What is Reddit's opinion of
Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
By popularity on Reddit, this product is:
2 reviews of this product found across Reddit:
Fun read!
Paul Ingrassia has a surprising amount on the rise and fall of Saturn in his book Crash Course.
My two favorite highlights:
1) The write-up you posted gets at it with this bit:
>Even the people that built and nourished the political rivalries at GM realized that assigning another small car to an existing division would result in a compromised product that would have no character, no unique selling proposition.
But one thing the book spends a longer time on the notion of the internal politics going on at GM. Namely that a lot of middle-high corporate folks looked around and said "Jesus we've made a rat's nest of insular thinking and internal rivalries, and that's probably hurting us." So to some extent, Saturn wasn't just GM attempting to purge their past sins in the small car market, it was also them trying to make this little island off in Tennessee to see if GM itself would/could work better than it was currently doing. They would set up design flow differently, they wouldn't be so antagonistic with the unions and the unions promised they would go into it with a clean slate, they would have their own new dealership network. There was almost this "marriage counseling" mentality to it, that by launching Saturn as their "own company" with more independence, they could figure out how to run the GM mothership better by seeing what Saturn does well.
And then after a very brief honeymoon, the whole thing became another insular bureaucratic GM rat's nest that limped along until it dies.
Which brings me to my second-favorite thing I learned from the book:
2) According to every industry estimation, Saturn had one (1) profitable year. From 1985 to 2010, year-of-our-Lord 1993 is the only time they ever brought in more money than it took to keep the lights on. In the end, Saturn cost GM billions and billions of dollars.
Popular alternatives to Crash Course: The American ...
Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town
The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer
