Volume 18, Number 3 · February 24, 1972
Auto Didacts
By Emma Rothschild
The Road and the Car in American Life
by John B. Rae
MIT Press, 368 pp., $12.00
The Automobile Industry Since 1945
by Lawrence J. White
Harvard, 348 pp., $10.00
The American auto industry is at the moment notoriously paranoid about its public relations. Although it pays for nearly 10 percent of all national advertising, the industry feels that it is treated unfairly by journalists, academics, and consumer advocates. The new chairman of General Motors, Richard C. Gerstenberg, has described the 'developing crisis in communications' between the public and the business community, notably the automotive community. GM's retiring chairman, James M. Roche, often addressed himself to the same problem. In a valedictory interview with the Wall Street Journal he urged that Americans stop attacking the auto corporations and pay more attention to the positive aspects of their lives. A few months before, he had pronounced that 'American business, from the perspective of the world, is plainly in trouble.' 'When free enterprise needs support,' he complained, 'it finds itself the target of much irresponsible criticism that causes disunity in our society.'
Review, 2975 words
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