Ex-GM head and subject of 'Roger and Me' dies at 82

Roger Smith, the former General Motors chairman and chief executive who was vilified as a poster-boy for American capitalism …

Roger Smith, the former General Motors chairman and chief executive who was vilified as a poster-boy for American capitalism in Michael Moore's documentary Roger and Me, died last Thursday in Detroit at the age of 82.

GM's current chief executive, Rick Wagoner, praised Smith on Friday as "a leader who knew that we have to accept change, understand change, and learn to make it work for us".

However, Smith's tenure at the helm of the world's biggest carmaker, from 1981 to 1990, was marked by controversy and mistakes. He was eventually ousted from the GM board.

Comeback, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Detroit motor industry, describes Smith's stewardship as "a reign of error of historic proportions", during which the carmaker squandered billions on misguided acquisitions and an inflated cost structure. Despite booming sales, GM's North American operations barely broke even in the closing years of Smith's tenure. By the time his fellow directors turned on him in 1993, the book recalls, he "was isolated, discredited and clearly not wanted".

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Roger Smith was born in Columbus, Ohio. After two years in the US navy, he joined GM in 1949 as an accounting clerk. Prior to his appointment as chief executive, he headed the financial and public and government relations divisions. Smith's rapid ascent through the GM bureaucracy has been ascribed to his financial skills and tenacity. But he also had a reputation as an irascible and demanding workaholic. Shortly after taking the reins in 1981, he ordered widespread lay-offs and cancelled planned cost-of-living increases for white-collar workers. His own contribution was to give up $135 (€92) a month of his $475,000 (€321,831) a year salary.

Smith translated his fondness for technology into an ambitious business strategy. A 1983 mission statement promised to move GM forward on three main fronts: reorganisation, diversification and automation. A period of massive upheaval followed. He led GM beyond the automotive industry for the first time by acquiring Texas-based Electronic Data Systems (EDS), a data-processing company, in 1984, followed a year later by Hughes Aircraft, a leading defence contractor.

GM also spent heavily on automating its assembly plants. It sought to sidestep the growing threat from Japanese carmakers by creating the semi-autonomous Saturn brand, described by Smith as "a different kind of company, a different kind of car".

These initiatives bore little fruit. Even before Smith stepped down, he oversaw the sale of EDS and a massive writedown on Hughes Aircraft. Saturn was eventually absorbed into the mainstream GM organisation.

Roger and Me gave the public a devastating insight into Smith's shortcomings. Towards the end of the film, Smith is pictured calling for generosity during the festive season, even as families hit by job cuts in Flint, Michigan, are being evicted from their homes.