Collision: GM, Toyota, Volkswagen and the Race to Own the 21st Century

by Maryann Keller

No enterprise is more important to the world economy than the auto industry, and in the U.S., Japan, and Germany, three auto companies are so dominant that their products have become synonymous with their home nations: General Motors, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Yet each of these three companies faces a profoundly uncertain future. Their very success - their size, their scope, their highly institutionalized ways - threatens them in this new age of an interconnected global economy, when being the biggest no longer means being the best. Collision is the story of the auto industry's past, present, and future, of the men who built these great companies, and the men who must lead them into the twenty-first century. It is a story of remarkable visionaries and desperate corporate infighters, brutal boardroom battles and mammoth societal changes. Maryann Keller brings unmatched insider access and incisive analysis to the task of telling this epic tale. In the last two years, vast changes have occurred in the leadership of these three companies, accompanied by intrigue, crises, and fundamental arguments over a vision of the future. At GM, the isolation of the complacent upper management - symbolized by the perks-laden yes-man culture of the mythic fourteenth floor at Detroit headquarters - brought the company so close to ruin that the previously tame board of directors rose up in unprecedented revolt. Toyota's reins passed in a calmer, more traditional way - from one member of the Toyota family to another - but the awesome juggernaut nicknamed "Bank of Toyota" must deal with potentially devastating culture shock - both in Japan and abroad. Volkswagen's ouster of the legendary Carl Hahn and stunning hiring of GM wizard Inaki Lopez showed that the company had finally acknowledged its severe problems, but those difficulties are so ingrained in the German social structure that change might be impossible. Keller's analysis of the future of the auto industry leads her to make som

287 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1993

Reviews

[Jeff Keehr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in 1994 and I don't recall anything about it. I like books on the auto industry and this woman was an expert.