The driveway icons that spelled success in America of the late 1960s and 70s were now rusty memories eroded by Asian quality and European style and the fickle Mid-East oil supply. There was a short revival in 2009 paid for by a transfusion of Federal tax dollars, but it wasn’t long after that before once again owning Detroit iron branded you as the chattel of your parents. The car market couldn’t live without the youth market. And as cars lay dying in the lots, the high-margin product lines of pickups, vans, and trucks moved across the Detroit River into Windsor, a border town in the country now known as French Canada. British and French Canada had gone their separate ways in 2035, the British side to pursue oil shale for the Pacific Rim and Midwestern American markets, the French side to pursue life as it had been. It was a bloodless separation, not unlike a middle-aged couple realizing after the kids leave that they no longer have any use for one another culturally, economically, or politically.
