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Management culture
Quotes
Halberstam: Big Three’s ‘shared monopoly’ held back innovation for years
“The Big Three in the auto industry stood virtually alone, possessors of what was in effect a shared monopoly, for the price of entry was too great for any start-up company. In an environment like […]
Editor's Note
Reader says design critique of 1966 Studebaker is ‘simplistic’ and ‘unkind’
Readers can communicate with Indie Auto either by submitting a comment or sending a message to the editor (go here). The other day I received a message from a displeased reader. What follows is his […]
Quotes
Bill Mitchell on how he wielded power like Harley Earl at GM
“Oh, he was powerful. God, I admired [him]. He just knocked the tar out of anybody. He’d get it fixed. If he couldn’t, he’d call New York and say, ‘Fix these…[.]’ Then, I inherited some […]
Quotes
1953 Popular Mechanics: Will U.S. cars get any smaller or bigger?
For the February 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics, Automotive Editor Arthur R. Railton and Detroit Automotive Correspondent Siler Freeman interviewed three American engineers and designers after they returned from European auto shows. The following quotes […]
Quotes
Eugene Bordinat: Robert McNamara was too logical
“[P]robably the guy that was most admired [by Ford Motor Company executive Lewis Crusoe] was [Robert] McNamara. He was a very concise speaker, he was a logician and prided himself that he was. He knew how […]
Quotes
What Bill Mitchell didn’t like about John Z. DeLorean
“I didn’t like his aloof egotism. He’d sit in a meeting and open his briefcase and brush his hair, and he’d dress floozy, you know, and he called us the establishment. He was a queer […]
Quotes
GM set its prices for a 25-percent return on investment in 1950s
“But if its return on investment averaged 25 percent for 1950 through 1955, well above the corporation’s target and the highest return in American industry, why couldn’t General Motors reduce the prices on its cars, […]
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Quotes
Detroit automakers created an exciting but insular realm
“Cars and the car business infect some people’s blood, which is why that agglomeration of machinery and brains and money we call Detroit functions as a state of mind as much as an industry, not […]