“Grosse Pointe myopians” is pejorative term that automotive journalist Brock Yates (2018) gave to the management class of domestic automakers in a review he wrote in 1968. That essay was subsequently expanded into a book, “The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry” (Yates, 1983).
Yates, a long-time writer for Car and Driver magazine, argued that the leadership of the Big Three automakers lived such an insular life in the exclusive Detroit-area suburb of Grosse Pointe that they failed to recognize dramatic changes in automotive marketplace.
Yates was prescient in predicting that domestic automakers faced a grim future if they continued to emphasize building cars that “were too large, too heavy, too clumsy and too inefficient to meet the needs of the modern driver” (1983, preface). He saw a public — and more innovative people within the automotive industry — shifting over to imported cars.
Yates’ critique is an all-too-rare example of accountability journalism in the automotive media.
In a subsequent book published in 1983, Yates stopped using the term “Grosse Pointe myopians” and instead made reference to “Detroit Mind.” This may have partly reflected a geographic shift whereby upper-level executives migrated away from living in Grosse Pointe to another exclusive suburb — Bloomfield Hills.
RE:SOURCES
- Yates, Brock; 1983. The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry. Empire Books, New York, NY.
- ——; 2018. “The Grosse Pointe Myopians.” Car and Driver. Posted May 2.
