The notion is so out-there, so ambitious, that it might not be taken seriously if it came from someone else.
But when Dan Gilbert talks, Freep business columnist Tom Walsh thinks readers should listen to his musings about a "Disney-esque automotive attraction in the heart of Detroit." Walsh also drops "stupendous" into his first sentence, lest anyone fail to grasp the scale.
Gilbert, the Quicken Loans chairman and buyer of downtown skyscrapers, is noodling some kind of attraction celebrating the past, present and future of automobiles -- including behind-the-wheel experiences.
'It should be downtown. You could build something as big as an Epcot Center. It could be something of that magnitude. It's just endless what you could do."
As a preliminary step, he tells Walsh, Gilbert is looking for a hard-core car buff "who has the kind of vision and who we could hire into our Detroit team here and start fleshing out some of these ideas and working with others."
Those others could include Roger Penske and Bill Ford, who've heard a bit about The Big Idea and wave reality-check flags in Walsh's column:
Penske: "We'd need commitments from the Big Three and others -- this is going to cost money -- and then we have to understand the viability and sustainability of it."
Ford: "It would be cool to have something big like that in Detroit. The question is, 'What exactly is it? What does it look like? And what would our contribution be?' "
For his part, Walsh sounds intrigued. "It's certainly worth exploring," he writes.
