The epilogue, which Halberstam didn't live to write, is that America's auto companies are now mostly subsidiaries or partners of Asian and/or European automakers. When they had a world monopoly on auto production in the 1940s-1960 they squandered time by starving development and innovation, preferring to milk existing factories, produce large, profitable and shoddy cars and banked the profits. The automakers were willing to give the unions above market wages to buy labor peace.
Japan, on the other hand built an entire industry from scratch, with both labor and management willing to sacrifice in the present to assure the future. They also sought lessons from American experts (ignored by American management) on quality and production.
How difficult the job was is explained in detail in the book, it makes fascinating and saddening reading.
I grew up in the '50s and '60s. I remember when Volkswagen burst on the scene with the Beetle, an inexpensive and well built small car. In contrast to the American offerings (huge boats on wheels with a ride like sitting on a couch), the new foreign cars were fun to drive and most importantly, mostly well built. That was the last opportunity for American manufacturers to wise up and build better cars. Instead they pursued government trade restrictions, government subsides and protectionism to suck more money from aging facilities and processes.
Robert McNamara at Ford, who later became US Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson, epitomizes the bean counters who drove the industry into the ground. He is most well known for insisting on the Vietnam Wars body count measure as a proxy for winning the war. That didn't turn out so well.
This lesson is not unique to the auto industry. Similar books could be written about the steel industry, the shipping industry, and many others. You snooze you lose.
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