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By Root 917 0

volumes, and have now achieved high-value collectible status. Engines steadily became larger and more powerful. GM was usually triumphant in the horsepower race, and the fact that these ultraheavy, overly powerful land yachts got only nine or ten miles per gallon was of little concern with fuel prices at twenty-five cents per gallon—roughly, as today, one-fourth what the rest of the world was paying. (Is it any wonder that the Europeans, and later the Japanese, focused predominantly on smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles when customers in their home markets were paying four times as much for fuel?) GM’s overseas business was booming, too, as company resources were poured into Opel and Vauxhall in Europe, and Holden in Australia.

But the real GM domination took place here in the United States. One out of every two vehicles sold was produced by a GM division. GM’s flashy designs, and equally flashy designers, became an intrinsic part of the American culture of consumption, newness, and “keeping up with the Joneses.” Whether it was the economy, the customers, the dealers, or the suppliers, everyone benefited from GM’s success. Sure, some voiced concern and resentment, and best-selling books, like Vance Packard’s The Waste Makers and John Keats’s The Insolent Chariots, reflected a small but growing nucleus of concern over whether all this arrogant opulence and the ever-shorter fashion cycle were really of benefit to society. But these books were written by intellectual elitists . . . so who cared what they said?

One incident that caused GM lasting harm was a 1965 book by a young lawyer and consumer advocate by the name of Ralph Nader. Unsafe at Any Speed accused the Corvair, different from other American cars with its rear-engine design, of being inherently unstable and accident-prone. Nader’s work gained huge notoriety and effectively shut down Corvair sales in the mid-1960s.

Unaccustomed to being dented by a lone ideologue, GM hired investigators to delve into Nader’s personal life, seeking any salacious information that would silence him. But news of the investigation leaked and caused a public outcry. In an effort at damage control, GM chairman Jim Roche (not the most charismatic of figures, even on a good day) delivered an abject apology to Nader. It was an epic low point in the company’s history; GM, for perhaps the first time, was cast in the role of villain. This occurrence also lent credibility to the nascent “safety advocacy” movement, costing GM more of the American public’s trust than the company realized at the time.

But it mattered not. GM still had 50 percent market share. In 1965 French national TV produced a one-hour special on the globe-spanning power of GM. They titled it “GM, Le Budget de la France” (“The budget of France”)—at the time, GM’s sales revenue exceeded the budget of the French Republic.

The unstoppable GM machine roared on, despite some increasingly strident criticism. As the 1970s approached, GM’s top leadership spoke of the “60–60–60” plan, meaning that GM would have 60 percent market share and GM stock would rise to $60 per share, all by the time the core senior leadership turned sixty.

It was not to happen.

3

The Beginning of the End

IT’S HARD TO SAY EXACTLY WHEN, WHY, AND WHERE THINGS FIRST WENT wrong.The company changed, as did the climate in which it operated. Certainly government played a role, as did the media. Foreign competitors, a “fringe” at first, began growing at the base of the mighty GM oak, with companies like BMW, Jaguar, and Mercedes providing affluent American customers more prestige than the Cadillac, the erstwhile pinnacle of automotive achievement.

But, as a former employee (in the 1960s) and observer of the scene at the time, I often refer to one of the key factors using the movie title The Empire Strikes Back. At some point in the early to mid-1970s, power shifted within GM, both in terms of organization and in terms of geography. To understand how and why, we need a little more history.

In the heady days of the 1950s and ’60s, the epicenter of power