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Author: Bill Vlasic Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 006204222X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 375
Book Description
Once Upon a Car is the brilliantly reported inside-the-boardrooms-and-factories story of Detroit’s fight for survival, going beyond the headlines to chronicle how the country’s Big Three auto companies—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—teetered on the brink of collapse during the 2008 financial crisis. In a tale that reads like a corporate thriller, Bill Vlasic, who has covered the auto industry for more than fifteen years, first for the Detroit News and now for the New York Times, takes readers into the executive offices, assembly plants, and union halls to introduce a cast of memorable characters, many of whom are speaking out for the first time, including the executives who struggled to save their companies but in the end had to seek a controversial, last-gasp rescue from the U.S. government. Vlasic goes behind the scenes to portray the men at the top during Detroit’s last stand. Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, tried to turn around a dying company, only to be forced to resign as a condition of the government bailout. Bill Ford, great-grandson of the legendary Henry Ford, had the will to keep Ford alive but needed the guts to hire an unknown outsider, Alan Mulally, to transform the company before it crashed. At Chrysler, leadership was constantly changing as new owners tried in vain to fix the smallest of the beleaguered Big Three. And through it all, the president of the United Auto Workers union, Ron Gettelfinger, fought to save the jobs of the men and women who build American-made cars and trucks. This tale of an iconic industry in crisis is more than a big business drama and provides a rich, unvarnished portrait of how Detroit’s decline affected tens of thousands of workers and dozens of communities nationwide. The story moves from the gleaming corporate skyscrapers and massive auto plants to the halls of the U.S. Congress and into the Oval Office, where President Obama and his aides wrestled with how to keep General Motors and Chrysler from going out of business. Vlasic shows why the bailout worked, and how Detroit can succeed under new leadership and build automobiles equal to any in the world. Once Upon a Car tells a uniquely American tale of success, failure, and redemption. It is an important and illuminating chapter in an astonishing story that is still unfolding. And no one is more qualified to write it than Bill Vlasic.
Author: Bill Vlasic Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 006204222X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 375
Book Description
Once Upon a Car is the brilliantly reported inside-the-boardrooms-and-factories story of Detroit’s fight for survival, going beyond the headlines to chronicle how the country’s Big Three auto companies—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—teetered on the brink of collapse during the 2008 financial crisis. In a tale that reads like a corporate thriller, Bill Vlasic, who has covered the auto industry for more than fifteen years, first for the Detroit News and now for the New York Times, takes readers into the executive offices, assembly plants, and union halls to introduce a cast of memorable characters, many of whom are speaking out for the first time, including the executives who struggled to save their companies but in the end had to seek a controversial, last-gasp rescue from the U.S. government. Vlasic goes behind the scenes to portray the men at the top during Detroit’s last stand. Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors, tried to turn around a dying company, only to be forced to resign as a condition of the government bailout. Bill Ford, great-grandson of the legendary Henry Ford, had the will to keep Ford alive but needed the guts to hire an unknown outsider, Alan Mulally, to transform the company before it crashed. At Chrysler, leadership was constantly changing as new owners tried in vain to fix the smallest of the beleaguered Big Three. And through it all, the president of the United Auto Workers union, Ron Gettelfinger, fought to save the jobs of the men and women who build American-made cars and trucks. This tale of an iconic industry in crisis is more than a big business drama and provides a rich, unvarnished portrait of how Detroit’s decline affected tens of thousands of workers and dozens of communities nationwide. The story moves from the gleaming corporate skyscrapers and massive auto plants to the halls of the U.S. Congress and into the Oval Office, where President Obama and his aides wrestled with how to keep General Motors and Chrysler from going out of business. Vlasic shows why the bailout worked, and how Detroit can succeed under new leadership and build automobiles equal to any in the world. Once Upon a Car tells a uniquely American tale of success, failure, and redemption. It is an important and illuminating chapter in an astonishing story that is still unfolding. And no one is more qualified to write it than Bill Vlasic.
Author: Jeffrey Rothfeder Publisher: Penguin UK ISBN: 0141970766 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
For decades there have been two iconic Japanese auto companies. One has been endlessly studied and written about. The other has been generally underappreciated and misunderstood. Until now. Since its birth as a motorcycle company in 1949, Honda has steadily grown into the world's fifth largest automaker and top engine manufacturer, as well as one of the most beloved, most profitable, and most consistently innovative multinational corporations. What drives the company that keeps creating and improving award-winning and bestselling models like the Civic, Accord, Odyssey, CR-V, and Pilot? According to Jeffrey Rothfeder - the first journalist allowed behind Honda's infamously private doors - what truly distinguishes Honda from its competitors, especially archrival Toyota, is a deep commitment to a set of unorthodox management tenets. The Honda Way, as insiders call it, is notable for decentralization over corporate control, simplicity over complexity and unyielding cynicism toward the status quo and whatever is assumed to be the truth - ideas embedded in the DNA of the company by its colourful founder Soichiro Honda, sixty-five years ago. With dozens of interviews of Honda executives, engineers,and frontline employees, Rothfeder shows how the company has developed and maintained its unmatched culture of innovation, resilience, and flexibility - and how it exported that culture to other countries that are strikingly different from Japan, establishing locally controlled operations in each region where it lays down roots. For instance, Rothfeder reports on life at a Honda factory in the tiny town of Lincoln, Alabama. When the American workers were trained to follow the Honda Way as a self-sufficient outpost of the global company, their plant pioneered a new model for manufacturing in America. As Soichiro Honda himself liked to say, "Success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Author: Charles K. Hyde Publisher: Wayne State University Press ISBN: 0814339522 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
Examines the role of the American automobile industry in producing vehicles, weapons, and other war products during World War II. Throughout World War II, Detroit's automobile manufacturers accounted for one-fifth of the dollar value of the nation's total war production, and this amazing output from "the arsenal of democracy" directly contributed to the allied victory. In fact, automobile makers achieved such production miracles that many of their methods were adopted by other defense industries, particularly the aircraft industry. In Arsenal of Democracy: The American Automobile Industry in World War II,award-winning historian Charles K. Hyde details the industry's transition to a wartime production powerhouse and some of its notable achievements along the way. Hyde examines several innovative cooperative relationships that developed between the executive branch of the federal government, U.S. military services, automobile industry leaders, auto industry suppliers, and the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union, which set up the industry to achieve production miracles. He goes on to examine the struggles and achievements of individual automakers during the war years in producing items like aircraft engines, aircraft components, and complete aircraft; tanks and other armored vehicles; jeeps, trucks, and amphibians; guns, shells, and bullets of all types; and a wide range of other weapons and war goods ranging from search lights to submarine nets and gyroscopes. Hyde also considers the important role played by previously underused workers-namely African Americans and women-in the war effort and their experiences on the line. Arsenal of Democracy includes an analysis of wartime production nationally, on the automotive industry level, by individual automakers, and at the single plant level. For this thorough history, Hyde has consulted previously overlooked records collected by the Automobile Manufacturers Association that are now housed in the National Automotive History Collection of the Detroit Public Library. Automotive historians, World War II scholars, and American history buffs will welcome the compelling look at wartime industry in Arsenal of Democracy.
Author: Simon Heptinstall Publisher: ISBN: 9780857627704 Category : Automobile industry and trade Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
Car Marques is a unique visual compendium of over 90 automobile logos and emblems. The book is arranged alphabetically and provides a detailed profile of each logo. Annotated diagrams highlight specific design details and reveal hidden symbolism. Includes color swatches with CMYK values and hexadecimal codes. Visual timelines show the evolution of selected logos from their origins to today. An invaluable resource and a perfect gift for car enthusiasts collectors designers and readers interested in the automotive industry.
Author: David Magee Publisher: Penguin Books India ISBN: 9781591842293 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
Journalist Magee explores Toyotas past and present in order to reveal how this car company has sustained such tremendous success. The lessons that Magee explains here can be valuable for managers in all disciplines and industries.
Author: Levi Tillemann Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1476773505 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
The Great Race recounts the exciting story of a century-long battle among automakers for market share, profit, and technological dominance—and the thrilling race to build the car of the future. The world’s great manufacturing juggernaut—the $3 trillion automotive industry—is in the throes of a revolution. Its future will include cars Henry Ford and Karl Benz could scarcely imagine. They will drive themselves, won’t consume oil, and will come in radical shapes and sizes. But the path to that future is fraught. The top contenders are two traditional manufacturing giants, the US and Japan, and a newcomer, China. Team America has a powerful and little-known weapon in its arsenal: a small group of technology buffs and regulators from California. The story of why and how these men and women could shape the future—how you move, how you work, how you live on Earth—is an unexpected tale filled with unforgettable characters: a scorned chemistry professor, a South African visionary who went for broke, an ambitious Chinese ex-pat, a quixotic Japanese nuclear engineer, and a string of billion-dollar wagers by governments and corporations. “To explain the scramble for the next-generation auto—and the roles played in that race by governments, auto makers, venture capitalists, environmentalists, and private inventors—comes Levi Tillemann’s The Great Race…Mr. Tillemann seems ideally cast to guide us through the big ideas percolating in the world’s far-flung workshops and labs” (The Wall Street Journal). His account is incisive and riveting, explaining how America bounced back in this global contest and what it will take to command the industrial future.
Author: Molly Butterworth Publisher: ISBN: 9781681062341 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Were it not for a few quirks of history, St. Louis might have become the center of the American automotive industry instead of Detroit. Since the late 1800s, St. Louis has been home to dozens of automobile makes and to numerous manufacturers, large and small. In They Will Run: The Golden Age of the Automobile in St. Louis, head down the road of automotive history in the Gateway City, where transportation has always meant power. Many St. Louisans have heard of the famous Moon automobile of the early twentieth century, but what about the Dyke, the Dorris, and the Gardner? Learn about the city's prominence as a key automobile manufacturing hub through the 1960s, and the role played by notorious St. Louis playboy and bon vivant Harry Turner in bringing the automobile to St. Louis. Do you know which vehicles produced here helped the Allies win World War II? Or which ones helped carry and sell beer, create the legend of America's first true sports car, or were raced around ovals and across the country? Dig down under the roads to uncover the previous lives of streets that once served as Automobile Rows lined with beautiful buildings in which to buy or repair cars. Authors and car enthusiasts Molly Butterworth and Tom Eyssell deftly take the wheel of this in-depth guide to the automotive heritage of St. Louis. Sit back and enjoy the ride, from the horseless carriage, through the halcyon 1920s, and up to the everchanging automobile industry of today.
Author: Bernhard Rieger Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674075757 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 298
Book Description
At the Berlin Auto Show in 1938, Adolf Hitler presented the prototype for a small, oddly shaped, inexpensive family car that all good Aryans could enjoy. Decades later, that automobile—the Volkswagen Beetle—was one of the most beloved in the world. Bernhard Rieger examines culture and technology, politics and economics, and industrial design and advertising genius to reveal how a car commissioned by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche became an exceptional global commodity on a par with Coca-Cola. Beyond its quality and low cost, the Beetle’s success hinged on its uncanny ability to capture the imaginations of people across nations and cultures. In West Germany, it came to stand for the postwar “economic miracle” and helped propel Europe into the age of mass motorization. In the United States, it was embraced in the suburbs, and then prized by the hippie counterculture as an antidote to suburban conformity. As its popularity waned in the First World, the Beetle crawled across Mexico and Latin America, where it symbolized a sturdy toughness necessary to thrive amid economic instability. Drawing from a wealth of sources in multiple languages, The People’s Car presents an international cast of characters—executives and engineers, journalists and advertisers, assembly line workers and car collectors, and everyday drivers—who made the Beetle into a global icon. The Beetle’s improbable story as a failed prestige project of the Third Reich which became a world-renowned brand illuminates the multiple origins, creative adaptations, and persisting inequalities that characterized twentieth-century globalization.
Author: John Wormald Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9781108486064 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 350
Book Description
What can we tell about the future of automobiles and the industries that make them by examining their past? Wormald and Rennick trace the history of powered land transport, the rise and fall of the railways, the spectacular rise of the automobile, and what might come next. Delving into the mighty and complex automotive industry, following the growth of the markets and production, this book illustrates the globalization of vehicle manufacturers and component suppliers, giving form to the development of the industry's business model. A key factor in an auto-industry's successes and failures is the often-difficult relationship it has with government, which varies in nature from country to country. As an illustrative case, Wormald and Rennick present and analyse the entire lifecycle of Australia's automotive history - including its birth, growth, functioning and death - and its shifting relationship with the government that supported it.
Author: Bill Vlasic
Author: Bill Vlasic
Author: Jeffrey Rothfeder
Author: Charles K. Hyde
Author: Simon Heptinstall
Author: David Magee
Author: Levi Tillemann
Author: Molly Butterworth
Author: Lawrence Goldstone
Author: Bernhard Rieger
Author: John Wormald