Well, Ion Mihai Pacepa was. “When the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu decided in the mid-1960s that he wanted to have a car industry, he chose me to start the project rolling. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I knew nothing about manufacturing cars, but neither did anyone else among Ceausescu’s top men. However, my father had spent most of his life running the service department of the General Motors affiliate in Bucharest.” Plus he was in charge of industrial espionage, which is also a good place to start. Pacepa wrote his recollections for the WSJ, because “the current takeover of General Motors by the U.S. government and United Auto Workers makes me think back to Romania’s catastrophic mismanagement [of its auto industry].” Though the differences between the US and Romania are legion, and not to be forgotten, the story makes for an interesting perspective.
11 Comments on “I Was a Communist Car Czar...”
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I was working at a small Japanese trading company in Germany in 1985 when the doorbell rang and two gentlemen from Romania came in, uninvited. Their looks were cliché-communist: plastic suits, plastic ties, plastic shoes, grey faces and uneasy mixed-nuts smiles.
Their quest was to inquire whether we saw a market for the Dacia. I said I had heard Dacias tended to fall apart if one tried to drive them, but my boss, ever the hyperactive but borderline competent small-business owner, said he’d like to export them to Japan.
The fellows from Dacia looked shocked, said they doubted the car’s quality was good enough for the Japanese market, left, and never called again.
Well I must say the article does play very loose and fast with its facts.
The most obvious: Jaguar – and the british automobile industry as a whole were not seized by the government after the 2nd world war. The british industry was world leading and exported heavily during the 50s and 60s. And it was private ly owned! Austin and Morris formed BMC (British Motor Corporation) in 1952. Then 1966 Jaguar Cars and BMC formed BMH (British Motor Holdings). 1968 BMH and Leyland became what is now known as British Leyland. Only later in 1976 due to severe financial problems of BL and liquidity problems BL became state-owned. A bit like GM now…
Perhaps the author would say that GM was seized by the american government after the Korean war who knows. But its not that true… To continue Jaguar itself was spun off in 1982 and went public in 1984. All this can be seen after a 5-minutes search on google and wikipedia. For the enthusiast there is always austin-rover.co.uk too.
Now to Dacia. Contrary to what the article states Dacia started automobile production in earnest in 1968 with the then old Renault 8 model (1962-1973), a rear wheel drive rear engined car, which was not a bad layout in its times. They used the 8 because the 12 was not yet available (!) as in still in development, testing etc. by Renault. In 1969 Dacia started production of the Dacia 1300 which is a license of the Renault 12. And guess whats the production date for the Renault 12 in its native France? – its 1969 – 1980! Yes the Dacia 1300 was a brand new model. And it wasnt in any way outdated. The Renault 12 was a very well selling car in Europe and elsewhere, produced in Turkey and Brazil as well (Ford Corcel).
As to the Dacias quality – well it was really abysmal, even more so for the domestic market. But this problem was not limited to Dacia cars but for quite everything, especially in Ceausescus Romania.
Then the trabant. It was not a cheapened DKW. Most of the german automobile industry was in western germany. In the east there were the BMW production and Auto Union. Auto Union produced two stroke engines and continued to do so until well into the 1960s. The trabant was conceived as a small car for the masses. It was a new car, specially developed and produced as the east german peoples car. Of course it used the 2 stroke as a) they had experience with it, b) it has advantages when used in a small engine, c) it can be produced cheaper (again peoples car) and d) in the 1950s a 2 stroke in a car was perfectly adequate. And when it went into production in 1957 it was a good small car, on par with west german offerings like the Lloyd Alexander. The plastic body was necessary because the steel industry was mostly in the west and the GDR didnt have appropriate materials in the needed amount in supply. And as for recycling – it wasnt that en vogue in the 1950s…
As to the rest of the article my opinion is that key facts are distorted. Your milage may vary. Of course communist cars werent that great. There was not a lot of investment in production lines or research, for example the german factories for Trabant and Wartburg proposed new contemporary designs, but the government denied any progress and funding. The cars were good to begin with, but no investment and update made them outdated… no news here.
As xeenu already stated, Pacepa is wrong with regard to the Trabant. Here is a link to the prodcuts of “Eastern Audi” (w/ pics, although only in German):
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobilwerk_Zwickau
…and as to the WSJ article, xeenu is right: it’s lousy.
Some people claim that WSJ is now quite worthless. Well they used to print a lot of incorrect detail info, too. Anyone intimately familiar with an industry should be able to pick it out. But I guess it’s possible they’re even more worthless than before, I haven’t been keeping track.
Wall Street Journal now quite worthless?
Well, draw your own conclusions. In 2007 Dow Jones, the publisher of WSJ, was purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. There is not much reason to assume that WSJ now has any more credibility than, say, Fox News when it comes to accuracy or fact-checking.
To bjcpdx: Thank You for Your insight. I wish to add that to my mind in the WSJ article in question author and/or reader do not necessarily have to be intimately familiar with the companies in question. A quick visit to Wikipedia would have cast a pitch dark shadow of doubt about the stated “facts” in general, let alone the details like when and why BL was nationalized.
ISlightly off topic: In german language there is a “watchblog”, checking newspapers facts (bildblog.de). Sometimes its absolutely hilarious what they pick out as wrong and distorted content. For example: Lately a tabloid titled a photo “soccer trainer chatting with pilots in an airline cockpit 12km above ground”. Though outside the cockpit windows one can see parked cars….. flying cars perhaps?
A quick visit to Wikipedia would have cast a pitch dark shadow of doubt about the stated “facts” in general,
I was thinking a few years back, even before wiki became big, when they were still considered a “respectable” journal. In hindsight that may very well been because people were more ignorant then. :)
ahh the Dacia. My home country’s only attempt at making an automobile. It was quite a crappy car even after the communist party was ousted out of power.
Totally off topic, but isn’t the idea of a communist czar a bit ironic?
I grew up in a Dacia 1300. A crappy car by today’s standards, but not too bad for the situation in Romania 30 years ago and for the quality of the roads back there and then.
The best think about Dacia was its built simplicity and robustness. Anybody with a minimum of mechanical prowess could fix that car with a minimum of parts needed. My father kept it for 34 years. The odometer would rewind back to 0 when it reached 99999 km. My father’s memory is that it went 3 times through that cycle in the car’s life.
The same minimalism is still applied today which makes Dacia one of the cheapest cars in Europe and a great success. The going back to basics approach for commuter cars is the secret for making it in today’s market. Maybe GM needs to learn something from Dacia.