Car Czar Rattner's Memoir Opens Curtain on Auto Bailouts

WASHINGTON DC September 3, 2010; The NADA newsletter reported that the Obama administration vetoed attempts by General Motors to abandon its Detroit headquarters a new book by a former top auto adviser reveals.

The revelation comes in a 320-page memoir by Steven Rattner, who was President Barack Obama's auto adviser for six months last year, and helped shepherd the $85 billion government bailout and bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler.

"Overhaul: An Insider's Account of the Obama Administration's Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry" also discloses Rattner secretly forced out GM Chairman Kent Kresa in June 2009, and offered GM's top job to Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn.

In addition to board room politics, Rattner's book tells White House tales. The president, Rattner recalls, asked aloud why Detroit automakers were unable to replicate the success of the Japanese car companies. "Why can't they make a Corolla?" Obama asked in November 2008, shortly after winning the presidency.

Rattner acknowledged that Detroit's automakers weren't entirely to blame. "I would discover that the struggles of GM and Chrysler were as much a failure of management (ed.note DUH!) as a consequence of globalization, oil prices, and organized labor," he writes.

"The auto rescue remains one of the few actions taken by the administration that, at least in my opinion, can be pronounced an unambiguous success." .

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