Crash Course: The American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster

Ingrassia covered Detroit for the Wall Street Journal for decades and won a Pulitzer for his reporting on General Motors. This book traces the American automobile industry from its postwar dominance to the 2009 bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler.

His explanation puts equal weight on management and labour. On the company side he documents the finance-driven culture at GM, the brand proliferation that left divisions competing with each other, the failure to respond to Japanese quality, and a succession of chief executives who protected the existing structure. On the union side he covers the contract terms that accumulated over decades: the jobs bank that paid laid-off workers, the work rules that limited what a worker could be assigned, the retiree healthcare obligations that were promised without funding, and the pattern bargaining that spread each concession across all three companies. He argues that management and the United Auto Workers reached a series of agreements that were rational for both parties in the moment and that collectively made the industry uncompetitive.

The last section covers the 2008 and 2009 crisis in detail, including the congressional hearings, the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, and the structured bankruptcies that wiped out shareholders, imposed losses on bondholders and preserved a modified union position.

The reporting is even-handed and the labour cost analysis is careful about the difference between hourly wages and total legacy cost per vehicle. Ingrassia is less strong on the product and engineering side than Lutz is, and the book was written immediately after the bankruptcies so it does not assess how the restructured companies performed.