Detroit is back. Not the city. That’s still teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, but the automakers. They’re manufacturing more vehicles than they have in years and today’s auto sales reports for June are expected to show the strongest monthly sales since late 2007, a little more than a year before GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection under a government-orchestrated plan.

“We’re back to pre-crisis levels in the annual sales rate,” says Mike Santoli, senior columnist for Yahoo! Finance. “We ‘ve had tremendous pent-up demand for cars in this country… now we’re getting the payback for that.”

Related: The Most Expensive Cars at the New York Auto Show

The actual June sales numbers will trickle out throughout the day. Ford sales are leading, up 13%, followed by Chrysler, up 8.2%, and GM, up 6.5%. Sales of pickup trucks for all three were brisk . Sales of GM's Chevrolet Silverado rose 29%, while sales of Ford's F-Series pickups and Chrysler's Ram surged 24% each.

U.S. auto sales

Steinway Musical Instruments (LVB) is about to be taken private in a $438 million deal with an affiliate of Kohlberg & Company, a private equity investment firm.

Last year we toured the Steinway & Sons factory in Astoria. (Watch the above video to see the inside of the Astoria factory, courtesy of Mamta Badkar/Business Insider.) The company is a subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments with two factories: one in New York, the other in Hamburg.

Steinway prides itself on having retained manufacturing jobs in the U.S. since all its Grand pianos are made here.

It does however manufacture and market its two lower end Boston and Essex pianos in Asia.

Sales for the company were hit in the New York area and across the world during the recession, with 'hobbyist' buyers cutting back on spending.

At the time, Steinway cut a third of its New York staff, reducing the Astoria factory head count to 215, from about 300.

But the New York market recovered quickly. In fact, in 2011 the company sold