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The Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise
"Vigorous, provocative... The Sack of Detroit is compelling, bold and stylishly written."
— Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal
A provocative, revelatory history of the epic rise—and unnecessary fall—of the U.S. automotive industry, uncovering the vivid story of innovation, politics, and business that led to a sudden, seismic shift in American priorities that is still felt today, from the acclaimed author of Hoover
In the 1950s, America enjoyed massive growth and affluence, and no companies contributed more to its success than automakers. They were the biggest and best businesses in the world, their leadership revered, their methods imitated, and their brands synonymous with the nation's aspirations. But by the end of the 1960s, Detroit's profits had evaporated and its famed executives had become symbols of greed, arrogance, and incompetence. And no company suffered this reversal more than General Motors, which found itself the main target of a Senate hearing on auto safety that publicly humiliated its leadership and shattered its reputation.
In The Sack of Detroit, Kenneth Whyte recounts the epic rise and unnecessary fall of America's most important industry. At the center of his absorbing narrative are the titans of the automotive world but also the crusaders of safety, including Ralph Nader and a group of senators including Bobby Kennedy. Their collision left Detroit in a ditch, launched a new era of consumer advocacy and government regulation, and contributed significantly to the decline of American enterprise. This is a vivid story of politics, business, and a sudden, seismic shift in American priorities that is still felt today.
— Barbara Spindel, The Wall Street Journal
A provocative, revelatory history of the epic rise—and unnecessary fall—of the U.S. automotive industry, uncovering the vivid story of innovation, politics, and business that led to a sudden, seismic shift in American priorities that is still felt today, from the acclaimed author of Hoover
In the 1950s, America enjoyed massive growth and affluence, and no companies contributed more to its success than automakers. They were the biggest and best businesses in the world, their leadership revered, their methods imitated, and their brands synonymous with the nation's aspirations. But by the end of the 1960s, Detroit's profits had evaporated and its famed executives had become symbols of greed, arrogance, and incompetence. And no company suffered this reversal more than General Motors, which found itself the main target of a Senate hearing on auto safety that publicly humiliated its leadership and shattered its reputation.
In The Sack of Detroit, Kenneth Whyte recounts the epic rise and unnecessary fall of America's most important industry. At the center of his absorbing narrative are the titans of the automotive world but also the crusaders of safety, including Ralph Nader and a group of senators including Bobby Kennedy. Their collision left Detroit in a ditch, launched a new era of consumer advocacy and government regulation, and contributed significantly to the decline of American enterprise. This is a vivid story of politics, business, and a sudden, seismic shift in American priorities that is still felt today.
432 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
January 5, 2022
I wish Whyte had ended his book two chapters earlier -- I would have trusted it a lot more.
The Sack of Detroit is obviously a bit of a hit job on Ralph Nader. And throughout, Whyte is so careful to provide lip service to criticisms of the car industry that it became clear he was protesting too much. But much of the book feels balanced enough that I was more than happy to engage with his arguments.
The problem comes at the end, where Whyte displays such a nakedly ideological streak that it throws the objectivity of the entire book into question.
Through the end of the penultimate chapter and into the lengthy epilogue, Whyte unleashes his fury at the left for ruining American enterprise. He laments the distrust Americans feel toward corporations and what he sees as a "brain drain" toward nonprofit work. Whyte is certain that the roots of our country's greatness lies in capitalism, and he sees any serious criticism of capitalism as a obvious issue.
I don't mind reading well-reasoned arguments in support of capitalism. In fact, I welcome it. But Whyte's strange epilogue -- which feels like it belongs in a different book -- cast all of his arguments in a different and far more uncertain light.
The Sack of Detroit is obviously a bit of a hit job on Ralph Nader. And throughout, Whyte is so careful to provide lip service to criticisms of the car industry that it became clear he was protesting too much. But much of the book feels balanced enough that I was more than happy to engage with his arguments.
The problem comes at the end, where Whyte displays such a nakedly ideological streak that it throws the objectivity of the entire book into question.
Through the end of the penultimate chapter and into the lengthy epilogue, Whyte unleashes his fury at the left for ruining American enterprise. He laments the distrust Americans feel toward corporations and what he sees as a "brain drain" toward nonprofit work. Whyte is certain that the roots of our country's greatness lies in capitalism, and he sees any serious criticism of capitalism as a obvious issue.
I don't mind reading well-reasoned arguments in support of capitalism. In fact, I welcome it. But Whyte's strange epilogue -- which feels like it belongs in a different book -- cast all of his arguments in a different and far more uncertain light.
March 7, 2022
First of all: what is with this title? "The Sack of Detroit" could have been about the decimation of the city's housing stock by banks like Chase and Wells Fargo, who offered predatory mortgages, foreclosed on the owners, and then wrote the houses off as losses and left them to rot. It could have been about the corrupt city government and school board, whose members have stolen from the neediest citizens for decades now. It could even have been about the hapless Detroit Lions players who so often snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. But no. "Detroit" here is shorthand for the US auto industry and the book is about how in the 1960s, meanies like Ralph Nader dared suggest that American car companies needed to improve their products' safety by means of regulation, and how GM chose to respond to that spectacularly badly. I guess if you are in an MBA program, this is a useful case study. But it's a bit disturbing to write off safety improvements as unnecessary and expensive. The current recalls and lawsuits concerning vaping products show that consumers and companies will go headlong into dangerous territory until lawsuits and legislatures intervene.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.
May 18, 2023
Kenneth Whyte’s study of the factors leading to the decline of Detroit’s automobile manufacturing prowess—General Motors’ in particular—begins in 1958, when the U.S. entered a recession and car sales tanked. Most cars out of Detroit at the time were large (nearly 18 feet long and 3,000 pounds heavy) but the import market—small cars out of Europe, where streets were narrow, gas cheap, and incomes smaller than Americans’—was beginning to grow. Also, at the time, over 30,000 traffic fatalities were occurring each year, eventually rising to over 50,000 deaths a year deaths per year, despite efforts to educate drivers via licensing and engineer better roads.
Ed Cole, an engineering and management prodigy at GM, decided to provide the American public with an American car that could compete head-on with the nascent import / compact market, arrived at the Corvair, a car which offered numerous innovative features, the most significant of which for consumers were its compactness and low price. In 1960, when Chevrolet introduced the Corvair, Ford and Chrysler also introduced compact cars.
Sales of the new cars ended a four-year slump for the American automakers at the expense of foreign-made compacts. Until 1960, sales of foreign-built autos had been roughly doubling each year. Buoyed by this success, Detroit automakers began buying up foreign automakers, largely in Europe, to compete on a global scale.
Beginning with the recession of 1958, during Eisenhower’s second administration, the auto industry’s long honeymoon with the Federal government was over, and overt hostilities against the industry were taken up by John F. Kennedy, who had little interest in business leaders and found them all to be crooks at heart.
Enter Ralph Nader. Nader’s attacks on the auto industry’s lack of focus on consumer safety didn’t come from nowhere with. Concerns about auto safety had already been raised by a small number of people—doctors and lawyers, mainly—who began studying traffic-accident data to determine what the safety issues were and how they might be addressed via better engineered car interiors, interiors that tended to damage the bodies inside them.
Starting in the late 1950s, consumer advocacy groups (a new phenomenon) began demanding higher quality products from manufacturers in general. Although people placed in Washington, DC—such as Ralph Nadar and Daniel Patrick Moynahan—were researching traffic accident reports for evidence of careless auto manufacturing, Senate hearings that included testimony from the upper echelons of the Big Three auto makers demonstrated that automakers had been incorporating safety features into their cars—seat belts, a rear-view mirror, door locks that kept doors shut even upon impact, power steering, and so forth. Despite those improvements, death rates from crashes remained alarmingly high.
Although not addressed by Whyte, the discrepancy between adding safety features and consumers using them seemed to owe to consumers who assumed that the cars they bought were already safe. Safety was a term consumers didn’t seem to define for themselves until after an accident occurred. And because consumers assumed cars were already safe, they took a passive view of their own needs to protect themselves once inside the cars, including the need to perform routine maintenance on them. (By the early 60s, when automakers were installing seatbelts that drivers were not then legally required to use, only 7% of drivers strapped in. Furthermore, traffic accident analyses from the time placed the blame for over 90% of accidents on poor driver performance, including driving on bald tires, driving with worn brake pads, driving under the influence, and so forth.)
Flustered by attacks on Ed Cole’s Corvair from the government and media outlets, on the one hand, and brisk sales of Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (Nader’s screed against the Corvair), on the other, GM ordered a grey-area background check on this guy Ralph Nadar, who seemed to have no discernible financial support for his relentless denunciations of the auto industry. The Goliath GM hiring private dicks to harass a lone David outraged public opinion when GM’s investigation came to light.
The automakers ended up losing the battle for public credibility in the face of Nader and the rise of consumer advocacy in general. Although the structural integrity of the Corvair and its engineering design were eventually proven equal or superior to equivalent vehicles at the time on the road, and although judges also deemed that the evidence confirmed the ethically and legally required due diligence on the part of the automakers, the Corvair was pulled from the market after sales tanked, despite the lack of evidence for its alleged design flaws. The cause of most Covair accidents—as with most accidents in vehicles of all makes—was human incaution.
Whyte categorizes as a mistake Congress’ the establishment of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since it introduces another expensive (and, for White, unnecessary) layer of government noodling that imposes financial burdens on automakers who, in turn, pass them along to consumers. Although The Sack of Detroit doesn’t mention it, the NHTSA’s regulations helped perpetuate the production life of the Ford Pinto by both establishing the financial limits to different categories of injury (from missing fingers to death) that plaintiffs could claim and absolving automakers from having to redesign any flaw if the cost of making the change would exceed that of paying court costs for death and dismemberment. Thus, Ford had no legal or financial reason to change the car until lawyers successfully focused on the ethical issues behind the status quo, legal or not. By presenting the suits for damages as class actions, a category of tort that allows plaintiffs to sue for punitive damages (available at the discretion of each trial judge) for actions deemed egregiously wrong, even if “only” ethically so. Lee Iococca—Ford’s president at the time—in his defense to not improve the Pinto’s design, repeated what his predecessors had said: Safety doesn’t sell.
Nadar’s attack against the Corvair resulted in both its discontinuation and diminutions of GM’s market share, profitability, and stock values lasting for decades. Public outrage and consumer protectionism was pandemic and not limited to GM, although GM took the brunt of the hit. All of the major players in this case at one time or another acted in bad faith, assumed the worst of its adversaries, and treat the public as idiots incapable of taking responsibility for their own poor decisions. Meanwhile, foreign automakers have been doing pretty well in the U.S., often beating GM at its own game.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Ed Cole, an engineering and management prodigy at GM, decided to provide the American public with an American car that could compete head-on with the nascent import / compact market, arrived at the Corvair, a car which offered numerous innovative features, the most significant of which for consumers were its compactness and low price. In 1960, when Chevrolet introduced the Corvair, Ford and Chrysler also introduced compact cars.
Sales of the new cars ended a four-year slump for the American automakers at the expense of foreign-made compacts. Until 1960, sales of foreign-built autos had been roughly doubling each year. Buoyed by this success, Detroit automakers began buying up foreign automakers, largely in Europe, to compete on a global scale.
Beginning with the recession of 1958, during Eisenhower’s second administration, the auto industry’s long honeymoon with the Federal government was over, and overt hostilities against the industry were taken up by John F. Kennedy, who had little interest in business leaders and found them all to be crooks at heart.
Enter Ralph Nader. Nader’s attacks on the auto industry’s lack of focus on consumer safety didn’t come from nowhere with. Concerns about auto safety had already been raised by a small number of people—doctors and lawyers, mainly—who began studying traffic-accident data to determine what the safety issues were and how they might be addressed via better engineered car interiors, interiors that tended to damage the bodies inside them.
Starting in the late 1950s, consumer advocacy groups (a new phenomenon) began demanding higher quality products from manufacturers in general. Although people placed in Washington, DC—such as Ralph Nadar and Daniel Patrick Moynahan—were researching traffic accident reports for evidence of careless auto manufacturing, Senate hearings that included testimony from the upper echelons of the Big Three auto makers demonstrated that automakers had been incorporating safety features into their cars—seat belts, a rear-view mirror, door locks that kept doors shut even upon impact, power steering, and so forth. Despite those improvements, death rates from crashes remained alarmingly high.
Although not addressed by Whyte, the discrepancy between adding safety features and consumers using them seemed to owe to consumers who assumed that the cars they bought were already safe. Safety was a term consumers didn’t seem to define for themselves until after an accident occurred. And because consumers assumed cars were already safe, they took a passive view of their own needs to protect themselves once inside the cars, including the need to perform routine maintenance on them. (By the early 60s, when automakers were installing seatbelts that drivers were not then legally required to use, only 7% of drivers strapped in. Furthermore, traffic accident analyses from the time placed the blame for over 90% of accidents on poor driver performance, including driving on bald tires, driving with worn brake pads, driving under the influence, and so forth.)
Flustered by attacks on Ed Cole’s Corvair from the government and media outlets, on the one hand, and brisk sales of Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (Nader’s screed against the Corvair), on the other, GM ordered a grey-area background check on this guy Ralph Nadar, who seemed to have no discernible financial support for his relentless denunciations of the auto industry. The Goliath GM hiring private dicks to harass a lone David outraged public opinion when GM’s investigation came to light.
The automakers ended up losing the battle for public credibility in the face of Nader and the rise of consumer advocacy in general. Although the structural integrity of the Corvair and its engineering design were eventually proven equal or superior to equivalent vehicles at the time on the road, and although judges also deemed that the evidence confirmed the ethically and legally required due diligence on the part of the automakers, the Corvair was pulled from the market after sales tanked, despite the lack of evidence for its alleged design flaws. The cause of most Covair accidents—as with most accidents in vehicles of all makes—was human incaution.
Whyte categorizes as a mistake Congress’ the establishment of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) since it introduces another expensive (and, for White, unnecessary) layer of government noodling that imposes financial burdens on automakers who, in turn, pass them along to consumers. Although The Sack of Detroit doesn’t mention it, the NHTSA’s regulations helped perpetuate the production life of the Ford Pinto by both establishing the financial limits to different categories of injury (from missing fingers to death) that plaintiffs could claim and absolving automakers from having to redesign any flaw if the cost of making the change would exceed that of paying court costs for death and dismemberment. Thus, Ford had no legal or financial reason to change the car until lawyers successfully focused on the ethical issues behind the status quo, legal or not. By presenting the suits for damages as class actions, a category of tort that allows plaintiffs to sue for punitive damages (available at the discretion of each trial judge) for actions deemed egregiously wrong, even if “only” ethically so. Lee Iococca—Ford’s president at the time—in his defense to not improve the Pinto’s design, repeated what his predecessors had said: Safety doesn’t sell.
Nadar’s attack against the Corvair resulted in both its discontinuation and diminutions of GM’s market share, profitability, and stock values lasting for decades. Public outrage and consumer protectionism was pandemic and not limited to GM, although GM took the brunt of the hit. All of the major players in this case at one time or another acted in bad faith, assumed the worst of its adversaries, and treat the public as idiots incapable of taking responsibility for their own poor decisions. Meanwhile, foreign automakers have been doing pretty well in the U.S., often beating GM at its own game.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
December 20, 2025
This book certainly challenged me intellectually: do I assign it one star, or two? There are compelling arguments for both sides. For the former, it may be argued that Whyte's historical analysis is Hayekean free market dreck of the worst kind. The fact that it has recently attained high status in the social circles of libertarians and other laissez-faire snobs is a testament to its circular, shallow analysis of socio-economic factors surrounding the U.S. auto industry and its relationship with politicians and the general public. These people could only hail a work that simple-mindedly praises the fantasy they hope might become reality. On the other hand, the latter option of two stars is not totally without merit. Whyte's subject is inherently interesting. How did the auto industry operate at the height of its economic might mid-century? How did politicians, executives, and watch dogs like Ralph Nader (be they self-appointed or not) interact with each other to form the auto industry as we know it? How have these decisions compounded upon each other and trickled down to the average car buyer? As something of a car enthusiast, I think Whyte did a passable job of describing the history of these cars and the infamous, divisive Chevy Corvair. Yet as someone with little to no background on Ralph Nader or the grimy inner workings of mid-century U.S. politics, I have no way to judge whether Whyte's ideologically warped history can be trusted as a basic description of the facts at hand. Tangentially, was Ralph Nader as viciously self-righteous as Whyte claims he was? Hard to tell from this account which implies that Nader was a sexless closeted gay man or a paranoid neurotic turned loose. Because this book really does not deserve so many words, I will conclude with the idea that I may be ideologically biased myself and in no position to critique Whyte. Why yes, I am! Reviling thought it may seem, I am one of those people who thinks that objectivity is a fiction. Historians and their readers would be best served by making their political inclinations and ideologies explicit from page one. Thus, we might be able to better compare and adjudicate interpretations of history.
September 28, 2021
The automative industry was once America’s greatest industry, with General Motors as the most important company, dominating car sales in the post World War 2 period.
The book describes the ascendancy of automotive manufacturing and how it shaped America’s economy, politics and cultural values. General Motors was revered as a titanic force as it always made enormous profits and innovated to produce great cars and business leaders
However, the company grew complacent in the 1960’s and profits declined precipitously as many auto safety and shoddy manufacturing issues caused the public to turn against GM. The author peels back the curtain on the life of Ralph Nader and his crusade for safer cars
GM executives were eventually forced to testify in front of a Senate committee, where they were unable to change lawmakers, and the general public, that the company was concerned with consumer and public safety. The book showcases this sudden shift in American priorities
The auto industry was compelled through new regulation to change how they produced cars, which the author argues was a leading cause in the decline of American enterprise over the past 4 decades.
Check out this great book to learn about the history of GM and it’s fall!
The book describes the ascendancy of automotive manufacturing and how it shaped America’s economy, politics and cultural values. General Motors was revered as a titanic force as it always made enormous profits and innovated to produce great cars and business leaders
However, the company grew complacent in the 1960’s and profits declined precipitously as many auto safety and shoddy manufacturing issues caused the public to turn against GM. The author peels back the curtain on the life of Ralph Nader and his crusade for safer cars
GM executives were eventually forced to testify in front of a Senate committee, where they were unable to change lawmakers, and the general public, that the company was concerned with consumer and public safety. The book showcases this sudden shift in American priorities
The auto industry was compelled through new regulation to change how they produced cars, which the author argues was a leading cause in the decline of American enterprise over the past 4 decades.
Check out this great book to learn about the history of GM and it’s fall!
June 9, 2021
I’m not going to bother reading this drivel, because The New Yorker’s Nicholas Lemann did a fine job of it (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...). Ralph Nader has done more for the safety of the American people than the last eight Presidents glommed together, and I voted for him in 2000. What a different world it would be with someone other than George W. in the White House on 9/11. Big Auto dug it’s own grave in the 1970s, for a myriad of reasons, with myopia, greed, and incompetence chief among them. They’re still digging their way out, federal bailouts to boot.
November 14, 2022
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
This finishes up a small project: reading all the nominees for the Manhattan Institute's 2022 Hayek Book Prize. (My previous book reports: here, here, here, here, and here.) I liked this one a lot.
It's the story of how America went wrong in its prevailing attitudes toward "big business". Starting (mostly) in the 1960s, we shifted from viewing corporations favorably as providers of useful products that made our lives better to predators that foisted off defective and unsafe crap that made them billions, but killed a lot of their customers, and injured many more. The author, Kenneth Whyte, concentrates on one company, General Motors, and one skirmish in the battle: Ralph Nader's crusade to demonstrate that their latest new model, the Corvair, was "unsafe at any speed".
Whyte does an excellent job of showing the charges against GM and the Corvair were largely meritless. But their defense was drowned out by grandstanding politicians (notably, Senators Abraham Ribicoff and Robert F. Kennedy), Nader's demagoguery, and a media only too willing to go along in trashing the company.
GM didn't help its case by hiring private investigators to look into Nader's personal and professional life, trying to find something illegal, immoral, or unethical. When this came to light, Nader was able to portray himself as a brave David against the GM Goliath. Again, the media of the day ate that up.
Whyte fits this all into historical context. Nader was not the first anti-corporate crusader; he was preceded by folks like C. Wright Mills, Vance Packard, John Kenneth Galbraith, etc. And the jihad against GM was big, but the thuggish behavior of JFK (and his brother, RFK) against the steel companies in the early sixties presaged the government posing as the protector of the "little guy".
Whyte is not an anti-government crank; he grants that some things that came out of the GM-Nader conflict actually did make motoring safer. But it turned the US into an increasingly litigious and regulatory country, with measurably significant harms to economic growth. And growth is necessary to alleviate poverty, and ensure middle-class prosperity. Our political/economic/legal system is "ridiculously adversarial". And we see echos of that when "entrepreneurial" politicians rail against "Big Pharma", "Big Tech", … whatever target they imagine might give them additional power.
May 25, 2022
Did the shift in 1960s American consciousness from “making goods” to “fighting bads” — as represented by auto safety attacks on General Motors cars — torpedo America’s world economic leadership? Or did it prove to be the necessary push to promote public well-being?
That’s the issue “on trial” in The Sack of Detroit.
Author Kenneth Whyte dives deep into the evidence on both sides. Even though his personal sympathies land with doing business, it’s a fair question to ask and examine, and I appreciate his mind-opening exploration.
Certainly, as he writes, “There was a growing appetite for social change in America and around the world. Authority was under attack from every direction in the early 1960s.”
But he also demonstrates how the product improvements of auto makers, better road engineering, and driver education, and perhaps law enforcement, were strongly decreasing the death and injury toll even before the regulations and lawsuits forced them further.
How does our free society reconcile the competing forces?
Whyte writes that the authors of the Constitution believed the way to stop one faction of the nation exercising tyranny over another was to make, as James Madison said, "ambition counteract ambition." Competing interests would fight it out at the polls, in the legislatures, and in courtrooms. Optimal policies would triumph.
So it’s left to the reader to consider Whyte’s contention:
“In proposing regulation of the most critical sector of the American economy, legislators would have been wise to adopt a low-key, collaborative approach in order to enhance safety without disrupting the confidence and operations of the automakers."
Yes, but: Would that have worked? Or is high visibility “good trouble” the costly but necessary road to improvement?
Read and judge for yourself.
That’s the issue “on trial” in The Sack of Detroit.
Author Kenneth Whyte dives deep into the evidence on both sides. Even though his personal sympathies land with doing business, it’s a fair question to ask and examine, and I appreciate his mind-opening exploration.
Certainly, as he writes, “There was a growing appetite for social change in America and around the world. Authority was under attack from every direction in the early 1960s.”
But he also demonstrates how the product improvements of auto makers, better road engineering, and driver education, and perhaps law enforcement, were strongly decreasing the death and injury toll even before the regulations and lawsuits forced them further.
How does our free society reconcile the competing forces?
Whyte writes that the authors of the Constitution believed the way to stop one faction of the nation exercising tyranny over another was to make, as James Madison said, "ambition counteract ambition." Competing interests would fight it out at the polls, in the legislatures, and in courtrooms. Optimal policies would triumph.
So it’s left to the reader to consider Whyte’s contention:
“In proposing regulation of the most critical sector of the American economy, legislators would have been wise to adopt a low-key, collaborative approach in order to enhance safety without disrupting the confidence and operations of the automakers."
Yes, but: Would that have worked? Or is high visibility “good trouble” the costly but necessary road to improvement?
Read and judge for yourself.
April 3, 2022
Originally, I thought this book would be about the destruction of the physical city of Detroit. Driving through the outskirts of the city,it is a wreck. Nothing like what it was at it’s peak of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
But instead, this book focused on General Motors, the corporation. How it developed out of the new auto industry and how it was propelled to be so large and powerful. It did represent the power of American Capitalism. It this all changed in the 1960’s. The government stepped in regulate and over regulate. The trial attorneys were able to liberalize their rules and then attack the auto industry. Ralph Nader and everything he brought, also served to attack the auto industry.
The auto industry and the American people as a whole needed to make auto travel safer, and to do it much faster than it was. But, as a country we focused on bringing them down, and we did.
The book also compared how the government also took down the tobacco industry and how they are also starting to look at the opioid issue.
As a country, we should think about this whole thing. Why are there more government employees in this country instead of employees that actually make something.
I do recommend this book
But instead, this book focused on General Motors, the corporation. How it developed out of the new auto industry and how it was propelled to be so large and powerful. It did represent the power of American Capitalism. It this all changed in the 1960’s. The government stepped in regulate and over regulate. The trial attorneys were able to liberalize their rules and then attack the auto industry. Ralph Nader and everything he brought, also served to attack the auto industry.
The auto industry and the American people as a whole needed to make auto travel safer, and to do it much faster than it was. But, as a country we focused on bringing them down, and we did.
The book also compared how the government also took down the tobacco industry and how they are also starting to look at the opioid issue.
As a country, we should think about this whole thing. Why are there more government employees in this country instead of employees that actually make something.
I do recommend this book
June 2, 2024
The Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise gives a detailed account of how Detroit, with the help from General Motors, went from the richest city in America to one of the poorest right now. I really enjoyed learning about what went wrong when General Motors was trying to expand its business and become the leading company in the automotive industry. When reading this book, I was shocked about how small errors made by politicans and motor executives alike resulted in the mess that Detroit is in right now. People like Ralph Nader tried to make cars more safe, and their voices were constantly ignored, since they were believed to have been trying to put General Motors and the entire automotive industry out of business. If their advice had been taken seriously, many of the resulting problems would have been prevented, and General Motors and the city of Detroit would be in a much better place right now. Overall, a great read, and I truly recommend it to anyone interested in business, history, and politics.
February 12, 2022
Great overall history of the American auto industry with a particular focus on the collision of government regulation and industry-driven safety measures when a young Ralph Nader released his book "Unsafe at Any Speed," the following congressional hearings, and the quasi-legal smear campaign against Nader that led to an era-ending PR crisis for GM.
Goes into great depth into how safety research and measures evolved in the auto industry, and the debate between where responsibility lies for improving safety (the driver, the auto manufacturer, the road builder, law enforcement, etc).
I think this is an important history for anyone interested in current discussion of urban planning, pedestrian and automobile safety, and the next evolution of this discussion that's unfolding around autonomous vehicles now.
Goes into great depth into how safety research and measures evolved in the auto industry, and the debate between where responsibility lies for improving safety (the driver, the auto manufacturer, the road builder, law enforcement, etc).
I think this is an important history for anyone interested in current discussion of urban planning, pedestrian and automobile safety, and the next evolution of this discussion that's unfolding around autonomous vehicles now.
October 3, 2021
I’m depth look into the frivolous claims made against the Detroit automakers in the 60s. While the book is clearly against the advocates and politicians who ruthlessly attack American business, the book does discuss both sides (GM was wrong to investigate Ralph Nader for example).
The last quarter is my personal favorite part of the book. I do feel like some chapters were a bit stale and dragged on a bit too long. But overall the book is informative and offers an interesting perspective from the automakers point of view.
The last quarter is my personal favorite part of the book. I do feel like some chapters were a bit stale and dragged on a bit too long. But overall the book is informative and offers an interesting perspective from the automakers point of view.
August 5, 2021
Remarkably provocative; kind of destabilizes everything I’ve believed about American business and federal regulations with regard to the auto industry for a very long time. And then it expands its critique to contemporary controversies with the opioid crisis and social media companies. Consumer advocates as noble heroes has always been the unquestioned narrative of my political thinking. This analysis gives me pause like I haven’t been given in a long time.
August 29, 2022
Outstanding and eye opening. History is cyclical and this book could not be more timely. Cars are safer today than ever in history yet about 30,000 will still die this year on American roads. Just like last year and the year before. Why? Well, as a cop I can tell you the answer is the same as it was in 1960. People. If you think Ralph Nader was/is an idealistic warrior fighting to save lives you probably should find something else to read.
March 27, 2025
Interesting until the end where the author starts to attack Nadar. Apparently it’s bad to want companies to be held accountable. Authors solution was just for the government to tell people to stop drunk driving and wear seatbelts😭
August 17, 2021
Interesting contrarian view on Nader's involvement with GM and eventual decline of auto
November 27, 2022
Remember the teacher in Ferris Buellers Day Off... that's how the speaker sounds. Not what you want to listen to on your commute.
Read
December 25, 2022dnf
March 27, 2024
Lovely history and the evils of politics. GM, Nader, America and the world. It finishes well with lessons hopefully learned.
January 11, 2025
Makes some good points but the author crams his thesis into the end of the book and doesn’t support it well. There are too many chapter-long detours into stories that aren’t that relevant
September 23, 2025
It's good to see an even-handed treatment of the beleaguered domestic auto industry. GM has come in for plenty of criticism, going back at least to the cost-cutting, badge-enginering 1990s. The author points out how Ralph Nader's antipathy to GM's Corvair shows that GM has been in the public eye, and under the Government's spotlight for some time.
We see how shifts in the marketplace in the late '50s, exacerbated by the '57-'58 'Eisenhower Recession' that led the U.S. automakers into smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, to feed the steady incursion of even lighter foreign cars.
The fact that sporty derivatives of small cars appeared soon after the compacts that they were based on showed that economy was just one factor in consumer choice. Soon the automotive market, both domestic and foreign, split into overlapping segments, which took turns gaining favor with the public.
By the late '60s, we had the muscle-car craze, fueled by taste rather than need or practicality; then the personal-luxury fad, sporty coupes, and, more recently, the obsession with SUVs and trucks.
Getting back to GM and the Corvair: Chevy knew that they'd miscalculated with the Corvair. It was obvious that the Falcon easily beat both the Corvair and the Valiant because it was very conventionally engineered and styled. So, Chevrolet quickly got their version of a mainstream compact to market, the Chevy II; even the name was conservative, if not bland.
But it was very successful. All this before Nader went to war against the Corvair. It's surprising that he was taken so seriously. He was a journalist: smart, clever, and extremely determined. But he neither drove nor owned a car, and obviously wasn't qualified to pontifcate about engineering; let alone the subtleties of automotive suspension systems or handling idiosyncracies.
On auto safety in general, it's clear that passive-restraint systems are lifesavers. Yet, it seems that that the net effect of better crash-protection has been sabotaged by giving too many motorists a daredevil mentality, in which disaster is courted as a sort of thrill. Personal responsibility is the best safety factor.
The author has an authoritive grasp of American corporate culture and big business generally, and I didn't expect him to write a book for auto enthusiasts, but there's a goof that keeps showing up: Plymouth is not Pontiac. We're not talking about Daihatsu and Lada, but two major American brands that put tens of millions of cars on our roads from the late '20s until the early 2000s. Pontiac was a GM brand (Bonneville, GTO, Firebird); Plymouth was Chrysler's (Roadrunner, Barracuda, Fury).
A good book, and generally well-written; but could've had better editing.
We see how shifts in the marketplace in the late '50s, exacerbated by the '57-'58 'Eisenhower Recession' that led the U.S. automakers into smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, to feed the steady incursion of even lighter foreign cars.
The fact that sporty derivatives of small cars appeared soon after the compacts that they were based on showed that economy was just one factor in consumer choice. Soon the automotive market, both domestic and foreign, split into overlapping segments, which took turns gaining favor with the public.
By the late '60s, we had the muscle-car craze, fueled by taste rather than need or practicality; then the personal-luxury fad, sporty coupes, and, more recently, the obsession with SUVs and trucks.
Getting back to GM and the Corvair: Chevy knew that they'd miscalculated with the Corvair. It was obvious that the Falcon easily beat both the Corvair and the Valiant because it was very conventionally engineered and styled. So, Chevrolet quickly got their version of a mainstream compact to market, the Chevy II; even the name was conservative, if not bland.
But it was very successful. All this before Nader went to war against the Corvair. It's surprising that he was taken so seriously. He was a journalist: smart, clever, and extremely determined. But he neither drove nor owned a car, and obviously wasn't qualified to pontifcate about engineering; let alone the subtleties of automotive suspension systems or handling idiosyncracies.
On auto safety in general, it's clear that passive-restraint systems are lifesavers. Yet, it seems that that the net effect of better crash-protection has been sabotaged by giving too many motorists a daredevil mentality, in which disaster is courted as a sort of thrill. Personal responsibility is the best safety factor.
The author has an authoritive grasp of American corporate culture and big business generally, and I didn't expect him to write a book for auto enthusiasts, but there's a goof that keeps showing up: Plymouth is not Pontiac. We're not talking about Daihatsu and Lada, but two major American brands that put tens of millions of cars on our roads from the late '20s until the early 2000s. Pontiac was a GM brand (Bonneville, GTO, Firebird); Plymouth was Chrysler's (Roadrunner, Barracuda, Fury).
A good book, and generally well-written; but could've had better editing.
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