Almost 30 years ago I reported for my first job in the Fisher Building in Detroit, a gilt-laden, art deco marvel conceived by Albert Kahn, which stood across the street from the headquarters of General Motors. Today, the Fisher Building remains but General Motors long ago decamped for a smaller perch near the Detroit River in a building whose mortgage is now being offloaded on to a destitute city. As a lackey in Time Magazine’s Detroit bureau, my assignment was to assume a plausible manner and tag along with my more senior colleagues while we reported on what, in retrospect, was the first convulsive death rattle of the US automobile industry. During the past few weeks, as the heads of the auto companies have started pleading for federal funds, I have found myself thinking about those long ago times.

In 1979, with Time’s passport in hand, I witnessed the twilight of imperial Detroit: the cigar ash falling on the lapels of Henry Ford II’s double-breasted suit as he waited for his chef to finish cooking hamburger the way he liked it – from ground filet mignon; the GM holiday party where the prospects for the industry were judged by the height of the heaps of shrimp parcelled onto the party platters; the Chrysler marketing vice-president who confided that he preset the radio of Lee Iacocca’s sedan to leave him with the illusion that the company’s radio commercials were blanketing the airwaves; or the xenophobic foolishness of a wire service reporter who, at a press conference, taunted an executive from Volkswagen by announcing that he had participated in a second world war bombing raid over Wolfsburg, the company’s hometown.