Once Upon a Car by Bill Vlasic (Review)

Once Upon a Car by Bill Vlasic

New York, William Morrow, 2011. 

Ho Hum, a business reporter writes about the recent near-death experience of the Big 3 (Ford, GM and Chrysler).  Actually, it is pretty through, flawed because it mostly focused on personalities and executive decisions surrounding the bailout, bankruptcy and reorganization.

My biggest complaint is, there is no real background about the Automobile business in North America.  Even short appendices about the "other" players (Toyota, Honda, etc) would have been very helpful in understanding how we reached that crisis. If you are going to write an industrial survey, please give me an overview of the entire Industry.  If it's about numbers, how about a review of them.

Maybe I am too influenced by my recent viewing of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car' (2005);  GM had the technology, and literally threw it away.   Not even a reference to this as a poor strategic decision.

And the numbers behind the "Stranded Costs" of the US Retiree Health Care that (allegedly) dragged them under.