Autoextremist #582: Exploding the “Cloak of Corporate Invincibility”...

Autoextremist #582: Exploding the “Cloak of Corporate Invincibility”...

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Here an exterpt of AE's rant of the week Rants - Autoextremist.com ~ the bare-knuckled, unvarnished, high octane truth...


Quote:
Exploding the “Cloak of Corporate Invincibility” and other fun stuff.

By Peter M. De Lorenzo

(Posted 1/31, 1:00 p.m.) Detroit. Well, after last week’s column highly annoyed some people down at the Silver Silos – and opened the eyes of others internally who have been asleep at the wheel, as well as those in the media who should know better while allegedly “covering” this business – I believe a follow-up is due.

Not to overstate the obvious, but I’ve been writing columns like the one last week (it’s still resonating far and wide around this business and on Wall Street, by the way), since Day One of this publication. Before Autoextremist.com none of the Sturm und Drang that is common on the Internet about this business existed, period. It just wasn’t done.

Before AE a “tough” piece about the biz or one of the executive leaders in it was usually confined to pointing out the obvious problems associated with the business or of that particular company, and the executive being interviewed would have to respond accordingly. And if he was responsible for the issues being brought up, or if they had occurred under his watch, it was even tougher, at least for back then.

But going so far as to call an executive out for being less than savvy or an incompetent bumbler just wasn’t done, because the fact of the matter was that a “Cloak of Corporate Invincibility” existed back then, and everything was shrouded in its murky code and unspoken aura of “it’s just not done that way,” at least if said reporter/commentator wanted to keep his, or in rare instances, her job. Or, even worse, if said publication wanted to see another car ad or industry perk thrown its way.

As I’ve said repeatedly it was a different time and a different era, and stories and commentaries that we take for granted today simply didn’t exist.