CHROME COLOSSUS: General Motors and Its Times

by Ed. Cray ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 1980

The first general history of GM in 50 years, but a mundane, plodding affair, with little new information to impart and nothing (fresh or otherwise) to say. For Cray, Charles E. Wilson's celebrated 1951 blooper is the simple truth: ""What is good for General Motors is good for America,"" and vice versa. But even his unexamined evidence says otherwise (and he amends the statement tentatively at the close). The first 180 pages are perforce dominated by Billy Durant's flamboyant efforts to assemble the first automotive combine, his ouster by Morgan interests and the Du Ponts, and his second soaring, reckless reign (1916-20)--a story brilliantly detailed in Bernard Weisberger's The Dream Maker (1979), which Cray seems barely to have consulted. To Durant's vision of a single company marketing cars at all prices, Alfred E. Sloan added his well-known philosophy of business organization--autonomous operating divisions, centralized policy-making and planning--and, via annual model changes, the concept of planned obsolescence. It was Sloan, too, who instituted the emphasis on styling, who began to homogenize the lines (so that they differed not in equipment but in design, upholstery, trim), and who set GM against adopting mechanical improvements until the public was willing to pay a premium. Also under Sloan, the postwar development of a small car was aborted and the multi-million-dollar lobbying for public highway construction got underway. With Charles E. Wilson, less stiff-necked and bull-headed than Sloan, GM moderated its intransigence toward labor; tried to avert anti-trust actions by selling off its investments in firms it didn't operate (but not before converting its streetcar systems to buses, thus securing a market for GM coaches); reached 43 percent of new car sales--and lifted the 24-month ceiling on installment payments. Come Harlow Curtice--""the most influential"" of GM presidents ""in shaping Automobile America,"" says Cray, ""and the least recognized""--GM set out to expand its market share and, in so doing, came to dominate customer preferences (toward size, weight, power--and fins) and to unilaterally determine prices, irrespective of costs. Complete to the debacles of more recent years (the Corvair and Nader, the Vega and Lordstoun), this does provide the diligent reader with a one-stop record of a corporate performance that, if anything, flouted the public interest at virtually every turn. But in all respects it falls below the Fortune standard of fluent, informed business journalism.

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION