Car: A Drama of the American Workplace

The private lives of Ford employees likewise do not escape Walton's critical eye. Twelve-hour days are common among Ford engineers, but the toll on their personal lives is high. So critical is Mary Walton of Ford's management practices that, upon seeing an early draft of Car, Ford revoked Walton's access to its top executives. For a book that provides both solid entertainment and an in-depth analysis of the auto industry, Car is the top of the line.

Book Description
[Tom] Breault . . . came up with a system to guide [top engineer Lew Veraldi] through dense material. When Breault presented a report, he would highlight both his copy and Veraldi's. . . . Eventually, Veraldi realized something was odd. 'Am I the only one in the room with a highlighted copy?' he asked suspiciously. 'Why? Am I the only one who can't follow this?' Breault thought quickly. 'No, sir,' he answered. 'It's because you're the only vice president in the room.'

An astonishing journey into the belly of our most important industry, a portrait of the energy and ingenuity of America at work. Their job, as the wife of the chief engineer put it, was to repaint the Mona Lisa. Faced with redesigning the Taurus, America's best-selling car and the flagship of its fleet, Ford Motor Company assembles 700 designers, engineers, planners, and bean-counters under a tough manager who set out to retake ground lost to the Japanese. On their shoulders rest the reputation and the profits of Ford, not to mention an investment of about 3 billion dollars. A cross between The Reckoning and The Dilbert Principle, this biting, insightful, and often funny account by a seasoned journalist follows the 1996 Taurus from its conception as a clay model in Detroit to its birth in an Atlanta assembly plant to its public debut in a New Jersey dealership. Mary Walton all but lived with the team for two years in a damp Dearborn basement, and she chronicles firsthand the clashes of designers and engineers over shapes, of marketers and accountants over costs, of product guys in Detroit and manufacturing guys in Atlanta as the new machine takes shape on the assembly line. And all of them, all of the time, are looking over their shoulders at the Japanese competition. The Taurus is a single product, but it contains thousands of parts, and just as many stories. Walton has woven these together brilliantly into a book that reveals the tension, the passions, and the pride that fuel the race to #1.

Kristina Osborn
Acquisitions
Columbus College of Art and Design, Packard Library


More than just cars - the development process   May 29, 2002
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

The appeal of this book goes beyond an interest in the auto industry or an interest in cars. If you work in any kind of development process, from software to hardware, this book is both an entertaining and instructive read. It seems we're all fighting the same battles: Designers and engineers constantly at loggerheads, testers finding bugs at the last minute, division presidents saying outlandish things to the press and the sales people looking for the spin. If you don't want to read yet another boring book on how to improve the software development process, try this.


Heavy on the cliches   June 7, 2001
 2 out of 7 found this review helpful

I just finished this book. While it paints an interesting picture about the process to bring a car to market, the style Walton employs falls short. I understand the strategy to be the naive narrator (learning with reader how things work), but she uses too many cliches and poor analogies to make her point. I don't know how many times she said "Ugly as sin" or even "It was, like," a few times. I'd recommend David Halberstam's The Reckoning or Comeback as well-written alternatives about the same subject, especially Comeback's depiction of the Mustang overhaul, than this book.