was a no-brainer to create their X series of minivan/cross-over vehicles.  After all, their forte is making expensive family sedans.  To keep somewhat of a performance aura around their cars, they then take their basic cars and soup them up into the high visibility but low volume M series.  The X series is an obvious extension of their family-vehicle centric plan.

Porsche was a little more surprising with the creation of their family sedan, the Panamera.  After taking the 911, slicing it horizontally on their CAD station and stretching it vertically, they also ended up with their Frankenmonster minivan:  Cayenne.  Shocking to Porsche purist, but in retrospect, a very smart move financially.  They captured a new niche of consumers who wanted the Porsche name without the previously required sports car.

Here’s where I’m going with this:  Ferrari has already taken one step toward the familyfication of their cars by creating front engine 4 seaters.  The next obvious step is to adopt BMW and Porsche’s route to continuing financial success by creating a Ferrari Minivan.  The issue, of course, is that Ferrari and their styling houses (Pininfarina, et. al.) lack the engineering and styling finesse of experts in minivan technology.  Sergio Marchionne recognizes this issue and sees a grand opportunity:

1) Purchase Chrysler’s U.S. dealer distribution network for nothing.

2) Charge some sort of fee to the soon to be “new Chrysler part deux” to transfer small car technology from Fiat to Chrysler.

3) Transfer Chrysler’s minivan technology and styling to Fiat’s Ferrari division.

It’s a win, win, win for Fiat!  And for Ferrari, since a high performance Ferrari Minivan would likely unseat BWM and Porsche.  The Ferrari Minivan could also recreate the wonderful tension and marketing opportunities of the 1960′s when Ferrari went up against Ford in the 24 hours of le Mans racing series–this time in the Minivan category instead of the less family friendly racing category (Ferrari 330 P3 vs. Ford GT40 MKII).  Most importantly, it could help Ferrari generate more cash flow so that it could remain in the good graces of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and continue to compete in Formula One racing.

Fact or Fiction?  You decide.

Metro Detroit in the USA and Windsor, Ontario in Canada were originally envisioned as a city-pair in the early parts of the 1900′s, to the point that the main international airport was designated in the region’s master plan as Windsor International Airport (Airport designation: YQG) in Canada, not what has now become Detroit Metropolitan Airport (Airport designation:  DTW).  But that was all before World Word II and as you’d expect, many plans changed following the war.

Today, the two cities, divided by the Detroit River, are a city-pair of sorts.  In just about any other city-pairs divided by a river, you’d see numerous river crossings by bridge and tunnel.  Not in this region.  Helped by Michigan state government and metro Detroit politics, the two largest trading countries in the world allow passage over a river by a single bridge and tunnel.  But this particular issue is for another time and another venue.

Our destination was Toronto, Canada.

ROAD COURSE
Location: Southern Ontario Province, Canada

Starting location:
City of Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, USA
Latitude: 42ø24′27.84″N
Longitude: 83ø 0′22.06″W

Ending location:
Toronto City, Ontario Province, Canada
Latitude:  43°40’42.06″N
Longitude:  79°37’53.39″W

Road:
260 miles of express road (highway 401)

Best time to drive:
March to October

Posted maximum speed limit:
100 km/h  (62mph)

Passing on the road:
As traffic permits.  Outside of the cities, most folks have good lane discipline.

The police:
Quite a few police cars and SUVs which are easy to see during the daytime and very difficult to see during the night due to their low profile lighting system.  Typically they drive at 100km/h in the far right lane and simply wait for people to come flying past them in the left lane.

On the Canadian highway, the revenue collection folks post the actual fines that you’ll face if pulled over for traveling above the posted maximum speed of 100km/h almost as often as they post the speed limit–$95 for 10km/h over the speed limit and up.  They also post the points that you’ll receive–3 points for 10km/h over the speed limit, increasing to 4 points for higher velocities.  How these translate to a US state and, more importantly, your insurance company is not clear.

At 50km/h over the speed limit, the game radically changes.  Get a ticket above 150km/h and the police become judge, jury and executioner.  You’re automatically assumed to be “racing” and the fee jumps to $10,000!  Also, they impound your car onsite and you loose your driver’s license.

Fun notes about the course and What to See:
How fast can you get from Detroit to Toronto without contributing to the local economy via a speeding tax:  That’s really one of the main questions.  The answer is:  Pretty damn fast.

Along the way you sweep through beautiful “big sky” farming country.  Skirt the area of one of the largest waterfalls in the world (Niagara) as it slowly drains the shallow Lake Erie and demolishes itself into rapids.  Then you end up in the wonderfully quirky metropolitan city of Toronto.  Enjoy music and the arts.  Toronto has all of the cafes, bars and music theaters you could want.  A sports fan?  The ice Hockey Hall of Fame is walking distance from just about every hotel.  Major League baseball is the same distance.

On this particular trip, we drove to our hotel, located near the waterfront of Lake Ontario, almost due south from the express road through the outskirts of Toronto.  Past the fascinating university district.  Then into the hotel/convention center near the waterfront.  Three mini cities within one.  If you have the time, try this routing.  The people watching is worth it!

AUTOMOBILE
Type of automobile: General Motors, Chevrolet Corvette C5 Z06, 6 speed manual transmission, 4 wheel disk brakes, 5.7liter V8 normally aspirated gasoline engine.

Notes about automobile:
Plus:405 horsepower and just about everything else!
Minus: The seats could be better as could the selection of the interior materials (especially the plastic).

HOW TO GET THERE
Closest international airports: This is a road trip. If you have to fly, you’ve missed the point!

WHERE TO STAY
There are numerous hotels in downtown Toronto either at the city center or near the lake.