Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.: My Years With General Motors

I have undertaken in this book to give an account of the progress of General Motors. There is much to say about the world’s largest private industrial enterprise. Its history covers the present century and many parts of the earth, wherever there is a road to travel. It involves a good deal of the modern development of the engineering arts. Tangibly, the corporation is represented in the market by Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC Truck & Coach, jointly the producers of about half the passenger cars and trucks manufactured in the United States and Canada today. Our overseas operations—Vauxhall in England, Adam Opel in Germany, General Motors-Holden’s in Australia, and our manufacturing plants in Argentina and Brazil—produced in 1962 about one tenth of the passenger cars and trucks made outside the United States and Canada in the free world. The corporation also produces a substantial quantity of the world’s locomotives, diesel and gas-turbine engines, and household appliances. Since General Motors is mainly a producer of automotive products—about 90 per cent of current civilian business—I have stayed for the most part in that area. I have, however, given separate chapters to the nonautomotive area and to General Motors’ role in war and defense.