On Fri, 7 Dec 2007 12:56:37 -0800 (PST), "David E. Powell"
wrote:

The irony about "Roger and Me" was Michael Moore eventually got to sit
down with Roger and talk. snip

The operative word in that sentence being "eventually."

However he felt that this wouldn't work with
the movie so he left that part out of it. snip

Smith finally broke down and agreed to a sit-down with Moore AFTER
filming was wrapped and the picture was already through post
production. He had his chance, but decided to do a Jack Welch and
stonewall. He got what he deserved. The wreckage that is GM now is
mostly due to bad decisions he made, continued as they were by Stempel
and Wagoner.

Smith's two biggest boners: shedding the "Sloan model" and making GM
just another bean-counter-run money grubbing American corporation. All
of the inventiveness, creativity and drive to excel that marked GM's
rise to #1 all during the Sloan era was gone. The second was Saturn,
which COULD have been a good thing, but wound up just being part of
Smith's failed "southern strategy" to move all GM manufacturing out of
Michigan, the Midwest and California and into backward southern
states, which are reliably anti-labor and whose desperate state and
local governments were forking over billions in tax breaks.

Saturn's designs were mediocre at best (the plastic skin idea was
robbed from Pontiac, everything else was also-ran GM designs not used
by the other "divisions") and, although quality of assembly was higher
than other GM products, it still couldn't match that of the Japanese
competitors. The whole "no-hassle dealer" idea turned out to just be
yet another GM advertising gimmick. Lee Iacocca even questions the
wisdom of hanging onto Smith's failed idea, as he also questions the
validity of Ford's Mercury line, which now is just a "dress-up" option
for the Ford line.

Ford, however, is coming out with some pretty darned good new
products, while GM's got their design transmission stuck in permanent
reverse. The real sleeper was the 500, which got a Fusion grill and
was rebadged back to Taurus...a VERY nice car. Chrysler, now a toy
for private equity hacks to play with, will probably tank soon due to
mismanagement, since La Sorda probably won't put up with the new
owners for very long if they don't behave. Remember, it was Ford's
going public and AWAY from total Ford family control in 1956 that
saved the company, even if drunkard King Henry II didn't necessarily
see it that way. The reverse could be very true of Cerberus' grabbing
of Chrysler. Lack of oversight and accountability always breeds bad
management, no matter what the industry.