Fifteen years later, Mr. Ingrassia has continued the story in the much less upbeat, Crash Course, The American Automobile Industry’s Road from Glory to Disaster published by Random House in 2010.  It focuses on GM and Chrysler, but their stories would not be complete without the inevitable comparisons with Ford and the Japanese automakers.  And as one reviewer put it, “Also square in the cross-hairs is the role of the UAW in the debacle that has become American auto manufacturing.”

 

An ‘important’ business case study, for sure, but road safety champions will also find it fascinating as they search (almost in vain) for the role (any role) that the development of safety technologies, a focus on building safer vehicles or other safety concerns may have played in the unfolding tragedy.  The nastiest sub-plot is recounted quickly: Ralph Nader’s expose, Unsafe at Any Speed of the risk from the allegedly unstable rear-engined Corvair, GM’s attempted answer to the unexpected competition from the “Think Small” Volkswagon. A media storm erupted at that time over GM’s admitted “routine investigation [of Nader] through a reputable law firm.”

 

Mr. Ingrassia certainly does not underestimate the effect of the Corvair ‘sub-plot.’  Indeed he says it is, “almost impossible to overstate the magnitude of the Corvair disaster for General Motors, indeed for the entire American auto industry. …The Corvair added General Motors—and by extension, all of corporate America—to the list of organizations not to be trusted.  In some ways, GM’s corporate reputation would never recover.”  And he alludes to one of the possible contributing reasons for the non-role of road-safety in the story, a lack of encouragement for: “any aspirations harbored by the company’s engineers to pursue innovative technology, as opposed to styling or horsepower, as the path to commercial success.”

 

The breakdown in quality control that followed from the creation of the General Motors Assembly Division in 1971 is also detailed. Unionized workers reacted to the increased line speed and reduction in quality inspectors by resorting to sabotage. Ingrassia describes Time magazine’s report of “Autos [regularly] rolling off the line with slit upholstery, scratched paint, dented bodies, bent gearshift levers, cut ignition wires, and loose or missing bolts.”  Clearly, at a certain point quality issues shade into safety issues.

 

Despite these stories, however, over the years the US car companies have made huge contributions to safety initiatives and have responded as required by law and the marketplace.  But in this recounting by a car-industry-expert journalist, safety concerns, safety attributes, safety advances play only a minor role and certainly not a strong enough one to have saved them, which is quite possibly an accurate assessment.  Either the consumer does not care enough about safe vehicles or the US car companies miscalculated by downplaying safety as an effective marketing message.