The Truth About Cars » Brock Yates

Brock Yates: Grosse Pointe Blank

Brock Yates — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:41:19 +0000

Detroit is a strange place, far away from the great cultural cities of New York and San Francisco. The men who run the city’s car companies are local men. They’ve risen to the top of GM, Ford and Chrysler after years of hard, intense work; clawing their way to the top of a huge, Byzantine bureaucracy. Backed-up by minions and and subalterns, these auto execs live in splendid isolation from the rest of the nation. They are out of sight and out of touch.

Brock Yates: Does Carlos Ghosn Dream of Electric Sheep?

Brock Yates — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:39:59 +0000

The French haven’t had much influence on the car world for some time. Up until the last decade or so, their automobiles have been goofy little nuts-on-wheels from outer space-- especially compared to machines from neighboring Germany, Italy or Japan, not to mention Detroit. But now we’ve got a Frog who’s in play worldwide. You want to talk about an internationalist? Carlos Ghosn was born in Brazil to Lebanese parents. The CEO who rescued both Nissan and Renault speaks six languages fluently and divides his time between Tokyo and Paris. If anybody understands the worldwide car biz, it’s Carlos Ghosn.

Brock Yates: Traffic. Deal With It.

Brock Yates — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:27:24 +0000

Car and Driver fired me. Editor Csabe Csere sat down in my kitchen and said he had to "let me go.” The magazine could no longer afford my services. No surprise there. Car and Driver had become a pale shadow of its former self. Like Detroit’s carmakers, Csere and his team had refused to recognize reality. The internet had arrived, the game changed, they didn’t. The magazine got thinner and thinner, making my paycheck seem fatter and fatter. I was sorry to see it go (the paycheck). But what the Hell. Here we are. Now what?