Sixty to Zero

Alex Taylor covered the automotive industry for Fortune for decades and wrote this account of General Motors' decline and 2009 bankruptcy from the perspective of a journalist who observed it throughout.

His explanation covers the same ground as Ingrassia's Crash Course with a different emphasis. Taylor concentrates on management and on the specific decisions: the brand proliferation that left divisions competing for the same customers, the finance-driven culture that treated cars as units, the failure of the Roger Smith reorganisations and the enormous spending on automation and on Saturn that produced nothing proportionate, the succession of chief executives who protected the existing structure, and the persistent inability to make product decisions that customers would respond to.

He also covers the labour agreements, the dealer network that could not be reduced because of state franchise laws, the legacy healthcare and pension obligations, and the market share decline that continued for three decades without ever producing a response proportionate to it.

Taylor's judgement is that the company's problem was a culture in which senior executives were promoted for loyalty and process rather than for results, and in which the seriousness of the decline was never accepted internally.

The reference has not verified the specific claims in this account. The book is journalism by a long observer rather than an investigation, and it covers ground that Ingrassia, Lutz and others cover with more original reporting. Its value is the compression of a three-decade decline into a single readable account.