“Choo Choo” Charlie Wilson was one of the kingpins in the criminal enterprise that placed General Motors on its road to disaster.
In that heyday — and I remember it well — as my uncle was the plant engineer of the large Fisher Body plant in Flint,
Wilson and his successors capitulated to virtually EVERY serious demand of Reuther and his cohorts...essentially passing on the increased labor costs on to an unwitting public. Reuther played the Big Three like a violin.
However, there was NO competition to challenge such abhorrent management malfeasance.
It was not until approximately 1956 — when European auto manufacturers were finally structured to make a run at the American market — that the threat of competition reared its head. VW, Renault and Morris all peddled their bare-boned cars at the same price — $1640 — and they all did 30 MPG; and ran, and ran, and ran, for next to nothing. A huge market developed overnight.
Detroit did NOT take this ominous threat seriously — and the rest is history. As an aside, it was not until approximately 10 year later that the Japanese did their number on Detroit, with the Datsun and Toyota saturation of the market. By that time the European game had run its course, except for a refined VW product line.
The Japanese marketing successes essentially rang the death knell on Detroit; however, the Detroit snake still thrashed in its death throes for these many years, even after its head was severed by the labor cost and product quality disparities, twenty years prior.
Very respy, dk/coro
You are correct!
One of the things GM did with the oil and tire people was to convince cities all over the country to rip up the light rail rights-of-way and replace those paid-for, efficient systems with BUSSES (with, of course, GM MOTOR COACHES).
As a child, in a scene repeated in countless towns across America, I spent hours watching the crews pull up the tracks along Clifton Blvd. in Lakewood, Ohio where those really cool streetcars once ran. They then widened Clinfton to make lanes for the new GM BUSSES.
Today, most of those towns wish they had those rights-of way back but, sadly, they were long ago paved or built over.
In my later professional career I sold materials handling equipment. GM was one of my customers. During the model changes every 3 or 4 years, we’d be called in to provide equipment for the new line configurations: THEY SELDOM ASKED THE COST — THEY JUST NEEDED IT NOW!!!
Now, if anyone thinks THAT sort of behavior was idiotic and arrogant, wait until Obama’s new totalitarian government hits full stride. Trust me: They’re just warming up.