How Just One Mistake Destroyed America's Car Industry

For most of the nineteen fifties, if you bought a new car almost anywhere on earth, the odds were better than even it rolled off a production line in Detroit, Flint or Dearborn. At its peak, the American car is the most wanted machine on the planet. Big V-eights. An acre of chrome. The whole world saving up for the badge. Americans build them faster than anyone alive, and from London to Sydney, everybody wants one. But fast forward to today, and it's gone. Ford doesn't sell a single traditional sedan in North America. General Motors has effectively fled Europe completely. The country that put the world on wheels barely builds an ordinary car anymore. Now, there's a simple version of this story — the Japanese, the oil shocks, the crash of two thousand and eight. But the truth is stranger, and far more damning. Because Detroit wasn't beaten. It made one decision — one that looked, at the time, like pure genius — and it never recovered.