General Motors, Decline and Fall,

1980 – 2009

William Sundwick

Founded in Flint, Michigan in 1908, the corporation that ushered in the automobile age in America and came to dominate the nation’s industrial economy by the 1970s, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy just after celebrating its centennial.

What happened?

In 1980, journalist/folklorist Ed Cray published his history of that corporation, Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times. GM then held a 46 per cent share of the domestic U.S. auto market. Cray notes it had been over 50 per cent in the early to mid-1960s, inviting threats of anti-trust action from Congress, amplifying anger at GM manufacturing decisions concerning safety and lethargic pursuit of emissions reduction. The Boards of Directors in those days were confident they could ride over these assaults. They were right -- so long as sales and employment were strong and stock valuation high. I certainly felt no insecurity growing up as a teenager in a Flint GM family!

But there was an unseen threat building, starting in the 1970s, which should have foretold a deepening challenge to GM’s place in the automotive market.

It came from Japan, with its much younger automobile industry looking toward export markets, not just in the U.S., but around the world. The first Toyotas and Datsuns appeared on the West Coast in the late 1950s. A curiosity at first with little penetration even in California. But that penetration grew and went nationwide by the mid-70s. GM management did recognize that there was something peculiarly competitive about Japanese manufacturing. They sought to learn more about it via partnership with Toyota. NUMMI (New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc.) was formed in the early ‘80s at a closed GM plant in Fremont, California (since sold to Tesla). It produced both Chevrolets and Toyotas side-by-side on the same assembly line.

But NUMMI failed to change “The General.” What General Motors couldn’t understand was that the secret of Japanese manufacturing, and growing preference of U.S. consumers, had nothing to do with efficiency of the machinery in the plant. It was not the “culture” of employees (the old GM workers were rehired in Fremont). Instead, it was mainly the culture of management. The Fremont plant was run differently from other GM assembly plants, following the Japanese model. But apparently, corporate management failed to notice a fundamentally different job design. Workers in Fremont rotated among many different jobs, rather than simply tightening the same bolt every day for an eight-hour shift on thousands of cars.

GM had advance warning of this problem from the wildcat strike at Lordstown, Ohio in the early ‘70s – where sabotage led to slowdowns and generally low production quality of the new “import killer” small car launched there, the Chevrolet Vega. Production rates were punishing, workers took it out on the product. Yet corporate management took no notice. After the “experiment” at NUMMI, Japanese style “relational management” never spread to other plants. The Vega’s design was considered flawed, too, not merely its manufacturing quality. General Motors could not see its employees as anything more than cost centers, whether hourly and salaried engineers. The public could see the effects.

“Corporate culture” has become a popular trope over the last thirty years. It probably had its origin in the sad story of General Motors’ decline. The corporation had its beginning in the early days of the automobile, in an environment analogous to how we thought of Silicon Valley in the 1980s. It was where entrepreneurial ventures based on engineering advances were the foundation of economic growth. Billy Durant, the founder of the corporation, was the embodiment of that entrepreneurial, risk-all, American myth that surrounded figures like Steve Jobs in later times. Durant’s genius (some would call it recklessness) was his willingness to take a chance on a bevy of garage tinkerers he met in Michigan. The first of them was Flint mechanic David Buick, struggling with his own version of a horseless carriage. His Buick automobile was the brand that started General Motors. Durant, however, did not build the GM corporate culture. The myth of that industrial spirit was, instead, created by Alfred P. Sloan. Sloan led an ever more centralizing corporate Board through the 1920s and 1930s. The stable of brands assembled by Durant and his early associates had all been managed independently at the engineering and production level. They always had shared technology and parts, but Sloan made them mere “divisions,” subservient to the General Motors Board of Directors, directed jointly from Detroit and Wall Street. Sloan was the archetype modern corporatist.

Sloan organized the corporation around profit centers and marketing concepts. Any original ideas for products or engineering had to clear rigorous financial hoops – the “bean counters.” The overwhelming strength of the industrial engine this strategy created caused General Motors to be perceived as a key factor for allied victory when World War II came. Its then-president, William S. Knudsen, became FDR’s head of the War Production Board.

But, after the war, that old, inherently conservative, midwestern corporate culture returned -- unable to focus its marketing on anything but the ego-enhancing product differentiation that Sloan had pioneered starting in the 1920s. The five automotive brands that GM successfully hawked during the postwar years (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac) were distinguished mostly by size and flash – what would today be called “bling.” All were built on a similar platform with more engineering in common than unique. Chevrolets and Cadillacs were built during the period to be fundamentally the same, different enough only to make a convincing argument that the higher-priced brand was somehow “better.” This was, of course, illusion – manufacturing standards and quality control were identical at all GM plants.

GM corporate culture could not grasp the reason for the increasing success of Japanese imports through the 1970s and ‘80s. It was not their cars’ designs, but a combination of several factors. There was the above-mentioned relational style of management in plants (and with suppliers); the uncomfortable fact that legacy costs were low at the much younger Japanese firms (not as many retirees collecting pensions and benefits); and, yes, a less risk-averse product-planning style, greater willingness to take chances on new designs without the relentless bottom-line calculations, the Wall Street side, that dominated GM decision-making. It was the old company, Toyota the young company!

When the UAW chose to strike General Motors in 2007, the walkout lasted three days. But three days lost production was not enough to change GM’s ways. Market share in the U.S. by then was down to only 20 per cent, a far cry from thirty years earlier. The public had caught on, even if management had not. GM was a global enterprise, but European market share was declining as well, and China was just getting started. South American (primarily Brazilian) operations were significant, but not on the scale of North American or European. When Wall Street was hit by the 2008 crash, the General finally took off his stars and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009, the corporation’s 101^st anniversary. Only a massive U.S. government bailout saved GM from liquidation.

Arising from the ashes, the “new” General Motors, General Motors Company, LLC, promised to be leaner and better – not necessarily meaner. But global market share, even after selling off subsidiaries, and shuttering brands (Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, others), has not revived over the ensuing decade. By 2019, U.S. market share had eroded even further, to about 17 per cent. Had the General learned anything?

CEO Mary Barra has flirted with new products, especially electric vehicles, and claims the company will transition completely to EVs (well, 70 per cent by 2040), but we’ll see. The plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt was discontinued in 2019, with no replacement named. Lordstown, site of the painful wildcat strike decades earlier, was not reconfigured, but closed – then sold to a start-up who will manufacture all-electric pickup trucks there soon. Will the GM Cruise Division, formed to manufacture autonomous vehicles at its Hamtramck plant, ever see the light of day?

If I were a prudent investor, I would not buy GM stock.

Drive Better Electrically

EVs, Past, Present, Future

William Sundwick 

Electricity as a means of propulsion for self-contained road vehicles is as old, or older, than the internal combustion engine (ICE). But EV market share declined to zero for a large chunk of motor vehicle history.

There were a variety of reasons for the demise. They were expensive, while the Model T was bringing motoring to the masses. Battery technology was limited. Baker Electrics and Detroit Electrics, “popular” in the first two decades of the 20^th century featured luxurious closed bodies, but had a range of less than 40 miles, and top speed of less than 20 mph. But when ICE-powered cars needed to be cranked to start, electrics could be started with a button. They were thought to be aimed at urban women, especially. Henry Ford bought a Detroit Electric for his wife, Clara. And, Baker Electric manufactured 800 cars in 1906 alone. Peak sales occurred in the second decade of the century. Altogether, by the end of the electric era in the early 1920s, there had been 33,842 electrics registered in the United States. No other country had as many EVs, although there were manufacturers in Europe, too. The explosion of demand for the Model T, and associated massive improvements in the national road network, tended to leave those early EVs to an affluent urban niche market.

Shortages of gasoline during World War II did cause some renewed interest in electric vehicles in Europe, especially Britain, which invented its famous commercial “milk floats,” and the Wehrmacht experimented with, but was unable to produce, hybrid electric armored vehicles, under the direction of Ferdinand Porsche.

Further experiments were carried out around the world during the fuel scarce 1970s and 1980s, but not enough market incentives existed to attempt series production of any electric. By 1997, Toyota took the gamble with its hybrid electric Prius, based on regenerative braking technology, manufacturing it in limited numbers for the domestic Japanese market. Plug-in hybrid design was pioneered in France, where Renault introduced the Elect’Road version of the Kangoo minivan in 2003. It used “blended” technology, where despite an AC charger, the battery electric drive and gasoline engine worked in tandem much of the time – much like the hybrid electric Prius.

In the U.S., General Motors was forced to offer electric driving. It’s novel EV-1 was leased, not sold, in California, in 1999 -- an answer to the CARB (California Air Resources Board) mandate for more fuel-efficient vehicles. GM famously de-activated and destroyed all examples except for a few survivors in museums. The film, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” offers a better, if more sinister, explanation for GM’s decision.

The CARB mandate was reversed when that happened, at the end of the non-renewable lease period. GM’s official explanation was that there was insufficient consumer demand for the relatively short-range EV (~80 mi.) – but, by 2011, Nissan began successfully selling its Leaf, with only a 90-mile range. 

Tesla’s emergence in 2008 marked a serious benchmark for EVs worldwide. Tesla’s market-changing invention was the Lithium-ion battery. Storage capacity, thus range, could now be far greater than any previous attempts at electric propulsion. As battery technology continues to improve, the need for hybrid gasoline engines will decrease. An all-electric future may eventually come. But, will it come fast enough? And, what about continued reliance on an electric grid mainly fed by coal and natural gas?

While California leads the nation in the adoption of EVs (and plug-in hybrids), other nations lead the U.S. By the end of 2018, 49% of all cars sold in Norway were electric. China has marshaled massive state intervention to manufacture EVs for its growing motoring population, with some projections as high as 46% of the domestic market by 2020. However, thanks mostly to California, the U.S. still has more registered electric and hybrid vehicles than any other country, despite a lowly 1% market share for EVs.

How do electric vehicles work? There are three different kinds of electric propulsion available in the marketplace today:

1) Battery-electric vehicles (BEV) like Tesla, Chevrolet Bolt, and Nissan Leaf. These cars have no ICE at all. They rely entirely on their electric motors and battery storage, which can be replenished externally (i.e., “plug-in”) in three modes: 120-volt household circuit, 240-volt “level 2” charger, or 480-volt “level 3” fast DC charging.

2) For the more range-anxious consumer, there are plug-in hybrids (PHEV), which rely on battery storage until it’s depleted, then seamlessly switch to a “range extending” gasoline engine. All-electric range for PHEVs varies from about 10 miles up to more than

50. Total range depends on the size of the gas tank. My Chevy Volt has a small 9.5-gallon tank which gives it a total range in excess of 200 miles. I’ve filled the tank only about five or six times in the 4 ½ years I’ve owned the car – and, several of those times was because of the automatic “fuel maintenance cycle” that burns old, stale gasoline.

3)  Gasoline-electric hybrids (HEV) like the Prius, which continue to be popular, especially in the United States, where gas is relatively cheap and plentiful. Many consumers think the 50-60 mpg that they can get with their Prius is sensational. But it doesn’t compare to 100-120 mpg-e (equivalent) for a PHEV or a Leaf.

Teslas are fast, too! Indeed, one performance characteristic of electric motors is they produce a great deal of torque at lower speeds, hence your 0-60 mph acceleration is likely to be quite good. Currently, there is a preponderance of luxury brands in the list of BEV and PHEV vehicles available in the U.S. That is mostly attributable to the phenomenal success of Tesla. While concept-to-production cycle times are longer than Tesla’s recent dominance of luxury-segment sales, many of the world’s luxury brands had been working on electric propulsion for some time. Tesla’s success moved competitors into crash programs.

How green are EVs, really? It is true that the connection to the nationwide electric grid is a limiting factor on how much CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) can be saved with plug-in electric vehicles. However, it has now finally come to pass that everywhere in the United States, the net carbon footprint of driving an electric or hybrid vehicle is positive. It will be better in places that have higher renewable infrastructure. But nowhere is the impact negative. This has been true only for the last year. All-electric BEVs are best, PHEVs next best, HEVs third.

The only remaining question: will the market move fast enough without massive state intervention like China’s? Rural areas in the U.S. will, of course, be the last to convert. Electric long-distance trucks are under development. And BEV or PHEV pickups are coming within the next year or so. But It may ultimately depend on political will, on getting behind a Green New Deal.

In the 1950s, General Electric and Westinghouse collaborated on a massive media campaign called “Live Better Electrically” (LBE). It had the support of utilities, the U.S. government, and state and local governments. Its sole purpose was to pump up profits for all the participants, selling appliances as costs of the grid were dropping dramatically.

Now, however, it may be time to think of your grandchildren more than your commuting convenience. Is America up to the challenge? 

Exit Strategy

Was Getting Out Inevitable?

Flint Series, Chapter 5

William Sundwick

Sometimes I think that friendships are simply a matter of convenience. While many people seem to make life-long friendships with kids they grew up with, my experience has been different. I lost contact with my childhood friends in high school, lost touch with my high school friends while we were all away at college, didn’t pursue college friends after the post-college diaspora. Indeed, even grad school, which was right here in the DC area, didn’t produce any lasting relationships, despite many of us staying here to pursue our careers.

No, my life has been marked by associations based on externalities, convenience, common interests – and those interests have changed over the years.

Through high school, in Flint, my primary interest focused on my future. Not that the present was so bad, just that it seemed to have no growth possibilities. Flint was already as big as anybody in my world could imagine it. My friends would say, “Well, you may not know where you’ll end up, but it sure as hell won’t be here!” My mother said with a look of anguish on her face, “Surely you must come up with a plan to go somewhere else?” My father mostly would laugh at the prospect of coming back to Flint after college – “What, and work for GM?” he chortled. And, he had been a General Motors “lifer.”

Only the “other Sundwicks” in Flint had any sense of attachment to the city. Perhaps it came from their mother’s family, the Stebbins. Perhaps it was from the complex web of social interconnections that the three siblings had woven over more years than my relatively brief Flint lifespan. As it turned out, only one of the three left Flint – middle cousin, Bob.

During one foray back to Flint, in 1979, staying with cousin John, I contacted a high school friend who was still in Flint (hadn’t seen him in more than a decade). He had graduated from MSU in E. Lansing, with a degree in oriental philosophy, and was working as a computer programmer for the City of Flint and raising his young family there. He was the exception.

Everybody else from high school, by that time, was far away. Even though, in 1979, I didn’t know where any of them were, it seemed inevitable they wouldn’t be In Flint.  I believe it was inevitable for me, and I never needed an exit strategy.

Once Google was available, I discovered a Ph.D. dissertation from friend Nate. And my mother had informed me, when I moved to Northern Virginia, that childhood friend Charles had married a “Korean girl” and was living in Reston. I never contacted him, though. I have no idea what happened to Abe, best of friends through both junior high and high school. But, it didn’t matter. The deed was done, escape effected. All who came before erased from memory.

Is there something wrong with me?

Once, during a trip from Kalamazoo in my college senior year (1968-69), I dropped in unannounced at Abe’s house on Mackin Road and talked with his younger brother, Sol. I introduced my girlfriend of the moment, who had driven there with me.

What transpired in the conversation is fuzzy, but one haunting aside from Sol keeps impinging on my consciousness. I believe he interjected, almost unnoticed by me at the time, “You know Abe is gay, right?” I think I didn’t want to acknowledge the import of that. I didn’t reply. In high school, he often joked (I thought) about “us” being “queer” – I had always taken it as a lame excuse for our not being able to find attractive girls to date at the time. I guess the meaning was deeper for him.

I’ve often wondered what happened to Abe during the AIDS epidemic of the eighties. But, I never followed up to locate Sol or Abe. No trace of either on Facebook, Twitter, or Google.

Abe had been the ringleader of the whole Get Out of Flint movement, not that there was much opposition from anybody else in our crowd. But, he was the most vociferous. Could he have been motivated by some personal animus against that conventional blue-collar midwestern city? His alienation may have been stronger than the rest of ours, and not just because of his Holocaust survivor parents, either!

All this leads me to wonder if any of us has an obligation to our hometown. What is it about place that can inspire loyalty, a desire to return after leaving? To “give back”?

In the case of Flint, the city has become known everywhere over the last thirty years as a dying place. Poisoning its residents through willful negligence has only been the “icing on the cake” of a three-decades-long disinvestment by its corporate overlord, General Motors, and by politicians not beholden in any way to those residents – the poorest city in the country, from a 2017 survey. Flintoids don’t have the money to buy the politicians. And, that generations-long brain drain, common to many rust belt cities, depletes any wherewithal to resist. We all shed a tear for Flint, but what have we done about it?

In the last chapter of my saga, I will try to shed some light on where the city is now. Some folks there remain optimistic, others are merely trying to keep expectations low. Is the popular local meme true? -- “Flint, coming soon to a city near you!”

Wasteland vs. Intellectual Ferment

Or, My Parents’ World vs. My World, High School Years

Flint Series, Chapter 4

William Sundwick

Flint Central High School was a new adventure. High school then comprised three years: grades ten, eleven, and twelve.

That meant one of my early high school experiences, in Spring 1963, was taking “Drivers’ Ed,”  which included behind-the-wheel time at a fancy new road course built on the grounds of Flint’s newest high school, Southwestern. Not satisfied with classroom content and a driver’s test at the local DMV, ours included “real” driving experience on streets with stop signs, traffic lights, and opposing traffic. And, the kicker, it was at the wheel of a choice of brand-new donated Buicks! Yes, this was Flint. Like everything in the city, if GM could figure out a way to encourage future customers, they would do it, including a high school drivers’ education program.

When I was fifteen, that was exciting.

The Resistance

However, I was now embedded with peers who were not so excited about cars and the auto industry. Their parents did not work for the “chrome colossus” of General Motors. They saw themselves as independent of the Flint mainstream; indeed, above it.

Dan, Nathan, Abe and his younger brother Sol (“Manny”), were all children of Holocaust survivors who somehow managed, separately, to find their way to Flint after spending early childhood in New York or Uruguay (in Nate’s case). They were all products of a strong Yiddish/Polish family culture. How did they come to live in Flint, these guys the same age as me?

I was a privileged transplant from Dearborn, whose paternal family were Scandinavians drifting down from the Upper Peninsula, and maternal family solid midwestern Scotch-Irish. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist preacher.

But my crowd was not my dad’s or Uncle Bob’s kind of people. None of my circle were cogs in GM’s wheel! Charles, my Ternstedt friend from earlier days, faded away after elementary school, perhaps due to his family being TOO close to my father’s work life (involving his dad’s performance evaluations from my dad?).

This group had parents who were shopkeepers, house-painters, and CPAs. But everybody in Flint was in some way beholden to General Motors, even if they did not work for “the man.” Success of their businesses indirectly depend upon him. When Flint’s population reached 200,000  in the sixties, that was about as big as a “company town” could get.

While in high school I was unaware of the glorious history of the sit-down strikes in the thirties, or the ultimate surrender of the UAW to corporatism in those post-war boom years. But, I was aware, even in my junior high years, of the acrid smell of stale cigarette smoke and half-emptied Manhattans in the living room on weekend mornings, left from the previous night’s corporate (Ternstedt plant, anyway) bridge parties. I thought to myself, “is this what I want to do for entertainment when I grow up?”

As my cultural affiliations solidified, the answer became clear -- no! And, it’s not because bridge isn’t a fascinating card game. But, I perceived a rot in the social fabric of those gatherings. It seemed a wasteland to me.

My friends had one thing in common. They were all uncommonly smart. Why they deigned to hang with me is still baffling, but I was flattered. We developed an understanding. None of us would come back to Flint once we escaped.

If anticipation of refugee status may have been natural for the Holocaust Children, it was not for me. They were well equipped for scraping by in jobs beneath their station – as their immigrant parents had done. I was too privileged to contemplate making huge sacrifices; instead, I hoped for lucky breaks.

The Academy

In addition to my social circle, there was also something about Flint Central’s location which had an important influence on my intellectual development. It would later be called the “East Village,” home not only to my high school, but the Flint College and Cultural Center. During my time at Central (1962-65), it included the shiny, modern steel and glass public library, a planetarium, art institute, concert hall, and the Flint Community College campus (now Mott College). Adjoining the East Village was the University of Michigan-Flint campus. The entire Cultural Center was developed primarily via the philanthropy of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. C.S. Mott, himself, also lived in his wooded estate, Applewood, adjoining the Center. Mott had been a co-founder of General Motors, and his foundation was primarily dedicated to improving the hometown of the corporation that created his wealth. It’s called “giving back.”

The land for the Cultural Center came from Applewood. But, Mott wasn’t the only notable who maintained a domicile in the East Village. Professors, including the first Dean of UM-Flint, lived there. I once went out with his daughter, my chemistry lab partner on that afternoon in November 1963 when the P.A. announcement told us that President Kennedy had been shot!

In fact, much of Flint’s “old money” lived in the neighborhood. I remember meeting a friend of a friend at his home there -- it had a butler’s pantry and dumbwaiter. He didn’t go to Flint Central, but to Georgetown Prep in Maryland!

So, there were the New York Jews, all of them left-wing intellectuals, the College and Cultural Center and East Village neighborhoods, and the C. S. Mott Foundation’s beneficence, all contributing to my evolving state of mind in high school. What else led to this ferment? 

The Actors

My mother. She was very proud of her hard-earned college degree from UM-Flint, after part-time studies as an adult, and a mom! She confidently marched into her high school English classroom in Flushing, a Flint suburb. At first, she felt she was reaching many of her students.

But, after a few years (by the time I was in high school), she had decided to call it quits. Her main complaint was the principal. She felt stifled by him, and generally devalued -- apparently a common experience for many teachers.

But, she did successfully tutor my cousin Bob (John’s older brother) in English when he returned to Flint from Tampa. He had a rough time in English. But, after her coaching, he was able to get into college, and from there to graduate school, and ultimately a professorship back in Florida.

Dad was there as well, but somehow didn’t contribute the same burning intellectual desire as Mom. He was an engineer, I would choose a different path.

Among my own teachers at Flint Central, four stand out: John Greenleaf Howe, Dale Kildee, Gayle Heyn, and James Graham Provan. Each played a significant role in shaping my future.

John G. Howe was my 10^th grade social studies teacher. Instead of world history, the traditional grade ten social studies curriculum, Flint called it “foreign relations” (probably to appease the local John Birch Society chapter – with their anti-communist agenda). He was a self-styled Republican politico, impressing me with the hard-nosed “realpolitik” behind his course’s topic.

He sponsored an after-school club, called the Reliques Society, which met in students’ homes, including mine. My socially conscious mom was slightly suspicious of the exact nature of this apparent “secret society” – but, she finally decided if it was endorsed by the Flint Community Schools, it must be okay.

Dale Kildee taught Latin. He also emphasized the political process, especially as practiced in the Roman Empire! A former Catholic seminarian, he left the order to teach in public schools.

After I graduated, he left teaching to pursue politics himself – becoming a 17-term Congressman before announcing his retirement in 2010, to be replaced by his younger nephew, Dan (who still represents Flint in Congress).

Gayle Heyn was my French teacher, who assured me that there was civilization beyond Flint – and it mostly spoke French! She became Gayle Kildee later, accompanying husband Dale to Lansing, then Washington.

Graham Provan was my U.S. history teacher. He taught me that American history wasn’t what I thought, by emphasizing its blemishes -- especially relevant in those days of civil rights struggles in the South.

Collectively, they showed me how politics equates with power.

The high school debate team (where I earned a varsity letter) can’t be ignored, either. It taught me about logic, argumentation, and research.

Yet, I pursued none of this after college. I lost something when I left Flint – where did it go?

Flint: Lumber to Carriages to Cars

The Flint Series, Chapter 1

William Sundwick

 When I arrived in Flint, Michigan at age six, the city, incorporated in 1855, had already established itself: first as a hub for the central Michigan lumber industry, then earning the appellation “Vehicle City,” then as the manufacturing center of the largest auto maker in the world. To clarify, that nickname on the iconic iron arches over North Saginaw Street signified horse-drawn carriages. Flint had become the nation’s foremost manufacturer of such “vehicles” by 1900, thanks mostly to the Durant-Dort Carriage Company, and Flint Wagon Works. 

William C. Durant and J. Dallas Dort were the driving force behind the city’s growth in those years, capitalizing on an auspicious lumber trade across the natural fords of the Flint River, and onward south and east. The raw materials for wagons and carriages thus were readily available.

With the success of his carriage empire, Durant embraced risk. Some would call him a speculator. Both he and his partner, Dort, became eager to move into the nascent “horseless carriage” field.  They would need the right contacts for capital and mechanical ingenuity. Durant reached out to secure both. Investment capital came from New York, and he found ingenuity closer to home, in Detroit. Specifically, from David Dunbar Buick, who had tried building cars, but was less than successful as a businessman. Durant rescued him financially and moved production to Flint. Durant tirelessly promoted what was now his Buick automobile, made at the original Durant-Dort carriage factory in today’s “Carriage Town” – the oldest Flint neighborhood. His angle was safety, becoming a public concern in those early horseless carriage days. It worked. By 1909, Buick had become the best-selling car in the U.S. (outperforming Ford, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac).

The amazing success of Buick in those early years may have gone to Bill Durant’s head. He started negotiating with his Detroit and Wall Street contacts to purchase other car makers. Some of his carriage-making executives, like A.B.C. Hardy and Charles W. Nash, were also pushing hard for more internal combustion powered vehicles. General Motors Corporation was chartered in 1908. It was Durant and Dort’s baby. Corporate HQs were right next door to the Durant-Dort Carriage Works factory. Nash would leave Durant to form his own brand, Nash Motors, in 1917.  

GM continued to grow – not just in Flint, but also Detroit. And Canada, too, under a partnership with R.S. McLaughlin, who, like Durant, was the largest carriage maker in his country. Durant acquired Buick competitors Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Oakland Motors. All these brands were retained, following Durant’s strategy to offer many different cars for different tastes at different price points.

Unfortunately, his next acquisition, Chevrolet, was not so successful at first.  The car was fine, but Durant’s holdings in Chevrolet were leveraged out of his control by partner McLaughlin -- Chevrolet briefly became a Canadian make. By the mid-teens, however, Durant had bought it back, and Chevrolet was pulled into the Buick orbit – made in Flint. But, by 1921, Durant was gone again, starting his own Durant Motors (in Flint) which survived until the crash of 1929, when Durant left the automobile business for good.

Despite the slowdown in automobile production during the Depression, Detroit and Flint saw huge numbers of immigrants from the Deep South (both black and white), as well as even more depressed areas in Northern Michigan. My uncle Bob was the latter. He married into a family with deep roots in the Flint area, although he was a new employee at the AC Spark Plug plant on the east edge of town. By the time I arrived in 1953, they were already the “Flint Sundwicks.”

Rapid population growth in an era of declining demand for its products caused serious social tensions in Flint. This tension led to the famous Sit-down Strikes of 1936-37, credited by many labor historians and the Left as the beginning of the modern union movement in the U.S. (which should now be called the “post-war industrial union movement of the 20^th century,” since unions are in decline in the 21^st century).

It’s easy for somebody who grew up in Flint during that post-war glimmer of labor prosperity and rising expectations to romanticize the place where it happened, as well as the times. Were the strikes started, or abetted, by communists? The historical record is vague on this – since many of the interviews with participants were collected during the McCarthy witch-hunting era. People involved, if connected to left organizations, were often reluctant to admit it. My own experience during high school in the sixties tended to foster a romantic view of communist agitators manning the barricades (in Flint’s case, guarding their machines) – they were my heroes, whether they really existed or not.

In my imagination, those strikes set the stage for the Flint that I knew. 

Selling an Old Name to a New Demographic

Cadillac’s “Break Through” Campaign and the GM Malady

William Sundwick

Picture, if you can, the typical Cadillac of the 1990s. It was probably a De Ville or Fleetwood Brougham. Big, posh, a veritable land yacht. There was the elegant little Allante sports car and, by 1999, the Escalade truck, but nobody at Cadillac had discovered how to market these aberrations to the Florida retirement community consumer, the demographic best understood at the time.

Cadillac needed to discover younger buyers – boomers in their fifties, not the retirees of the “greatest generation” purchasing what might be their last car. The target customers were buying BMWs, Volvos, Mercedes, then Audis. Why? There were many reasons, but marketing was a big one.

General Motors was, indeed, beset by some deep structural problems in the nineties. Fixed costs (both labor and capital equipment) were eating into profits. And, a series of strategic decisions beginning in the sixties had the effect of hollowing out the engineering pool needed for product innovation. Reorganizations, especially the BOC-CPC structure of 1984 (Buick-Olds-Cadillac/Chevrolet-Pontiac-Canada), exacerbated the decline of both quality and engineering creativity.

But, it was the gradual disappearance of its traditional customer base that was the Cadillac brand’s specific problem – it was an actuarial issue. Cadillac buyers may have been drawn to the brand going far back into their collective memories. But, frankly, they were dying off. The affluent younger greneration in their fifties and early sixties, whom Cadillac needed, was underwhelmed by Cadillac’s “standard of the world” slogan, dating from the 1910s. The Cadillacs they saw now belonged to their parents’ cohort.

Boomers were getting press in the nineties and aughts because they seemed to have a very different ethos than the generation before them. They were cast as a “Peter Pan Generation” –  refusing to grow old even in middle age. They were attracted to the edgy, the independent, the counter-cultural. Their classic rock music had stuck, their fitness fetishes caused gyms to sprout on every corner, and women were now as likely as men to be in the appropriate economic strata. These led to clear preferences for smaller, more agile, cars. Many boomers were now reaching the level of personal financial resources that Cadillac marketing was pursuing.

Enter the “Break Through” campaign – its first TV spot was at the 2002 Super Bowl. Rumors had been circulating in the advertising world of an undisclosed princely sum that Cadillac had paid for the rights to a 31-year-old Led Zeppelin song, “Rock and Roll.” It became the centerpiece for an advertising campaign that would last five years before it was finally pulled. There were several TV commercials featuring the song, which became indelibly associated with Cadillac, even among those aficionados who knew the song previously.

The new, naughtier, image that Cadillac was trying to create was not all smoke and mirrors. GM revamped the product line in serious ways – with the small CTS sedan, an entirely new platform for the larger STS, and in 2003, a Cadillac “Corvette,” the XLR.

Both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page thought the licensing terms fair. It was the first song they had ever licensed for a TV commercial. It may have been the first time ANY song from the “classic rock” period was licensed for a TV commercial.

There were other fronts in the campaign besides the music and TV commercials. The automotive press was regaled with track competition for Cadillac models (last seen when Cadillacs competed at Le Mans in the early fifties). The CTS-V, with its supercharged Corvette V8, was dubbed “world’s fastest production sedan” after besting all competitors around the Nurburgring Grand Prix circuit. Indeed, it set a record for lap time at that German course in 2008.

More of the edginess theme could be found in the well-publicized preference among professional athletes for a Cadillac truck – the Escalade. Escalades became synonymous with African-American “bling.” All these things -- the music, the racing, the urban flash – helped boost Cadillac 2003 sales figures by 16 percent.

Cadillac was beginning to reacquire some of the panache those of us old enough to remember the fifties had formerly associated with the make. Too bad for GM that the rest of their lineup didn’t receive equally successful marketing campaigns. Oldsmobile, for instance, died with a whimper at about the same time – its “not your father’s Oldsmobile” campaign had fizzled a few years earlier.

Was it the cars, or was it just that music, that brought Cadillac success? Let’s look at the cars. Compared to Cadillac’s competitors at the time, BMW clearly had the greatest following, and prestige.  Lexus was a little stodgy, Audi was yet to hit its stride, and Mercedes was sharing BMW’s strength with a slightly older demographic. Lincoln was already a non-entity as a competitor. The BMW customer was the “Break Through” campaign’s target. Cadillac’s CTS sedan was intended as a 3-series killer, the STS was squarely aimed at the 5-series, and the DTS would continue to aim at the geriatric crowd (and some Mercedes models). Escalades were aimed at an American high-end urban demographic, not averse to trucks – a market never penetrated by the Germans or Swedes. Volvo still made most of its sales in its lower end models (more Buick than Cadillac?). Lexus saw itself straddling that demographic, too. For the first time in recent memory, Cadillac’s lineup seemed competitive.

Teutonic engineering and style was what Cadillac tried to copy. The precision, the authority, the innovation, styling that was solid, yet sleek, and a sterling reputation for quality. These were BMW’s claims to leadership in the luxury segment. Unfortunately, the paucity of engineering talent at GM forced Cadillac to settle for marketing an image of engineering innovation, and revamped styling,. The reality was still lacking – speed, as in the staged Nurburgring event, would have to substitute for solid engineering.

 The initial boost from the campaign began to wane after the first year. There was a second Super Bowl commercial in 2003. The scene was a New York subway train with advertising posters for Cadillacs from the fifties as the train moved through time to today, and through the windows we could see the current Cadillac line. It may have been too urban-oriented for the Zeppelin sound track. Nevertheless, Cadillac stuck with the campaign, and the music, until 2006. It was succeeded by the “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit” campaign, with more of a country flair. But, that campaign was less successful, perhaps due to a lack of affluent buyers in the target demographic.

The urban orientation seen in the 2003 spot was a signal that future Cadillac marketing would become much more focused on the upper-middle-class professionals who live in large metro areas. It was probably inspired by the continued success of the Escalade and the growing concentration of wealth in cities.

So far, however, this new focus has not paid off. Cadillac sales are again in the doldrums. Perhaps moving Cadillac brand HQs to New York’s soho neighborhood will inspire new strategic thinking. Except that nobody in New York buys cars!

Is the corporation the problem? Could it be that General Motors just can’t decide where Cadillac belongs? GM market share has been increasing over the last couple years, but no thanks to Cadillac – it’s seems mainly driven by Chevrolet now, and newer crossovers from GMC and Buick.

GM’s 2009 bankruptcy forced another realignment. The “new GM” would be much leaner, freed from onerous UAW contracts, and could raise up some bright young engineering talent within its ranks. The new focus would be on technology – both manufacturing and car design. It’s noteworthy that plug-in hybrids and all-electrics are now being developed by GM faster than anybody else in the U.S. market except Tesla. Cadillac, for its part, is seeking to unveil a more extensive semi-autonomous driving package than any other domestic make. Coming soon.

The new marketing target for Cadillac is Generation-X. They are as different from their boomer parents as the boomers were from their parents. Gen-Xers still value independence and edginess, but are less concerned with social status than their elders, more pragmatic. They are less easily intimidated by group pressure. And, they are financially less secure than their elders – worrying about how to pay for their kids’ college!

All this may lead them to make more conservative choices in cars. A new marketing campaign for GM’s luxury brand could be a serious challenge for that old Cadillac crest. We’ll see if the current urban focus is the correct one.