This article in MSNBC hits close to home - Is the US Auto Industry Doomed?  

... In a report, cited in the Financial Times last week, Lapidus suggested that Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler were understating their collective unfunded pension liability by $40 billion. Should investors factor this information fully into the companies’ stock prices, the prices might sag between 20 percent and 70 percent, Lapidus suggested.

...Do all these declinists know something that investors don’t? After all, for dying companies, the Big Three enjoy remarkably large market caps: $21.5 billion for GM, $20.3 billion for Ford, and $37.5 billion for DaimlerChrysler.

...Meeting all pension and health-care obligations will sap an immense amount of the Big Three’s resources. And the demographics will make the problem worse over the coming decade, not better. General Motors has 2.5 retirees for every worker on the job.

As someone who's about to dip my toe into the world of auto purchasing in the near future, I keep askying myself "Where is Detroit?"  For me it isn't the financials but rather a fundamental products question that I don't have the foggiest answer to.   (I've got enough of a finance background to understand, however, how corp financial structures can actually have an impact on this seemingly unrelated aspect of corporate operations...)

In so many ways, I should be an auto manufacturer's ideal customer - young with a lifetime of car-buying ahead of me, affluent, trendy -- willing to pay a premium for styling features which don't impact COGS the way a bigger engine might -- but for the life of me I can't find a single Detroit car that I want to buy. 

And I'm pretty darn patriotic and receptive to entertaining a "buy American" impulse.

The cars I'm contemplating:

• BMW 3-series  -- the classic "hi, I just graduated from B-school" car
• Audi A4 -- the classic alternative to the 3-series;  same quality, less pretentious
• Lexus IS300 -- Lexus' answer to the 3-series.  Needs a bit of an update though - it's starting to look stale and perf numbers are falling off relative to the latest generation 330's and A4 3.0's
• Infiniti G35 -- the breakaway from the pack ;  radically different styling and aggressive price / performance

There are a few other vehicles that I've sort of tossed out of contention - Saab 9-3 (on the verge of being a family car), Volvo s40/60 (same ding as the Saab), Acura TSX (needs some serious styling help if it wants to hang with this pack) and the Jag X-Type (no daddy cars!).  

But I can't find a single Detroit-model that entertains the same "compact / luxury / sport" segment (yes, I know that Saab and Volvo are owned by GM/Ford now but that's not quite the point I'm making here).   The heralded Lincoln LS?   Maybe my dad would consider it.  The Cadillac CTS?   Just too weird. 

This segment is big enough for at least 4-5 solid import players who generate significant volume.   Parking lots in Silicon Valley are veritable fleets of these cars (padded with de rigeuer SUV's and Accords / Camrys / Integras).   Where's Detroit?