The issue of non-local businesses trying to exploit Detroit's name is a hot issue. In a new flare-up, the chairman of Crain Communications lashes out against a startup he says tries to "get away with Grand Theft Auto."
"A site has been identified to assemble the first ever pure electric sports car in Michigan," a Detroit Electric release said in March 2013, "with production to start in August."
"Anyone who wants to use Detroit in his or her corporate or brand name should have some serious connection with the city and this community," Keith Crain writes in Crain's Detroit Business. "It may not be required -- but it should be."
He's "outraged" at a foreign outfit calling itself Detroit Electric, which "came into our city claiming all sorts of activities that obviously never came true. And now, not surprisingly, they skipped town."
The venture was announced in March 2013 "with a great deal of fanfare," Crain recalls, adding that he saw the name as "irritating" from the start.
The company's electric car, which was an English shell with Asian electric motor and batteries, was met with back-patting and handshakes from local dignitaries. Yet there was nothing Detroit about it. . . .
I never thought that it would really do business in Detroit. . . . And it sure looks like it's been confirmed as the company is now setting up shop anew in the Netherlands.
Crain wasn't the only skeptic originally. "It's too early to . . . be sure news release hype will turn into reality," Deadline Detroit wrote the day Detroit Electric announced this in March 2013:
A site has also been identified to assemble the first ever pure electric sports car in Michigan, with production to start in August.
Our coverage that day added:
Among other topics not yet addressed:
- Where's the factory?
- When and how can applicants seek the "180 sales and manufacturing-related jobs"?
- What "major partnership" stake will a larger carmaker have?
Fifteen months later, Crain declares in his column:
I wish that the U.S. trademark office could wrestle control of the Detroit Electric name from this Asian/European company.
I have no doubt that someone will eventually want to produce another real electric car in Detroit and should be able to use this name. . . .
I just hate to see this company get away with Grand Theft Auto.
-- Alan Stamm
Earlier at Deadline Detroit:
