The best Super Bowl ad wasn’t really an ad at all. At its heart, the beautifully filmed “Imported from Detroit” ad featuring Eminem, the Chrysler 200, and some of Detroit’s amazing art and architecture, is a love song for the city in which I was born.

For many, Detroit is a cautionary tale, a disharmonious convergence of the absolute worst of politics, greed, race and economic realities. Even those entrusted to raise it up, who professed to love it and promised to work in its best interest, instead lined their pockets at the city’s expense.

It’s tough being Detroit. It’s tough being a Detroiter.

But the world forgets that Detroit and Detroiters are tough, and the Chrysler ad — on Detroit’s behalf — flips a big middle finger to those who’ve counted it out and danced on its grave. Detroit’s not yet ready to give up the ghost, the ad says, and for proof of its mettle, here’s what the Motor City’s making these days: Cars, cool cars, cars with attitude, cars with the will to compete.

The ad is all anyone’s talking about in these parts, in person and online. It made people — including me — feel instantly proud and hopeful for the future of Michigan’s still-largest city.

Now, some of the challenges facing Detroit will take years, maybe even decades to overcome, if at all. Many problems are just chronic facts of Motor City life.

But the rebounding of the auto industry is great cause for hope, and if Detroit is to once again thrive, it will be attitude — the attitude of the city, the attitude of that Chrysler ad — that lifts it from the desperate depths into which it has fallen.