Brock Yates: Grosse Pointe Blank

Brock Yates
by Brock Yates

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.

Unlike most moguls, car executives must have a profound understanding of their customers’ psychological needs. While selling tires or TV sets or erectile dysfunction drugs has little to do with the responsible corporation’s “identity,” automobile buyers form a deep, fundamental attachment to “their” carmaker. If a car exec does not truly understand his customers’ emotional drivers, his customers will drive someone else’s car.

The Big Three’s bosses work is unlike that of any other boss of a major manufacturing operation. In a sense, they must function more like television or movie executives. They must link with their audiences’ daily lives– and dreams– or lose business. They must be one with their sales people– and the “real” people.

And yet, the geography of the business and its “show biz” component makes the men who run Detroit's car companies a culture unto themselves. They live in fancy houses well away from inner city squalor; their private clubs are among the finest in the world. Their social set links them with each other, and connects the major companies like Europe’s nobility linked eighteenth century nation states. They are seldom fired, downgraded or even moved laterally. They are stars in their own little universe. but this universe is distant, and finite.

You could even say these execs live cloistered lives. The Motor City’s Princes and Kings have more privilege and perks than other major executives, yet remain behind closed doors. They make millions from but rarely deal with the Union men who actually build the cars upon which their livelihoods depend. PR flacks protect them from the snooping media. And they seldom deal with the public– beyond an occasional visit to a motor show or a speech written by their media men delivered to some fawning special interest group.

In the world of powerful men, here or in Europe, few live within such a bizarre combination of privilege and insulation.

Like many bosses in industries under assault from "barbarians," Detroit’s isolated auto execs work tirelessly to maintain the status quo. Safe in their gilded cages, they continue to ignore their customers' changing needs. And they continue to build the same products over and over: the same damn automobiles that their fathers and grandfathers built.

Go back 40 years, when I scribbled a story that put me on the Motor City hit list: “The Grosse Pointe Myopians.” The sub-title pretty much outlined the premise: “Accustomed to silver-lined visions, the auto elite refused to see any gray clouds.

“Detroit can fire scattershot numbers to justify practically anything, including slumping sales. However two vivid facts remain after all the ledgers have been shuffled; the domestic automobile industry is not growing as rapidly as expected and imports are making shocking inroads into the American market.”

Remember now, those words were written close to a half-century ago. Nothing, not a damn thing, has changed. Sales continue to slump as the Europeans take more of the upscale market and the Japanese and Koreans (and soon, the Chinese) chisel away at the center and bottom of the market.

More importantly, the “Myopian” component of the domestic car business remains. Leading the near-sighted non-charge: Ford’s Alan Mulally, GM’s Rick Wagoner and Chrysler’s Bob Nardelli. Not one of them has what used to be called “the common touch.” None of them restlessly prowls the dealerships, motor shows or parking lots, away from their minions, trying to get a feel for what their customers really, really want.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln spent more time away from the White House than in it. Not so Detroit’s CEOs. They and their executive staff are bunkered. And blind. In fact, Detroit’s leadership hasn’t changed in the slightest way since The Grosse Point Myopians was written at the start of what we might now call the domestic automobile’s “dark ages”.

A radical change in the Big Three’s power structure must take place, and quickly. If not, we could see Motown go away, as the imported cars and trucks seize the total market. Yeah, it’s hard to believe, but the world moves on, and very little in this rapidly shifting world can remain the same.

What’s it going to take to get the “Gross Pointe Myopians” to finally take off their glasses and face cold, hard reality? Do you really want to know?

Brock Yates
Brock Yates

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  • Tech98 Tech98 on Feb 13, 2008
    ...inability to sustain high precision complex manufacturing due to lack of demanding customers within the continent and lack of engineering organization. There are plenty of demanding customers, especially in California, that's why the Big 2.x are bleeding market share. They've skated for too long on the 'My country's cars, right or wrong' mentality of some of the population. I think it has more to do with the practice of American management, its relentlessly stupid short-term focus and particularly the Detriot numbers-numbnut upper management dominated by financial organization-men. The 'hit the quarterly numbers' mentality is a horribly mismatched culture in which to manage the manufacturing of an expensive durable consumer good with product cycles and development lead times of 3-5 years. If you don't actively promote a culture of long-term thinking and emphasis on engineering like Toyota and Honda, you end up with rampant corner-cutting and mediocre penny-pinched products. And Billy-Bob-wearing-a-Superman-cape bombastic sales pitches don't work when you've burned bridges with an entire generation with decades of crap products. Detriot skated for several decades on its former reputation for decent vehicles until people caught on that they were building junk. Now it will take probably as long a period building reliable, quality vehicles before people will trust them again. Why can't GM engineer and build a car as good as, if not better than, a Honda Civic? They have plenty of capable engineers. And GM has engineering facilities in South Korea and factories in Mexico, which could beat a Japanese-designed, Ohio-built Civic on raw labor costs per hour. Is crappy engineering that sells at a trickle at KMart prices to rental fleets really a superior financial proposition than building a world-beater that costs more to make but is actually good enough to be sold at a premium, profitable price point?
  • Wardenr Wardenr on Nov 20, 2008

    Mr. Yates, Being an old "Gear Head" like yourself, this (also) MBA gives a standing ovation to the powerfully prescient words you penned over 40 years ago...in "The Grosse Pointe Myopians." Wish I had your article framed and hanging on my wall! Even more, I wish said article, along with "The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry" AND John DeLorean's "On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors" were distributed to ALL 535 members of Congress...as they decide about the fate of Detroit...and the CRETINS who manage it! Keep giving them HELL, Brock. I LOVE IT...and DETROIT DESERVES IT!!!

  • 3-On-The-Tree 4cyl as well.
  • Luke42 I want more information about Ford’s Project T3.The Silverado EV needs some competition beyond just the Rivian truck. The Cybertruck has missed the mark.The Cybertruck is special in that it’s the first time Tesla has introduced an uncompetitive EV. I hope the company learns from their mistakes. While Tesla is learning what they did wrong, I’ll be shopping to replace my GMC Sierra Hybrid with a Chevy, a Ford, or a Rivian — all while happily driving my Model Y.
  • 3-On-The-Tree I wished they wouldn’t go to the twin turbo V6. That’s why I bought a 2021 Tundra V8.
  • Oberkanone My grid hurts!Good luck with installing charger locations at leased locations with aging infrastructure. Perhaps USPS would have better start modernizing it's Post offices to meet future needs. Of course, USPS has no money for anything.
  • Dukeisduke If it's going to be a turbo 4-cylinder like the new Tacoma, I'll pass.BTW, I see lots of Tacomas on the road (mine is a 2013), but I haven't seen any 4th-gen trucks yet.
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