TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102990/1029207.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.5 KB | 76 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 77

The New Boss: A "Car Guy"



    Since entrepreneur and stock-market speculator Billy Durant
first cobbled together a venture he called General Motors in
1908, the company has always been ruled by finance men, numbers
wizards and balance-sheet fixers. No one was a better example
of this than Roger Smith, a diffident financial virtuoso who
led the company during the 1980s. But when Smith retired last
July after a decade in which GM lost one-fourth of its U.S.
market share, mostly because of weak products, GM's board made
history by promoting an engineer to the chairman's job.

    The fix-it man is Robert Stempel, 57, a 6-ft. 4-in. former
college-football tackle with a boombox voice and a down-home
manner. Until his ascension to GM president three years ago,
he was often seen driving a motorcycle near his home in the
sedate suburb of Bloomfield Hills, where he keeps a fleet of
old cars he likes to tinker with. His engineering feats have
become part of the company lore. In his early career he
designed the front-wheel-drive transmission on the 1966
Oldsmobile Toronado, and in the 1970s he was the leader in one
of GM's biggest breakthroughs: the catalytic converter, a
revolutionary antipollution device. Stempel has been groomed
well for the chairman's post, having served as head of several
divisions: Chevrolet, Pontiac, GM's Adam Opel subsidiary in
Europe and the Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac group. He has never
held a job in the finance department.

    Stempel's biggest challenge is to shake up a bureaucracy
that has stifled innovation. On that count he is amply
qualified. His communication skills have been recognized ever
since he was first sent on the road in 1966 to persuade
skittish dealers of the merits of the front-wheel-drive
Toronado. Later he helped defuse a bitter environmental fight
at a major new plant site. Associates say he has a photographic
memory for both faces and statistics. While Stempel was general
manager of Chevrolet in the early 1980s, he gave a detailed
presentation of 17 different vehicles, ranging from the
subcompact Chevette to medium-duty trucks -- all without
referring to notes. "It was an amazing performance," recalls
a senior engineer.

    The son of a New Jersey banker, Stempel worked summers as
a garage mechanic and won a collection of drag-racing trophies.
Later he graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, then
earned an M.B.A. from Michigan State in 1970. He still reads
car-buff magazines, and enjoys skiing and surf casting. Stempel
and his wife Pat have three children, two grown and one in
college. But Stempel is intensely private about his life
outside the company, a feeling that carries over from the
kidnapping of his son Timothy in 1975. (His son was rescued from
a car trunk, and the kidnappers were caught.)

    Stempel's elevation was greeted with cheers among GM workers
and dealers, who have wanted a product-oriented chief, a "car
guy," for a long time. They have also been heartened by
Stempel's declaration that he will run GM as a team leader
rather than an autocrat. He promises that the changes he makes
will be humane. "We are not going to take GM apart and put it
back together again," he said on the day he took over. But he
will have trouble resisting the urge to tinker with GM until
it roars like the racing machines he loves.


By S.C. Gwynne.