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General Motors
Quotes
What Bill Mitchell didn’t like about John Z. DeLorean
“I didn’t like his aloof egotism. He’d sit in a meeting and open his briefcase and brush his hair, and he’d dress floozy, you know, and he called us the establishment. He was a queer […]
Media Analysis
Successful automotive journalists need to master these two rules
(ORIGINALLY POSTED 5/24/2014) Many are called but few are chosen to be professional automotive writers. Some things you can’t control, like technological change and media consolidation. However, aspiring writers can increase their odds of success by […]
Readings
DeLorean’s book is still one of best critiques of General Motors
(EXPANDED FROM 1/15/2021) On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors ranks right up there with Brock Yates’ The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (1983) in articulating where Detroit went wrong. Although written by […]
Quotes
GM set its prices for a 25-percent return on investment in 1950s
“But if its return on investment averaged 25 percent for 1950 through 1955, well above the corporation’s target and the highest return in American industry, why couldn’t General Motors reduce the prices on its cars, […]
Current Events
Could the 2022 Toyota Tundra’s excesses doom it like the 1958 Buick?
I should give Toyota credit for one thing — the 2022 Tundra does stand out in a crowd. Even in a parking lot filled with other large trucks and sport-utility vehicles, the newly redesigned Toyota […]
Quotes
John Z. DeLorean: Downsizing GM cars for 1973 was opposed by Mitchell
“The K-Car program proposed a common body and chassis for all the GM cars in the intermediate and compact car classes. On the Chevrolet lines alone this meant building the Chevelle, Camaro and Nova, which […]
Design Notes
Will cars with ‘crying-eyes’ styling withstand the test of time?
The automotive media tend to “normalize” even pretty weird styling trends. One result is that robust critiques often don’t get much visibility until after a trend is fading away. I thus found it refreshing to […]
Letters to the Editor
Buick, Olds and Cadillac hurt the independents in the early-50s
Geeber offers valuable additional layers of analysis to our story, “Was the ‘Ford blitz’ to blame for the collapse of independent automakers?” Thus, I’m elevating this comment to the front page. While the focus has […]
Quotes
Retired GM designer mused about gender and penny-pinching
“What distressed most of us was that we could never be identified as just designers. We were always the ‘la femmes,’ or we were the female designers, and that — we were designers, and men […]