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Profiles:
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This page points to works on the automotive industry and
specific manufacturers. It supplements discussion
of highways as a communication revolution and a metaphor
for the internet.
It covers -
introduction
The literature on the auto industry as an embodiment of
national pride, driver of economic development and bellwether
of industrial relations is dauntingly large. Some points
of entry are as follows.
James Rubenstein's Making and Selling Cars: Innovation
& Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Uni Press 2001), Koichi Shimokawa's The
Japanese Automobile Industry: A Business History
(London: Athlone Press 1994), The Machine That Changed
The World: The Story of Lean Production (New York:
Harper Perennial 1990) by James Womack, Daniel Jones &
Daniel Roos, The Decline & Fall of the American
Automobile Industry (New York: Empire Books 1993)
by Brock Yates, Who Really Made Your Car? Restructuring
and Geographic Change in the Auto Industry (Kalamazoo:
Upjohn 2008) by Thomas Klier & James Rubenstein and
Time for a Model Change: Re-engineering the Global
Automotive Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press
2004) by Graeme Maxton & John Wormald are of particular
value.
Michele Hoyman's Power Steering: Global Automakers
& the Transformation of Rural Communities (Lawrence:
Uni Press of Kansas 1997) explores competition to host
car manufacturers and component suppliers, offering a
perspective on writings by Richard Florida and other 'lure
the creatives' (with decaf latte and opera or otherwise)
pundits.
Questions of organisation, consent and command are explored
in Haruhito Shiomi and Kazuo Wada's Fordism Transformed:
The Development of Production Methods in the Automobile
Industry (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1995), Fairness
and Division of Labor in Market Societies (New York:
Berghahn 2004) by Hyeong-Ki Kwon and Lean Work: Empowerment
and Exploitation in the Global Auto Industry (Detroit:
Wayne State Uni Press 1995) edited by Steve Babson.
Timothy Whisler's The British Motor Industry, 1945-94:
A Case Study in Industrial Decline (Oxford: Oxford
Uni Press 199) and The British Motor Industry
(Manchester: Manchester Uni Press 1995) by James Foreman-Peck,
Sue Bowden & Alan McKinlay are essential reading.
For the Australian industry see Wheels and Deals:
The Automobile Industry in Twentieth Century Australia
(Aldershot: Ashgate 2001) by Robert Conlon & John
Perkins, Big Wheels and Little Wheels (Melbourne:
Lansdowne 1964) by Laurence Hartnett, Volkswagen in
Australia: The Forgotten Story (Heathmont: AF 2004)
by Rod & Lloyd Davies and Davison's Car Wars :
How The Car Won Our Hearts & Conquered Our Cities
(Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin 2004).
For design see in particular Thomas Hine's incisive Populuxe
(New York: Knopf 1996), Edson Armi's celebratory The
Art of American Automobile Design (University Park:
Pennsylvania State Uni Press 1988) and Jeffrey Meikle's
Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design in America,
1925-1939 (Philadelphia: Temple Uni Press 1979).
Global production (or merely global markets) is explored
in J. A. C. Conybeare's Merging Traffic: The Consolidation
of the International Automobile Industry (2004),
Kenneth Thomas' Capital Beyond Borders: States and
Firms in the Auto Industry, 1960-1994 (New York:
St Martin's Press 1997), Dimitry Anastakis' Auto Pact:
Creating a Borderless North American Auto Industry, 1960-1971
(Toronto: Uni of Toronto Press 2005).
For components see Michael French's The U.S. Tire
Industry: A History (New York: Hall 1990) and Stephen
Harp's, Marketing Michelin: Advertising and Cultural
Identity in Twentieth-Century France (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Uni Press 2001), the latter more persuasive
than Herbert R. Lottman's The Michelin Men: Driving
an Empire (London: Tauris 2003). Klier
& Rubenstein's Who Really Made Your Car? notes
that parts suppliers account for as much as 70% percent
of the value added motor vehicle manufacture, with parts
industry employees outnumbering final assembly workers
by nearly four to one. The answer to 'who really made
your car' is a long list of parts companies whose facilities
may be located next to the assembly line or on the other
side of the globe.
Ford
As with railways, contemporary and subsequent writing
about auto industry entrepreneurs such as Ford, Morris
and Citroen offers a perspective on recent blather about
dot-com zillionaires.
For Ford the three volume biography by Allan Nevins &
Frank Hill - Ford: The Times, the Man, the Company
(New York: Scribner 1954), Ford: Expansion & Challenge,
1915-1933 (1957) and Ford: Decline and Rebirth,
1933-1962 (1963) - is very much an authorised history,
eliding Ford's antisemitism, management caprices, personal
cruelties and use of thugs as a key element of labour
strategy. Carol Gelderman's Henry Ford: The Wayward
Capitalist (New York: Dial 1981) is similarly generous.
William Greenleaf's perceptive Monopoly on Wheels
(Detroit: Wayne State Uni Press 1961) considers the Selden
patent case; Ford's antiquarianism is considered in Howard
Segal's Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village
Industries (Amherst: Uni of Massachusetts Press 2005).
Mira Wilkins & Frank Hill's American Business
Abroad: Ford on Six Continents (Detroit: Wayne State
Uni Press 1968) complements Simon Reich's The Fruits
of Fascism (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1990) and Working
for the Enemy: Ford, General Motors & Forced Labor
in Germany During the Second World War (New York:
Berghahn 2000) by Reinhold Billstein, Karola Fings, Anita
Kugler & Nicholas Levis. It is extended by papers
in the two volume Ford, 1903-2003: The European
History (Paris: PLAGE 2003) edited by Hubert Bonin,
Yannick Lung & Steven Tolliday. Neil Baldwin's Henry
Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New
York: Public Affairs 2001) and Albert Lee's Henry
Ford and the Jews (New York: Stein & Day 1980)
consider Ford's virulent antisemitism.
David Lewis' The Public Image of Henry Ford (1976)
is essential reading, considering media portrayal of Ford
and the company's efforts to influence that portrayal.
It is complemented by Reynold Wik's Henry Ford and
Grass-roots America (Ann Arbor: Uni of Michigan Press
1972).
For the second and later generations see The Fords
(1987) by Peter Collier & David Horowitz, the more
incisive The Reckoning (New York: Morrow 1986)
by David Halberstam, Robert Lacey's The Men And The
Machine (New York: Ballantine 1986) or Wheels
for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century
of Progress, 1903-2003 (New York: Viking 2003) by
Douglas Brinkley. The Edsel is discussed in Disaster
in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel (Stanford: Stanford
Uni Press 2002) by Thomas Bonsall, Edsel: The Motor
Industry's Titanic (London: Academy 1994) by Robert
Daines' and John Brooks' The Fate of the Edsel and
Other Business Adventures (London: Collins 1963).
There is unfortunately no major study of the Ford Foundation
- counterpart of the Gates foundations in buffing the
entrepreneur's profile - as the organisation is reported
to have commissioned and then suppressed a succession
of works by figures such as William Greenleaf. His
From these beginnings: The early philanthropies of Henry
and Edsel Ford, 1911-1936 (Detroit: Wayne State Uni
Press 1964) considers gifting before mortality and tax
regime changes transferred many assets away from the Ford
family.
GM
For General Motors see Halberstam's The Reckoning
and Alfred Chandler's superb Strategy & Structure:
Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise
(Cambridge: MIT Press 1962) and Giant Enterprise:
Ford, General Motors and the Automobile Industry: Sources
& Readings (New York: Harcourt Brace World 1964).
They might be supplemented by Robert Freeland's The
Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation: Organizational
Change at General Motors, 1924-1970 (New York: Cambridge
Uni Press 2001) and William Serrin's The Company and
the Union: The 'Civilized Relationship' of the General
Motors Corporation and the United Automobile Workers
(New York: Knopf 1973).
Other works include Axel Madsen's The Deal Maker;
How William C. Durant Made General Motors (New York:
Wiley 1999), William Pelfrey's Billy, Alfred, and
General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, a Legendary
Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History
(New York: Amacom 2006), Stuart Leslie's Boss Kettering:
Wizard of General Motors (New York: Columbia Uni
Press 1983), Ed Cray's Chrome Colossus: General Motors
and its Times (New York: McGraw-Hill 1980), Bernard
Weisberger's The Dream Maker, William C Durant, Founder
of General Motors (Boston: Little Brown 1979), General
Motors and the Nazis: The Struggle for Control of Opel,
Europe's Biggest Carmaker (New Haven: Yale Uni Press
2005) by Henry Turner Jr and Robert Burk's The Corporate
State and the Broker State: The Du Ponts and American
National Politics, 1925-1940 (Cambridge: Harvard
Uni Press 1990).
For Alfred Sloan see his My Years With General Motors
(Garden City: Doubleday 1964), Arthur Kuhn's GM Passes
Ford, 1918-38: Designing the General Motors Performance
Control System (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press 1986) and David Farber's Sloan Rules:
Alfred P. Sloan & the Triumph of General Motors
(Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 2002). Sloan's work should
be supplemented with A Ghost's Memoir: The Making
of Alfred P. Sloan's My Years with General Motors
(Cambridge: MIT Press 2002) by John McDonald and Freeland's
The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation,
noted above.
For more recent years see Maryann Keller's Rude Awakening:
The Rise, Fall, and Struggle for Recovery of General Motors
(New York: Harper Perennial 1989) and Collision: GM,
Toyota, Volkswagen and the Race to Own the 21st Century
(New York: Doubleday 1993), Joe Sherman's In the Rings
of Saturn (New York: Oxford Uni Press 1994), Micheline
Maynard's Collision Course: Inside the Battle for
General Motors (New York: Carol 1995) and Doron Levin's
Irreconcilable Differences: Ross Perot Versus General
Motors (New York: Little Brown 1989).
Among works on offshore interests see Vauxhall Motors
and the Luton Economy, 1900-2002 (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press 2003) by Len Holden.
AM
For American Motors see Tom Mahoney's upbeat The Story
of George Romney: Builder, Salesman, Crusader (New
York: Harper 1960). Packard is eulogised in the intelligent
The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company (Stanford:
Stanford Uni Press 1995) by James Ward.
Chrysler
Works on the Iacocca revival at Chrysler should be read
with some caution. They include David Abodaher's Iacocca
(New York : Macmillan 1982), Lee Iacocca's Iacocca:
An Autobiography (New York: Bantam 1982), Michael
Moritz & Barrett Seaman's Going for Broke: Lee
Iacocca's Battle to Save Chrysler (Garden City: Doubleday
1981), Robert Lutz's Guts: The Seven Laws of Business
That Made Chrysler the World's Hottest Car Company
(New York: Wiley 1987) and Robert Reich & John Donahue's
New Deals: The Chrysler Revival and the American System
(New York : Times Books 1987).
There is a more searching look in Charles Hyde's Riding
the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation
(Detroit: Wayne State Uni Press 2003), Steve Jefferys'
Management & Managed: Fifty Years of Crisis at
Chrysler (New York: Cambridge Uni Press 1986) and
Doron Levin's Behind the Wheel at Chrysler: The Iacocca
Legacy (New York: Harcourt Brace 1995). For the founders
see Vincent Curcio's Chrysler: The Life and Times
of an Automotive Genius (New York: Oxford Uni Press
2000) and The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars,
and the Legacy (Detroit: Wayne State Uni Press 2005)
by Charles Hyde.
Daimler-Benz and BMW
Lutz to the contrary, the 'seven laws' weren't hot enough
to help Chrysler evade a takeover by Daimler-Benz, described
in Bill Vlasic & Bradley Stertz's Taken for a
Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off with Chrysler (New
York: Morrow 2000), Jürgen Grässlin's Jürgen
Schrempp & the Making of an Auto Dynasty (New
York: McGraw-Hill 2000) and David Waller's Wheels
on Fire: The Amazing Inside Story of the DaimlerChrysler
Merger (London: Hodder & Stoughton 2001).
Benz's history pre-1946 is explored in Neil Gregor's Daimler-Benz
in the Third Reich (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1998)
and Bernard Bellon's Mercedes in Peace & War:
German Automobile Workers, 1903-1945 (New York: Columbia
Uni Press 1990).
For BMW see Horst Mönnich's BMW: Eine Deutsche
Geschichte (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay Verlag 1989).
VW
Volkswagen is profiled in Bug (New York: Simon
& Schuster 2002) by Phil Patton, Small Wonder:
The Amazing Story of the Volkswagen (New York: Little
Brown 1967) by Walter Nelson and Getting the Bugs
Out: The Rise, Fall, and Comeback of Volkswagen in America
(New York: Wiley 2002) by David Kiley.
A reality check for Ferry Porsche's We at Porsche:
The Autobiography of Dr Ing hc Ferry Porsche (Garden
City: Doubleday 1976) is provided by Das Volkswagenwerke
und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich (Dusseldorf:
Econ 1996) by Hans Mommsen & Manfred Geiger.
BMC, Austin and BL
The misadventures of BMC, Morris and Austin are chronicled
in Lord Austin the Man (London: Sidgwick &
Jackson 1968) by Z E Lambert & R J Wyatt, Roy Church's
excellent The Rise & Decline of the British Motor
Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1995), his
Herbert Austin: The British Motor Car Industry to
1941 (London: Europa 1980), Martin Adeney's Nuffield:
A Biography (London: Hale 1993) and The Breakdown
of Austin Rover: A Case-Study in the Failure of Business
Strategy and Industrial Policy (New York: Berg 1987)
by Karel Williams, John Williams & Colin Haslam. A
view from the top was provided by Michael Edwardes' Back
from the Brink (London: Collins 1983).
For William Morris, Lord Nuffield (1877-1963) see Philip
Andrews & Elizabeth Brunner's reverent The Life
of Lord Nuffield: A Study in Enterprise & Benevolence
(Oxford: Blackwell 1955) and Martin Adeney's Nuffield:
A Biography (London: Hale 1993).
For a regional perspective see David Thoms & Tom Donnelly's
The Coventry Motor Industry: Birth to Renaissance
(Aldershot: Ashgate 2001).
Citroen, Renault and FIAT
The major English-language work on Citroen remains John
Reynolds's André Citroën: The Henry Ford
of France (New York: St Martin's Press 1996).
Works on Renault include Anthony Rhodes' Louis Renault:
A biography (London: Cassell 1969), Caroline Schulenburg's
Renault und Daimler-Benz in der Zwischenkriegszeit
(1919-1938): Eine vergleichende Unternehmensgeschichte
zweier europäischer Automobilhersteller (Stuttgart:
Franz Steiner Verlag 2008).
For FIAT a starting point is Alan Friedman's Agnelli:
Fiat and the Network of Italian Power (New York:
NAL 1989); other works are highlighted here.
Nissan and Toyota
For Nissan see Halberstam's The Reckoning and
Michael Cusumano's lucid The Japanese Automobile Industry:
Technology & Management at Nissan and Toyota
(Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1985). John Rae's celebratory
Nissan/Datsun, A History of Nissan Motor Corporation
in the USA, 1960-1980 (New York: McGraw-Hill 1982)
might be read in conjunction with David Magee's Turnaround:
How Carlos Ghosn Rescued Nissan (New York: HarperBusiness
2003).
For Toyota see Yukiyasu Togo & William Wartman's Against
All Odds: The Story of the Toyota Motor Corporation and
the Family that Created It (New York: St Martin's
1993), David Magee's How Toyota Became #1: Leadership
Lessons from the World’s Greatest Car Company
(London: Portfolio 2007), Eiji Toyoda's Toyota: Fifty
Years in Motion (New York: Kodansha 1987).
For Honda see Tetsuo Sakiya's Honda Motor: The Men,
the Management, the Machines (New York: Harper &
Row 1982), Robert Shook's Honda: An American Success
Story (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall 1988)
Hyundai
Accounts of Hyundai before the fall are provided in Donald
Kirk's Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju Yung
(Armonk: Sharpe 1994) and Richard Steers' Made in
Korea: Chung Ju Yung and the Rise of Hyundai (New
York: Routledge 1999).
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