On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors,
Wright, J. Patrick
BOOKS IN REVIEW - "On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors," Brock Yates You of course recall Detroit. It is a large, dingy city in southern Michigan noted for the manufacturing of automobiles, epic race riots, and a long list of cultural titans...
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...In ,ts way, ,t makes a much more eloquent ,tatement about OeLorean's socml values than all the moral posturing he permits h,mself in the book To be sure, there ts plenty of ammunmon with which to bombard General Motors L,ke the ennre domest*c industry, GM has been r,d,culously slow m responding to clearly evident demands for smaller, more efficient automobdes It must answer for permitting nearly a quar- ter of the U.S car market (and bd-hons of dollars m revenue) to dribble away to the imports from Europe and .lapan It manifestly deserves to be ta,~ugated for smugness, provmcml-,sm, and technologmal torpor It is not news that the American auto-mobde industry as a whole is in a malaise, and, while much of the trot~ble can be traced to external forces, large dollops of blame can be placed at the doorsteps of the arrogant moguls DeLorean describes m thzs book For this reason only the author may quahfy, by default, as a force for good, his self-aggrandize-ment and literary pettiness notw,th-,~tandmg [] THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1980...
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...DeLorean declined to have the book printed under his by-line for fear that it might impede his efforts to manufacture an automobile under his own name...
...He then took over as general manager of the flag- ship division, Chevrolet, which was in a sales doldrum and entangled in serious organizational rats' nests...
...D~Lorean's opinions are recorded in a rather confusingly authored book titled On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, by business journal- ist J. Patrick Wright...
...To a man they seem to have a boredom thresh- old that would shame a musk ox...
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...For many years, John Z. DeLorean was the V/underkind of GM, a man who appeared (thanks, in part, to his own carefully managed image-build- ing) to be equal parts Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Schweitzer, Henry Ford, and Cary Grant, at least to the automoguls who bed down in the posh, but parochial, Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills...
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...Rather, the 14th floor of the General Motors Building is populated by dullards and poltroons whose lives are propelled only by urges to shuffle trivia-laden volumes of paper and to preserve the orderly, moss-laden bureaucracy which brought them to power...
...DeLorean appears to have fallen victim to the same lusts that infect the 14th floor on Detroit's West Grand Boulevard His new car wdl be a high-powered, mid-engined, ultra-zoomy, sporty car intended to trans- port a pa,r of affluent boulevard,ers in semi-reclining luxury It will compete with such low-key trans-portatmn modules as the Corvette, the Datsun 280ZX, and the Porsche 924, and wdl sell m the unproletarmn price range of $15,000-$20,000...
...DeLorean was part of the winning team that boosted the Pontiac Division of GM from a manufacturer of fusty, maiden-aunt's vehicles to the racy glories of "Wide Tracks" and "Tigers...
...One might assume, coming from a man of such high conscience, it would be a miracle of environmental responsibil- ity" miserly fuel consumpuon, large cargo and passenger capacity, mi-nuscule emission, etc...
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...He IS a man with a masswe ego who, one ~magmes, dreams of a posmon s,mdar to that of the legendary Italian automaker, Enzo Ferran, or to that of the consc,ence-ravaged young auto-mogul played by Rock Hudson in one of those interchangeable, fantasy-bloated Harold Robbins/Arthur Haley televismn epms that sketch such a r,diculous caricature of De- trout DeLorean appears to envision himself as umquely capable of bridg- ing the gap between the ugly, mundane commercmhsm of General Motors and the euphorm V~SlOnS of the 1960s' counterculture, which is probably why he always seemed at GM to be so obsessed about being "w,th-lt " It was, after all, DeLorean who insisted that Chevrolet's entry into the mini-pickup truck market be named "Luv " Yet, for all his trendy machma-uons, and for all his whining about the cigar-chomping pragmausm at GM, we should not forget that DeLorean did attempt to abort pub-l,cat,on of the book for reasons of slmple busmess He openly fretted that his old associates would take umbrage and use their vast influence to scuttle his plans to manufacture his own automobile: the DMC-12 (for DeLorean Motor Company...
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...Second, if the senior staff of General Motors is such a gang of pecksniffs and buffoons, how is it that the corporation has managed to dominate the automobile business, worldwide, for so many years...
...Here sit, in presumed splen- dor, the clear-eyed, Machiavellian tycoons who pull the levers that control the largest, most complex, most socially influential concentra: tion of free enterprise known to man...
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...One imagines GM's merci-less hammerblows against its rivals, its manipulation of governments, the bribing of senators, the cynical man- ufacture of lethal automobiles, and assorted financial gyrations that would make Bert Lance, Bernie Cornfeld, and Robert Vesco look like nelghborhood grafters by compari-son...
...Others say that DeLorean aided his demise with excesses of vanity and imprudent social gaffes, such as shedding his wife of many years and pairing up, in rapid succession, with flashy little buds in their 20s His vivid appearance (manifesting a pro- clivity for tailored, Italianesque suits and longish, heavily dyed hair), his somewhat less than successful at-tempts to position himself as an international, jet-set celebrity, his posing, bare-chested, for a color poster, his constant (and perfectly correct) public utterings that Detroit must build smaller, more environ-mentally responsible vehicles--all combined to create enemies among his dowdy, stolid burgher associates, whose-idea of a big time was swilling an extra Martini on the eve of the Michigan-Ohio State football game...
...has already distributed to its affiliated newspapers articles by scholars and professionals such as Eugene Rostow, Harry V. Jaffa, Forrest McDonald, Martin Gilbert, P.T...
...It is a large, dingy city in southern Michigan noted for the manufacturing of automobiles, epic race riots, and a long list of cultural titans headed by Diana Ross and the Supremes...
...Certainly the lower elevations of the GM budding, where the Chevrolet headquarters are situated, are not so different from the higher altitudes of the same structure that they would shock and surprise a bright, observant man like DeLorean...
...The fact is that many people m the automobile business have long sus-pected DeLorean's motwes, desp,e his brilliance He seems to be propelled more by a des,re to be an important personality than an impor- tant mdustnahst Without being too far off-target, someone recently described him as "the Margaret Trudeau of the automobile business...
...How far do the tentacles of this mega-corp extend...
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...First, how could a man with over 20 years in the automobile industry, includmg tenures as gen-eral manager of two of GM's most influential divisions, be so ill-pre- pared for the old goats he alleges graze on the 14th floor...
...After some w'rangling, Wright decid- ed to go ahead with the project without DeLorean's imprimatur...
...Within the perimeters of its monochromatic, working-class neighborhoods and sprawling assembly plants lie the headquarters of the General Motors Corporation, which qualifies, by any number of financial measurements, as the largest private industrial concern in the world...
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...It would be, one imagines, a vehicle in whmh Jane Fonda and her husband might haul Ralph Nader and Barry Commoner to an anti-nuke rally...
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...Whatever the reasons for DeLor- ean's fall from grace, and however staid he found his associates to be, there IS more to a corporation than its executive personalities For instance, there are those corporate conspira-cies and outrages that elevate Nader- ites into spasms of reformist rev-erie-just the kinds of things one might relish to read in an insider's account...
...and is Inclined to pose a similar quesnon to DeLorean about his colleagues: "If they're so stupid, why aren't they poor...
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...Ac-cording to DeLorean, GM's major-domos sometimes sleep during long briefing sessions, indelicately snoring at key moments while others yawn...
...To his credit, Wright mortgaged every- thing to publish the book himself and turned it into a solid best-seller...
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...But sadly, the only scandals that DeLorean can seem to dredge up in 235 mamfestly self-serving pages revolve the ill-fated Corvair, and some hazy business about hls being dragooned for obscure political con-tnbutlons His Corva,r criticisms are a bit odd, m that he flays GM in much of the book for its disregard of tech- nologmal progress, then singles out the Corvalr, which was a rare exam-pie of engineering audacity in the corporatmn's history, for indictment (Nevertheless, DeLorean ts probably correct when he claims that much of the GM h,erarchy was aware of the Corvair's jittery rear suspension but decided to go ahead and sell the car anyway ) The trouble with DeLorean's trea-tise is not so much its content--which, doubtless, is accurate--as its style He whines about aspects of big business that are so indigenous to old, powerful, establishment-oriented companies that only the most naive sophomore in business school would be surprised at his revelatmns...
...The building itself is a 1920sexpression of the bold and the baroque: a stony leviathan jutting above the flat landscape in a proper Midwestern expression of restrained pomposity...
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...DeLorean, or so he claims, was cut off at the knees by a consortium of yahoo Rotarians who feared that his mana- gerial brilliance, coupled with his glittering social conscience, might (con tin ued on page 3 9) Would You Like to Write for 4,000,000 Readers Across America...
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...BROCK YATES (continued from page 28) fumigate the fungus-encrusted chambers of GM's executive suite...
...But not so, says a one-time insider named John Zachary DeLorean...
...Within a few years he had the business booming again and seemed as surely destined for leadership in GM as Edward, Prince of Wales, was destined for the English throne...
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Vol. 13 • May 1980 • No. 5
