At Global Alliance, we take the “Worldwide” in our company name very seriously. We pride ourselves in offering premium limousine services to our clientele not only in our home base of Toronto but around the globe. Through our sophisticated network of trusted worldwide affiliates, Global Alliance can provide professional chauffeured services in hundreds of international cities. We will discuss many of the major worldwide destinations served via our affiliate network on this blog. Today we roll into the Motor City, Detroit.

Michigan’s largest city and the fourth-largest city in the Midwest, Detroit is also the anchor of a larger metropolitan area of over five million inhabitants, the fourteenth-largest in the United States. Founded along a river system linking Lake Huron and Lake Erie in 1701 by French explorers (détroit being the French word for “strait”), Detroit was the largest settlement in French North America between Montreal and New Orleans and was a major centre in the fur trade due to its location on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Detroit was ceded to the United States by Britain (which had only a few decades before won it from France) in 1796, and began its rise as a great American city.

As a major regional centre and capital of Michigan throughout the first half of the 19th Century, Detroit saw a great influx of immigrants and grew steadily. Detroit was incorporated as a city in 1815, laid out its major streets like the grand boulevards of Paris, and experienced prosperity as an industrial and shipping hub. Detroit’s industry, wealth, and population exploded around the turn of the century behind the erection of the automotive industry lead by Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Company and competitors Chrysler, Dodge, and General Motors. By 1920, Detroit was the fourth-largest city in the nation, its plethora of good union auto-manufacturing jobs attracting migrants from across the country, in particular blacks and whites from the South.

Reaching its population and productivity peak in the 1950s, Detroit’s renaissance in popular cultural influence was during the 1960s and early ’70s, when Berry Gordy’s legendary Motown Records – source of the popular and influential “Motown Sound” – produced one hit song after another and launched many local African-American talents to worldwide stardom, including Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, and the Temptations. Although Detroit’s economic and cultural fortunes have declined along with its population since the 1970s, it remains a major metropolitan centre and vibrant urban community in the contemporary Midwest.

Detroit’s auto giants still base their head offices in the Detroit area, with GM’s downtown headquarters in the riverside Renaissance Center certainly the most iconic. Other landmarks in the city include the historic 5,000-seat Fox Theatre, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the city’s entertainment district centred on Greektown and its three casino resort hotels. Detroit is a major sports city, with the frequent respective NHL and NBA champion Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons both based in the city, along with the tradition-steeped Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball and the NFL’s Detroit Lions.

Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (airport code DTW) is the main airport in the Detroit area, based in suburban Romulus.

Please feel free to contact Global Alliance Worldwide Chauffeured Services for all of your transportation needs in Detroit, Michigan.