The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American Car Market | 
 enlarge | Author: Micheline Maynard
Publisher: Doubleday Business
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 197591
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0385507704
Dewey Decimal Number: 338
EAN: 9780385507707
ASIN: 0385507704
Publication Date: September 21, 2004
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Product Description
An in-depth, hard-hitting account of the mistakes, miscalculations and myopia that have doomed America’s automobile industry.
In the 1990s, Detroit’s Big Three automobile companies were riding high. The introduction of the minivan and the SUV had revitalized the industry, and it was widely believed that Detroit had miraculously overcome the threat of foreign imports and regained its ascendant position. As Micheline Maynard makes brilliantly clear in THE END OF DETROIT, however, the traditional American car industry was, in fact, headed for disaster. Maynard argues that by focusing on high-profit trucks and SUVs, the Big Three missed a golden opportunity to win back the American car-buyer. Foreign companies like Toyota and Honda solidified their dominance in family and economy cars, gained market share in high-margin luxury cars, and, in an ironic twist, soon stormed in with their own sophisticatedly engineered and marketed SUVs, pickups and minivans. Detroit, suffering from a “good enough” syndrome and wedded to ineffective marketing gimmicks like rebates and zero-percent financing, failed to give consumers what they really wanted—reliability, the latest technology and good design at a reasonable cost. Drawing on a wide range of interviews with industry leaders, including Toyota’s Fujio Cho, Nissan’s Carlos Ghosn, Chrysler’s Dieter Zetsche, BMW’s Helmut Panke, and GM’s Robert Lutz, as well as car designers, engineers, test drivers and owners, Maynard presents a stark picture of the culture of arrogance and insularity that led American car manufacturers astray. Maynard predicts that, by the end of the decade, one of the American car makers will no longer exist in its present form.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Not the best for research papers May 10, 2008
The End of Detroit looks like a great book with a lot of great information. As a source for a research paper, however, its layout isn't helpful. Cryptic chapter titles and a lack of sections or section headings mean that one must, in essence, read the entire book to obtain valuable contextual information.
Bottom line - it's written more like a novel than a documentary. I don't have the time to appreciate that.
Not Enough September 11, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Maynard does a splendid job analyzing Detroits's current problems but ignores some important history. The industry as a whole was badly damaged by the great depression and later even more so by the FDR, The NRA, and the new dealers. Once upon a time American cars were like their Japanese and European counterparts in the sense they were precision machines loaded with engineering inovations, Cadillac offered 3 engines in 1931. V-8, V-12, V-16. By 1941 Cadillacs were nothing more than Chevrolets in basic design but grown longer, wider,and fatter. The American auto industry in the 1920's & 30's was like Europe's auto industry today building all different kinds of cars in all different price ranges. There were cars like the Doble and Stanley that were steam powered, in 1935 there were about 20 different car makers other than the big 3. The Depression coupled with sky high New Deal taxes destroyed the fine car makers like The Pierce Arrow Motor Car Company of Buffalo NY, Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg leaving the way for the Europeans to grab this important market starting in the 1950's after the economy began to recover from the war. Low cost car makers like Studebaker were hated by the UAW because they could not afford to pay the same wages Ford, or GM could. Ther biggest part of this whole tragedy is the art of making, desiging, well crafted cars died with the Pre-WWII generation From 1946 - 1973 American cars were been big, heavy, rolling pieces of costume jewelry. When oil prices after 1973 made building the cars in this manner no longer possible, Detroit has struggled since as to what to do. No longer able to fool people with cheaply made cars disguised to look well made under tons of steel, they have had to re-invent the way they build cars. To Detroit's credit they have made some progress over the years. The problem they faced in the 80's was they had not had to build anything remotely resembling a sophisticated engine in over 50 years. Up to the early 80's the 1928-37 Indiana made Duesenberg Model J still held the title of most technologicly advanced American car, when Detroits new front wheel drive engines could not match Toyota fuel economy they had to remove weight off the cars to make them lighter, since most consumers know nothing of engineering and only judge cars by what they see and feel, American cars were dismissed as being Tin Cans on four wheels, to quote my mother. In recent years Detroit has made some progress. Cadillac seems on the mend, the XLR is a wonderful car but like the Allante before it, way over priced. The new Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky are really nice but GM blundered big time dropping Oldsmobile.Ford has not been doing so well, the new Mustang is a 1967 Mustang front end and 1970 Mustang rear-end redone in plastic. YUK ! Mercury is almost dead. The new Lincolns are hideous. Chrysler has benefited from it's association with Damiler Benz. The Chrylsler 300 is the nicest sedan in it's price range. Time will tell if things turn around. The U.S. Auto industry has been written off before and has come back.
 Maynard is the Oracle of Detroit March 19, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Here we are, March 2006 and reading this book for the second time will give one chills! Wagoner had a road map predicting the demise of GM and yet stayed the course. This book combined with The Toyota Way makes the unfortunate End of Detroit painfully clear and often sheds more light on cultural paradigm than business sense!
 An alternate title: Big 3 Execs Blow It March 11, 2006
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I was disappointed when I first started reading Ms. Maynard's book. I had expected to delve into the details of the manufacturing process and appreciate Japan's robotic genius. If you are interested in the technology then look elsewhere.
But Maynard is a pretty good storyteller. She tells stories about the founders of Toyota and Honda. She chronicles their cars, the Camry and Accord, and the engineers behind their success. If I have any complaint about her book, it's that she writes more about the import companies and their leadership then she writes of Detroit, her home town.
Perhaps she is hoping that the CEO's of GM, Ford and (Daimler)Chrysler will read her book and take a lesson or two from their competition:
1. Listen and learn from your customers. Had Ford paid more attention, Taurus might still be the number one selling sedan.
2. Respect your workforce. Toyota and Honda are demanding of their workers, in Japan and in America. But they also value and actively seek their suggestions for improving the production process. (Whether the United Auto Workers hinders this communication in Detroit is left unclear.)
3. Stay humble and hungry.
In the end I'm impressed with the case Ms. Maynard makes for leaderhip. Poor decision making by the Big Three Execs explain much of the reason that Detroit matters less in the automotive world than it used to.
Comprehensive, but somewhat superficial January 18, 2006
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book provides a helpful overview of the major problems and challenges that the American auto-makers are currently encountering. Its breadth is impressive, covering everything from automotive history to market analysis to profiles of and leadership anecdotes from Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, BMW, and others in addition to the Big Three.
But at only 310 pages (hardcover), what it has in breadth it lacks in depth. Books like Turnaround (about Ghosn's revival of Nissan) and Car (about the design of the Ford Taurus), both cited by Maynard as sources, provide more direct insight on automotive industry leadership. And Halberstam's The Reckoning, although it's twenty years old, makes a more compelling and analytical argument as to why Detroit should worry about the imports.
Maynard's allegations are nothing new: Detroit has huge pension and health care burdens; it overestimates its understanding of the American market; it relies too much on emotion and nostalgia, not enough on engineering, research, and quality; its hands are tied by UAW contracts; it relies on huge discounts to motivate buyers; it's suffering brain drain to the import companies; it has too much corporate inertia. And while there is some background information to support each claim, much of it is anecdotal and cherry-picked. For example, while much is made of Nissan's ability to reinvent itself, Chrysler's multiple successful revivals are used only as an example of its inability to be consistent. And although the American companies have improved their vehicle quality dramatically in the last decade, Maynard focuses on the negative and profiles on a handful of individual consumers who happened to buy American lemons.
While I didn't find it especially insightful or interesting, I think it's still a worthwhile read for those who want to build automotive industry knowledge.
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