Jobs for no one here

I think a lot of pretty big news is hiding under the edges of The Big Story.  Fitting into Riverdaughter’s lead, this one just caught my eye:

New York City picks Nissan minivan as next taxi cab

Japan’s Nissan Motor has won a contract to provide the next generation of New York’s famous yellow taxis.

The deal, which is estimated to be worth $1bn (£607m) was announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The design will be based on Nissan’s NV200 minivan model.

The van, which beat US carmaker Ford Motor and Turkish manufacturer Karsan Otomotiv for the 10-year contract, will be phased in starting in 2013.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg acknowledged the Nissan NV200’s boxy form evokes suburbia, but he said the yellow paint would give it the iconic New York touch.

Sweet.  I guess Ford doesn’t have any yellow paint?

And if you’re like me, maybe you’re thinking that Nissan will surely make these cabs somewhere in the US – right?

HaHaHa!  The joke’s on us:

The NV200, which will be built in Nissan plants in Mexico, is the first to be designed specifically for use as a New York City taxi.

UPDATE: Some versions of the story include this sentence:

Karsan’s proposed taxi. As part of its proposal, it offered to build a plant in Brooklyn, N.Y., to assemble the vans.

But, they still end with that final bit of information that the taxis will be manufactured in Mexico.

The taxi version of Nissan’s NV200 for New York will be manufactured at the Japanese automaker’s plant in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

I don’t know why the bit about the Brooklyn factory was dropped from some stories. Does it mean that part of the offer wasn’t accepted? Or that they just don’t think it’s important?