The Great Debate

This piece originally appeared in Reuters Magazine.

Henry Ford had to fight to build the Model T, even within the company that bore his name. The Russian immigrant engineer who saved the Chevy Corvette bucked the General Motors brass to do it. Lee Iacocca and Hal Sperlich built the minivan at Chrysler only after the vehicle—and they—had been rejected at Ford.

Those three cars were not just huge commercial successes—each also placed its stamp on American life, much as the iPad has today. Two were utterly practical while the third was ostentatiously stylish, but what they all had in common is this: The people who created them overcame formidable obstacles to put them on the road. Unblinking determination is a common theme in the biggest American business success stories, such as Ray Kroc’s damn the-odds effort to build McDonalds and Steve Jobs’ audacity in reshaping Apple. Luck and timing are involved too, but they aren’t enough. The special sauce (apologies to Kroc) is a strain of determination that blends self-belief with belief in the commercial potential of a product.

Determination and self-belief sometimes goes awry in the auto industry, as in other arenas. Exhibit A is the Chevrolet Corvair, introduced in 1960 with an innovative air-cooled, rear-mounted engine that produced 29 miles a gallon, more than double most cars of its day. Despite the weight concentrated in the car’s rear, Ed Cole, the Corvair’s creator, stoutly rejected putting a weight-stabilizing bar under the car’s front end. The result was a plethora of accidents and a muckraking 1965 book by an unknown lawyer named Ralph Nader: Unsafe at Any Speed. The Corvair scandal prompted a boom in product-liability litigation that continues to this day.

Then there’s John Z. DeLorean, whose 1970s effort to build an “ethical sports car” in Belfast collapsed amid financial overreach. Most guys would have tried to rescue their company with an IPO or junk bonds, but DeLorean tried selling cocaine. Though he was acquitted at trial when a jury judged that the FBI entrapped him, his career and his company were finished.

But both Cole and DeLorean enjoyed enormous success before their signature failures. Cole created a small-block V8 engine that powered the legendary ’57 Chevies and was a key figure in the success of the Corvette. DeLorean created the Pontiac GTO, which launched the muscle-car craze of the 1960s and still invokes strong emotions among onetime boy racers. A sign on a restored GTO displayed in suburban Chicago a few years ago declared: “This car was built in honor of Almighty God, in memory of my dad, and of my fellow hometown veterans who did not have the chance to live these memories.”

– Robert J. Dewar is a former Ford Motor Company general foreman and author of A Savage Factory: An Eyewitness Account of the Auto Industry’s Self-Destruction. He currently lives in Cincinnati, OH and runs a successful packaging business with his wife and family. The views expressed are his own. –

The war in the auto plants never ended. It flared up and died down, but it never ceased. Management and labor circle each other like sumo wrestlers searching for an opening. Like any war, it ignores honesty, human dignity and common sense. Like any conflict, it leaves collateral damage.

As a supervisor at Ford Motor Company’s largest transmission plant, I fought on the front lines. Despite leaving the auto company many years ago, the factory skirmishes were a key factor in the industry’s disastrous decline in the 1980s, and likely continue to play a part in the failures of the industry today.

– Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The opinions expressed are her own. —

As disastrous auto sales figures for November were reported this week, the Big Three auto companies–GM, Ford, and Chrysler–told Congress that they want government loans to keep from going bankrupt.

The pleas of General Motors and Chrysler were the most urgent.  Ford allowed that its cash position was better and that it might get through 2009 without tapping the federal line of credit it seeks.

Mr. Ludwig, a former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, is founder and CEO of  consulting firm Promontory Financial Group. Any opinions are his own; GMAC Financial Services is one of Promontory’s clients.

The economic upheaval wreaking havoc on the global financial system is threatening to claim another victim: the domestic automobile industry and its financing arms.

General Motors Corp. could run out of cash by January without help. Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC also need fast government intervention to stay solvent. Automakers and the UAW are making their case to Congress this week for emergency help. But even the supporters of a $25 billion aid package for the auto industry are dubious about whether they have the votes to pass it.

This raises the question, why not just let them go bankrupt?  The domestic auto industry is everyone’s favorite whipping boy, and its problems have been growing for decades. Some are of its own making; many are circumstantial. But we cannot blithely accept its failure as somehow inevitable or deserved.

– Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission, testified before the Senate Banking Committee on the proposed bailout for the domestic auto industry. The following is his written testimony to the committee. The opinions expressed are his own. —

The domestic automobile industry has two major components—the Detroit Three and the Japanese, Asian and European transplants that also assemble and source components in the United States and Canada. Both contribute importantly to the vitality of our national economy. Ensuring these companies have the means to compete globally is vitally important.

The gradual erosion of the market shares of the Detroit Three over the last several decades stems from higher labor costs—having origins in wages, benefits and work rules–poor management decisions, and less than fully supportive government policies. Although the U.S. government has been sympathetic to the needs of the industry, the industry has fallen victim to currency manipulation and other forms of protectionism in Japan, Korea, India, and China.

Congress is taking a hard look at Detroit's autos these days. But what about Detroit's jets?

When the chief executives of Ford and General Motors flew in to Washington yesterday to ask Congress for a $25 billion lifeline, they didn't fly coach.

General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner arrived on his company's cushy Gulfstream IV, ABC News reported. Ford CEO Alan Mulally flew in on a private company jet as well.