Dieter Zetsche, the mustachioed leader of Daimler-Benz, returns to Detroit, his old stomping grounds, to put Mercedes-Benz in the spotlight at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show.

The Mercedes-Benz 2009 New Years reception held on the eve of the opening day of the Detroit Auto Show was filled with irony. Here was Daimler head Dieter Zetsche, who not long ago was CEO of Chrysler here in Detroit, holding forth at a lavish reception in the newly renovated Book-Cadillac Hotel at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in downtown Detroit. Reflecting on how much has changed since the 2008 reception that Mercedes held a year ago, Zetsche said, "Today the world is a different place. At this moment, every automaker is feeling the pain. But the automotive sector is the victim, not the cause [of economic distress]." Zetsche continued, "I have a lot of empathy for this city, its automakers, and its auto workers, having lived here for a number of years." Having said that, Zetsche said that, regardless of the economy, Mercedes-Benz would not compromise its future product planning: "We won't put our long-term success on the line with short-term budget cuts. That's why our R&D budget is one of the largest in the automotive industry, and we intend to keep it that way."

I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the room who was hoping that, just as the once-grand Book-Cadillac Hotel, which had sat empty for more than two decades until recently being resurrected by Westin, the Detroit auto industry can also have a rebirth. But we don't have two decades to wait for that to happen. We need it to happen in the next two years.