Upon listening to the NUMMI podcast from NPR’s This American Life inspired me to look into this subject more deeply. I found a book on Amazon called “Rude Awakening” by Maryann Keller. This book though dated from 1989 gives a detailed history of GM’s involvement in the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California which recently shut it’s doors.
The book itself is an interesting look at General Motors up to the 1980’s. It does tend to concentrate in that era but, Keller does give a background of the company so as to give you an idea on how General Motor grew into the behemoth it was at the time. It is amazing how a company that was once the worlds largest automaker(recently Toyota took over that title) and had lost there edge.
Even though the book sort of has a hopeful tone for GM one has to wonder what happened in the twenty years since the book was publish seeing that they declared bankruptcy just last year. Apparently they didn’t learn there lessons fast enough.
Also the creation of Saturn is covered in depth here and how GM tried to re-create the lessons they learned from NUMMI. Sad to say the hype about Saturn was more remarkable than the automobiles they produced(except for the Saturn Sky roadster which I like very much.).
It would seem like there’s not much left of the company compared to the 1980’s. They had acquired EDS from Ross Perot, Hughes Aircraft, created Nummi was starting Saturn. EDS was spun off in 1996 and is now known as HP Enterprise service. Hughes companies were divided and eventually split off from GM. NUMMI as you know recently shut’s doors after GM pulled out after filing bankruptcy. Production of Saturn’s has halted and will cease to function as of October 2010.
If your interested in automotive history this book is a good read. It will give you insight in how General Motors ended up in bankruptcy just last year.
