Comeback

"This is a story of upheaval, renewal, fierce competition, and triumph, which begins in 1982, when Honda started to build cars in Marysville, Ohio, and the entire U.S. car industry seemed to be on the brink of extinction, and ends just over a decade later with a remarkable role reversal, as the Japanese car industry falters and America's Big Three emerge as winners on a global scale." "Along the way, Ingrassia and White tell scores of fascinating stories - of Steve Bera, who was sent by GM to learn the secret of Japanese productivity ("No problem is problem"); of GM's Roger Smith, who changed General Motors, but in all the wrong ways; of the rise of Bob Lutz, Chrysler's preeminent "car guy," and the fall of Don Petersen, who, like many previous Ford executives, forgot whose name was on the building; and of the rise and fall of Bob Stempel. They tell of men like Tom LaSorda, who learned how to beat the Japanese at their own game; Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua, who tried to transform GM's bureaucrats into "warriors" in the "Third Industrial Revolution" and achieved fame as "Superlopez," until his career foundered in rumors of industrial espionage and treachery; Bob Marcell, whose struggle to build a whole new kind of car at Chrysler ended in triumph; and John Coletti and Will Boddie, who brought in Ford's new Mustang in record-breaking time ..." "From the report of the extraordinary excesses of top management to the descriptions of the production lines on which cars are built, Comeback is an intricate, insightful, irresistible, behind-the-scenes account of America in the eighties and nineties - a story that goes to the very heart of the American spirit."--Jacket.