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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Prophetic and Amusing,
By
This review is from: The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (Paperback)
As another reviewer has pointed out, this book is not a business school case study - if you want a hardcore management study of GM, or a trip through the nuts and bolts of the manufacturing process, look elsewhere.However, this is one of the best looks at what really killed General Motors: a corporate culture divorced from reality and impervious to outside ideas (let alone criticism). In my opinion, at least, all the stupid things they did on their long road to bankruptcy were symptoms of the fact that the company spun off into a reality of its own imagining. Brock Yates wrote this book in 1984 with a mixture of love, humor, and frustration. Nothing he describes in the book ever got fixed and the eventual results speak for themselves. I bought this many years ago when it came out in paperback, and I've hung on to my copy for all these years. It's a great read, and it's a good reminder of the dangers of complacency. It's just too bad that GM paid no heed to Yates or any of the other critics who tried to wise them up back when the company still could have been saved.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Curiosity item value only,
By
This review is from: The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (Paperback)
This book by Brock Yates, a car race commentator and former auto magazine writer, was arguably the first to claim that General Motors would go bankrupt, as it did a quarter-century later. It was widely lampooned at the time since GM still dominated the industry. As an analysis of the problems of the American producers, the book is pretty superficial, with a focus on bureaucracy at GM and the development of poor car models. Yates fails to really get at the changing dynamics of the industry or the internal management problems that undermined the companies. To understand the origins of contemporary problems, you'll do better to go to Robert Sobell' Car Wars or David Halberstam's The Reckoning. Both are now dated but very good reviews of how the decline of the industry unfolded to the 1980s. The story of the disastrous decisions (especially at General Motors) since the mid-1980s has yet to be written accurately, though there are a variety of weak journalistic accounts out there.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seems they haven't learned , yet,
By
This review is from: The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry (Hardcover)
Book is about GM and their problems in the 1980's trying to create a small car to compete with the German's and Japanese. They thought they had it with the Cavalier, but because of near sightedness, and other restrictions in the corporation, came up with a very sub par creation. Seems like they haven't learned, still 25 years later, have a lot of the same problems today! A very good read. Also tells that Ford and Chrysler were in the same boat. Maybe Brock Yates should write a revised edition.
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