Customer Reviews

Common Sense Not Required: Idiots Designing Cars & Hybrid Vehicles, My Career With Chrysler, Includes How To Find a Good Mechanic

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This is an intriguing book. It's well worth reading, despite the fact that it provides little insight into the automobile industry except to complete novices. If you can read and understand a copy of Car and Driver, there is nothing here you don't already know. There's not a lot of "inside scoop."

Instead, the real value lies in getting inside the head of Mr. Boberg, who is convinced that his world-class intelligence was of such colossal value that Chrysler ignored him at its peril. The first page after the intro sets the tone:

"I grew up in a home where we posessed an arrogance that we were smarter than everyone else....I have heard people talk about how it doesn't take a high IQ to be successful. It takes hard work and perserverance. With my superior intelligence, I have observed this to be true. I am personally an example. I'm very intelligent, yet considered a failure in most people's eyes."

We are put on notice that we're dealing with a genius while bemoaning the fact that hard work can bring success to those with less-than-Bobergian intelligence. He is "a failure in most people's eyes," but that doesn't matter. To Boberg, "most people" are the title's "idiots" anyway. Their opinions about everything, including what cars they want to buy, are insignificant and obviously in error.

The last paragraph of the book includes this assessment of the oh-so-challenging Boberg condition:

"This is where I wish I wasn't so smart."

Well, maybe Mr. Boberg isn't so smart. His book is riddled with typos, factual inaccuracies and bad grammar. (Boberg, aided by a decent proofreader, might have wished he "weren't" so smart.)

Boberg does a good job of providing background and premises for his stories that back up his point of view. If you don't know the situations he's discussing, he provides enough facts for his arguments to be consistent within the universe of the facts provided. However, even a passing knowledge of engineering, Chrysler, or the vehicles he's discussing reveals inconsistencies between The World According to Boberg and reality. The real crux of his tales is not mentioned...or perhaps is not even known to Boberg.

You'd think a guy with such a reverent view of himself might start to temper his arrogance when basically everyone he encounters disagrees with him. Apparently, he never did, right down to unemployment and moving back in with his father after 12 years at Chrysler. This book tells this tale without any sense of perspective, irony, or any self-knowledge whatsoever.

That's the real entertainment in this book: watching an arrogant individual with an inflated sense of his own competence and intelligence slide into complete failure...and not even understand his own collapse after the fact. This is made all the more fascinating by the fact that he is accurately telling us this tale himself, with apparently no idea how poorly this story reflects on him. Just amazing.

I'm an engineer; I'm used to reading bad prose. I'm used to dealing with technical people deficient in people skills, but I just can't get past more than a few paragraphs in this book. I'll probably give it another try when I'm feeling more masochistic, but for now this book will be sitting on the shelf. If you have a low tolerance for badly written, egocentric self aggrandizement, then give this piece of work a wide berth.

I wonder how the author got this published? Touted as a book that will give you insight into the auto industry etc etc actually you are given way too much insight in the mind of a bitter, self absorbed author. Nobody likes the author as much as the author does.

I bought this book specifically for the chapters about the author's work at Jeep, developing the XJ, TJ and WJ. As something as a Jeep fan, I found the some of the details of the creation and development of these vehicles rather interesting.

Unfortunately, the whole book could have used a lot more proofreading and editing. It seems like the author's thoughts are sometimes not nearly as well organized as they can be. He often adds sentences that really don't add anything, like telling me that I was supposed to find the next paragraph about front suspension of the Jeep Cherokee somehow uninteresting. There is some good content in here, if you go fishing for it. It's just a little too hard find and read.

I bought the book because I was looking for ideas with regard to converting a gasoline powered vehicle to electric power. If this is your purpose, then this book has absolutely no value for you.
On the other hand, if you are simply interested in the grotesque manner in which large corporations lurch along, then you will find this amusing - and possibly even worth while. Having spent a goodly number of years within the corporate world, I can empathize with this man. His main problem, however, is that he did not have the good sense to get out early.

A few months ago, I stumbled upon this book while surfing the net for information about hybrid cars. Despite my regard for Mr. Boberg as a complete a$$hole, I read the entire book. I was extremely interested in purchasing a hybrid vehicle; the author seems to think anyone that would consider buying one is an "idiot."

Several news stories have popped up recently where hybrid owners have been complaining about the fuel economy of their cars. Combined with the information in CSNR, I found myself thinking "sucker" when I observed a hybrid car. I read the book again and realized that it is only Mr. Boberg's intent to educate people about what hybrids are really all about.

It is not a popular notion for someone to criticize new technology. The author predicts that hybrids will never become mainstream. Thinking back in automotive history, the wankel was the future, but it never caught on, though it did survive in the Mazda RX. I hope he his wrong, but I have to give him credit for making a credible argument to the contrary.

I was expecting more inside "secrets" to be revealed. But the biggest secret he reveals is that there just aren't that many secrets. The book is more focused on the bumbling of some of the management and the success Chrysler experienced despite this.

I highly recommend reading Common Sense Not Required. Despite my initial irritation with the author and his unpopular views, I couldn't put it down. The humor is sarcastic, but effective. I really enjoyed reading it twice.

Having read "Common Sense Not Required," I am most impressed with the author's thorough knowledge of the industry, and his skill in explaining even complex mechanical situations. I have a sufficient knowledge about cars, but was concerned that I might be overwhelmed by the technical jargon. Not so! I laughed out loud at some of the antics of the Chrysler employees. The author's voice and humor make it a very readable book. There's a lot of practical information as well as numerous interesting stories that keep the reader turning pages. Even though I don't work in the car industry, I drive one, and the stories contained herein will appeal to most people. The information on hybrid vehicles is very timely and informative. This is a book you will want to OWN!

Mr. Boberg has hit upon the crux of the American automotive industry, that being, "idiots" tend to be examples of THE PETER PRINCIPLE, personified. Management at Chrysler has never been responsibly described by the mainstream press, never utilizing anything less than glowing terms in the early to latter 1990's. Newspapers and magazines all seemed to fawn over the executives regardless of capability, based solely on those executives' adeptness at public relations. Several of the minions described in this book cost AMC and Chrysler millions of dollars, due to their ineptitude, in my opinion, and now, the facts surrounding their "accomplishments" are out in the open, for all to see the heretofore hidden warts on the programs hailed as successes by the media, such as the Detroit Free Press.

Technical expertise is not required to understand the terminology used in this book, as Mr. Boberg is very adept at explaining concepts in lay terms. Overall, any true enthusiast of this industry, including those employed therein, should place this book on the top of their "Franklin Planner" to-do list.

Our views of the inside of the auto industry have been limited to PR-saturated praise in business magazines, self-loving autobiographies, and exposes written by famous people (most notably John DeLorean). This book is written by a very talented and reputable suspension engineer, and covers his time at AMC and Chrysler. A co-worker told me that Chrysler manages to get by for the same reason as any large, badly run company (e.g. most of the rest of the industry): the dedicated people work hard to triumph over the dimwits and egomaniacs...but this book will tell you a lot about the industry.

Unusual in this book is a large section on hybrid-electric cars, telling where they are practical, and where they are hype; being written by an engineer, these chapters use actual facts and figures.

I don't agree with most of the author's political opinions, but fortunately these are largely confined to the last chapter.

You really have to buy this book.

If you are a true car buff, particularly if you are interested in the technical side then this is a must read.