I was looking at some history of the automotive CEOs and thought Roger Smith was bad, from meeting him personally and being an employee during his tenure as GMs CEO. But it seems I may have been wrong, but GM did have the most of the worst of all time Automotive CEOs.

History's 10 worst auto chiefs

http://money.cnn.com/galler...-ceos.fortune/2.html

1. Henry Ford
President, Ford Motor Co.
1903-1918, 1943-1945

brilliant inventor, Ford was a terrible CEO. He never believed in accountants, so he never knew how much his company was making -- or losing. Stubborn to a fault, he refused to make styling changes in the Model T as its sales wound down in the mid-'20s. When he finally agreed to introduce the Model A, he shut down production for 17 months to get ready.

2. K.T. Keller
President, Chrysler Corp.
1935-1950

A machinist by trade, Keller was a micromanager at heart. Chrysler's organization chart was said to resemble a wheel with Keller at the hub but no rim that allowed the spokes to communicate. Design took the biggest hit. Because he insisted on high-roofed cars that allowed people to wear their hats inside, Keller consigned the automaker to several decades of unfashionable, though functional, autos. As late as 1949, he ordered that one-and-a-half inches be added to the height of all Chrysler vehicles.

3. Fred Donner
CEO, General Motors
1958-1967

GM's most influential bean-counter ran the company from its old New York City offices on Columbus Circle, and in his unwillingness to get his hands dirty, Donner redirected the automaker from product engineering to financial engineering. "A car is a whole series of engineering compromises," he once said. "You can't have everything." Donner's "compromises" are blamed for the failure of the rear-engined Corvair. The accountants he promoted would terrorize GM with their financial fly-specking for another generation

4. John Z. DeLorean
CEO, DeLorean Motor Co.
1975-1982

After raising $200 million to build his gull-winged, stainless-steel-bodied sports car, DeLorean opened a factory in Northern Ireland where he discovered that raising money was easier than actually building cars. Cost overruns and slow sales sent DeLorean looking for more capital, which in turn made him the subject of an FBI sting operation. In 1982, he was charged with conspiring to smuggle $24 million worth of cocaine into the U.S. While he was eventually acquitted, his company collapsed, and DeLorean's car is best-known today for its role in the Back to the Future movies.

5. Roger Smith
CEO, General Motors
1981-1990

When Smith took over, GM's U.S. market share was 46%. It was 35% when he left. In the process, he wasted billions trying to revive the sagging giant through diversification (EDS and Hughes), automation (robotized factories), reorganization (two superdivisions B-O-C and C-P-C), commonization (GM-10 cars) and experimentation (Saturn). Smith's legacy was a fleet of low-quality, lookalike autos, an unqualified successor, and a mountain of debt that pushed the company close to bankruptcy in 1992

A little more info about Rogers incompetence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...er_Smith_(executive)

6. Bob Stempel
CEO, General Motors
1990-1992

Stempel was the loyal soldier who couldn't bring himself to undo Smith's mistakes until a deep recession pushed GM close to the financial brink. When he finally produced a restructuring plan, Stempel dithered on actually executing it. In the process, he lost the confidence of the board of directors, who pushed him and his leadership team out in an historic coup. It would be another 17 years before GM resized itself and got its costs under control with the help of the federal government.

8. Jürgen Schrempp
Chairman, Daimler Benz
1995-1998

Co-chairman, DaimlerChrysler
1998-2000

Chairman, DaimlerChrysler
2000-2005

The ultimate big thinker, Schrempp was building a global empire when he bought Chrysler for $38 billion in 1998. Always better at concocting grand schemes than actually executing them, he failed to get his American and German employees to effectively work together. Chrysler continued its history of boom-and-bust cycles after German managers took over, and after one bust too many, Schrempp suddenly resigned his chairmanship with his world-enveloping strategy in tatters

9. Jac Nasser
CEO, Ford Motor Co.
1999-2001

Determined to shake up Ford, Nasser tried to remake the automaker in the image of General Electric, redefining it as a consumer products company and investing billions in new brands like Volvo and Land Rover, dealerships, and junkyards. At the same time, he installed draconian and wildly unpopular employee-rating systems to reduce headcount and improve productivity. Unluckily for Nasser, he made his big moves on the eve of a deep recession and made the mistake of forgetting whose name was on the building. Ford would spend nearly a decade unwinding the residue from his acquisition spree

10. Henrik Fisker
CEO, Fisker Automotive
2009-2012

Like many entrepreneurs before him, car designer Fisker had big plans for the company he co-founded, and he dreamed of producing 100,000 cars a year. But styling a beautiful car was the easy part of the job, and Fisker Automotive was derailed by technical problems with its plug-in hybrid drive system and the bankruptcy of a key battery supplier. No cars have been built for weeks now, and the money is running out. Fisker turned the CEO job over to a production expert in 2012 and left the company entirely this March over strategic differences as his successors frantically searched for additional financing from overseas sources.

Now before anyone says anything I didn't make the list, CNN Money did, link above.

if it was me I would have made a few changes to the list and added as well as removed some.
Now the reason I started this thread to show reasons for GMs demise was executive incompetence more than any other reason, sure there were others but that was the biggest. executive incompetence by the top men who were supposed to be making a company better.

Steve

------------------
Technology is great when it works,
and one big pain in the ass when it doesn't



Detroit iron rules all the rest are just toys.

Everyone who doesn't know the history of the DeLorean Motor Company is quick to condemn it. John DeLorean sought investors through all the usual AND legal means. When someone makes you 'an offer you can't refuse' to tend not to refuse it. And when the would-be mobsters turn out to be the FBI, the court case quickly turns into a joke. Like they say, when you're accused, it's on the front page. When you're acquitted, it's on page 14.

The biggest reason DeLorean failed was Margaret Thatcher. Instead of paying the money owed to DMC, she simply refused to release funds and put the company into receivership. The Thatcher government actively ruined any and all efforts to save the company, and ANY company partially funded by the previous administration in an effort to discredit them. Manufacturing in the UK and especially jobs suffered immensely under her rule. I was thrilled the day that ***** died.

Anyone in charge of GM since the mid 70's should be at the top of that list. Anyone who spent any amount of time twiddling their thumbs on the 14th floor, focusing on capital instead of product, is responsible for Old GM's demise.

No mention of Malcolm Bricklin? Now there's an incompetent thief who ran several good ideas into the ground, and introduced the Yugo upon an unsuspecting populace. Or the people in charge of AMC? Preston Tucker, he was a great engineer, but TERRIBLE at running a company.

quote By Alex Taylor III, senior editor-at-large

Mr Taylor, I STRONGLY urge you to quit your day job. It's called 'research', look into it.

I said I would change some of those on my list, DeLorean was one I would have not had on there myself ether, GM hated that guy because he left and started his own company and I am sure that was one of the reasons no GM parts were in it. He was the one executive at GM who bucked the executive at GMs stereo type. had balls the size of a Bonneville .

Steve

[This message has been edited by 84fiero123 (edited 02-25-2014).]

quote Originally posted by 84fiero123: I said I would change some of those on my list, DeLorean was one I would have not had on there myself ether, GM hated that guy because he left and started his own company and I am sure that was one of the reasons no GM parts were in it. He was the one executive at GM who bucked the executive at GMs stereo type. had ball the size of a Bonneville . Steve

I would have replaced him in the list with Rick Wagoner, making it 4 GM CEOs on the list of worst auto chiefs in history. making it a clean sweep of worst CEOs in history at GM having numbers 3,4,5.
He axed the EV1, among other mistakes he made not only as CEO but also as CFO before he became CEO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...goner#General_Motors

So even without my changing the number of CEOs GM had as heads 3 were the worst in auto history,


Steve

[This message has been edited by 84fiero123 (edited 02-25-2014).]

You read a book?

" Hello, Steve? Yeah, we were wondering done here at the engineers office when you could come in and get your ID card. Yeah, we figured you are as smart as anyone here, and since you worked with your hands you can show us how to put the toilet paper on the roller. "

Not sure I would agree with all of these.

I would give Henry Ford a pass as it is hard to argue the success of the company in it's formative years, even if he didn't believe in accountants. What he did was better than the accountants who have run GM for decades.

Fisker may not make my list either. A new startup that failed hardly makes for an epic CEO failure.

Either or both could go away to make room for a couple doozies.

Rick Waggoner of GM, who even in the middle of asking for handouts from taxpayers in 2008, was refusing to really restructure his company for success. After flying to congress on a corporate jet, he basically had to ask for money for a company he steered into the ground, arguing that it was just "cicrumstances" and when sales go back up, GM would be "fine." Must have been good cool aid he was drinking in the Ren Center.

I would also stick Robert Eaton in that crew. After Lee Iococca managed to pull Chrysler out of the scrap heap (albeit with government handouts), Eaton then executed the "merger of equals" which led Chrysler first to Daimler ownership and control, then being pushed off onto Cerebus capital which ran it into the ground.

quote Originally posted by 84fiero123: On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors

Excellent book, and insight into what went on back then, and continued for decades until GM went bankrupt. It probably even still continues this way.

You can't point to one single thing and say 'THAT is what killed GM' but the 14th floor and the accountants were at least half to blame.