Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry

Documents the collapse and comeback of America's largest industry in a saga of greed and stubbornness, spotlighting dedicated managers, engineers, and financiers who struggled to change the Big Three before it was too late. 60,000 first printing. First serial, The Wall Street Journal. Tour.

After posting record operating losses of $7.5 billion in 1991, Detroit's "Big Three" automakers seemed headed for disaster. But the last three years have brought a dramatic turnaround. How Ford, Chrysler and General Motors transformed themselves from tottering dinosaurs turning out defect-ridden cars in the 1980s into efficient producers of popular automobiles is the theme of this riveting, juicy, optimistic report. Ingrassia, Wall Street Journal senior editor in Detroit, and White, the Journal's deputy bureau chief in Michigan, offer a familiar story-American plants adapted Japanese methods and technology learned from Japanese-U.S. joint ventures. But the authors also provide a candid inside look at Big Three decision-making, power struggles, arrogance and near-diasters, telling how a new cadre of managers replaced a stultifying status quo, along with withering profiles of Lee Iacocca, Roger Smith, Donald Petersen, Bob Lutz and other top auto executives. Photos. First serial to Wall Street Journal; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An informative if overlong account of how American car makers regained much of the ground they had lost during the 1980s to foreign rivals in their own backyard and Europe. Drawing mainly on their own reportage as Detroit-based correspondents for The Wall Street Journal, Ingrassia and White offer a lively series of set pieces illustrating how Motown's Big Three (Chrysler, Ford, General Motors) managed to avert envelopment by their Japanese counterparts (Honda, Nissan, Toyota, et al.) and to launch an impressively effective counterattack. In large measure, the authors conclude, the improvement in the US industry's fortunes is attributable to its capacity to adopt and adapt the cost-control, employee-empowerment, productivity, and quality- assurance techniques pioneered by Japanese manufacturers. As Ingrassia and White make clear, however, the makeover was convulsive on the assembly line as well as in the executive suite. The authors do a fine job of reconstructing the boardroom coups that resulted in the ouster of such old-guard stalwarts as Chrysler's Lee Iacocca, Ford's Don Peterson, and GM's Bob Stempel (the unfortunate engineer who inherited the god-awful mess Roger Smith had made of the planet's largest commercial enterprise). Covered as well are the lesser lights who designed the passenger vehicles (Chrysler's Neon and Ford's born-again Mustang among others), plus the plant managers who reconciled the requirements of lean production with the aspirations of a unionized work force accustomed to adversarial labor relations. On the minus side of the ledger, Ingrassia and White have not resisted the temptation to include whatever they've learned in more than a decade on the automotive beat, and their narrative occasionally veers into trivial byways. Nonetheless, an engrossing and cautionary take on a consequential industry whose welfare is everybody's business. (16 pages of photos, not seen) (First serial to the Wall Street Journal; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Pulitzer Prize winners Ingrassia and White, both of the Wall Street Journal's Michigan bureau, have written the definitive recent history of the American automobile industry. In the last five years, Ford, GM, and Chrysler have all managed to rebound from the near-fatal mistakes they made in the 1980s. The authors go beyond the daily barrage of press releases and earnings reports to unearth a dramatic tale of clashing egos and boardroom intrigue. The result is a story at once engrossing and packed with valuable information. Although intended for general readers, this flawlessly researched book will also serve as an excellent resource for special collections. This work will nicely balance Maryann Keller's more internationally focused Collision (LJ 10/1/93). Highly recommended.
Alexander Wright, Harvard Univ. Lib, Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

By the mid-1980s, as U.S. consumers switched to more well designed, better-built, fuel-efficient Japanese cars, conventional wisdom had begun to sound the death knell for the U.S. auto industry, and industry analysts sat deathwatch for the so-called Big Three automakers. But within the past several years, headlines have proclaimed a remarkable turnaround as a resuscitated Detroit has driven a U.S. economic recovery. Today, Ford sells cars in Japan, and Chrysler is enjoying record profits. The authors, who cover the auto industry for the Wall Street Journal and won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of upheaval at General Motors, tell how it all happened, starting with what turned out to be the first step toward regrowth--the retirement party of GM chief Roger B. Smith in July_ 1990. The authors suggest that there is a lesson to be learned here: that once U.S. auto executives stopped complaining about unfair trade practices and set about trying to improve their product and production techniques, they were able to compete more effectively. With plenty of colorful characters and dramatic events, Comeback is business journalism at its best. David Rouse