DüSSELDORF AND MUNICH may have claims to priority, but most historians of techno music identify Detroit as the birthplace of the genre. In countries like Britain and Germany, the city is enshrouded in myth, venerated as the hallowed source of all things futuristic and funky. But in America itself, there's little awareness of Detroit's global prestige among ravers. Here, electronica converts and technophobes alike tend to think of the music as a European import. Almost twenty years after the genre emerged, the notion of techno as a Motor City invention is finally filtering into public consciousness -- thanks to a TV commercial for a car.

Produced by the agency J. Walter Thompson, spots for the Ford Focus show the car being assembled by a cyborg-like entity that's half-DJ and half auto-plant robot. The soundtrack is a 1985 tune generally considered the first proper Detroit techno track, "No UFOs," created by producer Juan Atkins and released via the appropriately Fordist alter-ego Model 500.

From Nike's infamous ad featuring the Beatles' "Revolution" to the two recent car commercials based around Hendrix tunes, advertisers have long used classic rock songs to surround their products with rock's mythopoeic aura. The Focus commercials break new ground, though, by linking the line of cars with a specific musical genre, and even using "Detroit Techno" as the campaign's slogan.

Talking in the industry's slightly chilling language of "multi-spike strategies" and "targets," Paul Hallas -- the J. Walter Thompson brand manager who supervised the campaign -- declares, "the last thing we want to do is ruin or exploit an art form, in fact we're trying to support one. The idea was to find unexpected ways to communicate our message, and align our product with things that are relevant to our target." If the "target" wants to discover more about Detroit techno, adds Hallas, it can visit the Web site focus247.com for a history lesson.

The Detroit scene and its enclaves of acolytes across the world are renowned for their protective attitude toward the music's underground status, and as you'd expect, the Ford Focus campaign has confused and polarized this tightknit community. Like other music subcultures, Detroit techno oscillates between resenting the mainstream's co-opting, diluting embrace and complaining of neglect. It's a dilemma captured by one participant on the 313 Web forum for Detroit techno obsessives, who asked: "If you were angry they used 'No UFOs', how mad would you have been if they hadn't?!"

The debate is especially conflicted because the financial beneficiary is Juan Atkins, the senior member and mentor figure in the legendary "Belleville Three" of DJ/producers who pioneered the genre. Many believe that if anybody has a right to reap the rewards, it's Atkins. When it comes to electronic dance music, creative directors in the ad industry -- like the record-buying public itself -- have tended to favor the white, usually British popularizers of the genre rather than its black American originators. For Detroit techno purists, this is doubly galling, not just because Atkins and his ilk aren't getting payback for their contributions, but because they believe that white electronica producers like Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method, and Moby (all of whom have figured heavily in TV adverts) are actually bastardizers of the form. Castigating the elder statesman of Detroit techno for commercializing his own art is a difficult step for fans (most of whom tend to be white, as it happens) simply because this is such a rare instance of a black artist getting "paid in full" rather than ripped off.

The auto industry and Detroit techno have historically had a closely entwined relationship, and this makes the Ford Focus /Juan Atkins link especially fitting. Techno was invented by "the sons of the auto industry," as Hallas puts it: a generation of black middle class youth in Michigan who'd grown up accustomed to affluence thanks in part to the strength of the racially mixed United Auto Workers. Atkins's grandfather and father both worked at Ford. The Europhile sensibility of Atkins and the other inventors of techno -- their early Eighties infatuation with English and German synth-pop, with Italian fashion -- stemmed in part from an upwardly mobile desire to differentiate themselves from the ruffneck youth of Detroit's ghettos. Beyond this, techno's nervous, high-energy rhythms seem deeply connected to Detroit's car culture. It's one reason that European synthpop tunes like Kraftwerk's "Autobahn" and Gary Numan's "Cars" struck a chord and were so influential in the genesis of techno.

For all these reasons, a remark made by Atkins early in his career has renewed resonance: "I'm more interested in Ford's robots than Berry Gordy's music." Intended as both a patricidal declaration of independence from Detroit's pop past and a mission statement about making machine music, the comment conceals further ironies. After all, Gordy actually modeled Motown's hit factory on the assembly line, from specialization of labor (a strict division between writers, performers, and producers) to part-interchangeability (session musicians the Funk Brothers often built rhythmic undercarriages not knowing what song-chassis would be welded on top). And Gordy himself was an ex-Ford employee. One way or another, it seems, everybody's working for the Man.