AAH #812 - When U.S. Sales Fall to 8 Million A Year

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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John McElroy (0:24)

All right. Gary, we get to do another show.

SPEAKER_1 (0:27)

We do.

Gary Vasilash (0:28)

In fact, it feels like we already did the show. Before the show started.

John McElroy (0:33)

We've been talking so much before the camera started rolling. That's exactly right. We got to let everybody know we've got Chris Theodore with us. Let's see if I know Chris was at Ford. I know Chris was at Chrysler. I know that Chris was at American Motors. I think American Sunroof as well.

Chris Theodore (0:49)

American Sunroof as Cars and Concepts. I worked with DeLorean.

Gary Vasilash (0:57)

It's not because you couldn't keep a job, it's because you were good. So let's make this clear. Let's make this clear. Come on.

Chris Theodore (1:05)

I didn't want to be stuck designing one part of an automobile.

John McElroy (1:10)

But you got some good cars under your belt.

Chris Theodore (1:12)

Good cars and learn from a lot of people and a lot of different companies and different cultures and want to share that with what I was taught in over 50 years in the business.

John McElroy (1:26)

And we'll get into that, but we also got to let everybody know, we got Perry Stern back on the show again. So Perry, tell everybody where you're at.

Perry Stern (1:34)

Well, my site is autonxt.net and I've been doing this since the late 90s when I started at Microsoft, when they decided to start this thing called the Microsoft Network, otherwise known as MSN. And I've been writing about cars ever since.

Gary Vasilash (1:50)

Do you have an MSN account?

Perry Stern (1:52)

I don't anymore. But I did for a very long time.

John McElroy (1:57)

So Chris, let's talk about the book that you've written, all about learning from masters, the mentors in your career. And so you take it, just give us a thumbnail sketch.

Chris Theodore (2:11)

Well, I knew a lot of companies, knew, worked with or for over a dozen of Automotive Hall of Fame members.

They all taught me things. Thousands of engineers and others in the industry.

And you learn by working at different companies. You mentioned some of the companies, supplier companies. I've been on both ends, being in the OE and then being a supplier to the OEs. And I want to share what other people taught me because mentorship is something that has kind of died with all the COVID and the bankruptcies and everything else. And I see we've got talented people in the business, but they don't necessarily have the experience, the history and so on. So I would at least want to share the lessons that are stuck in my head. And I try and tell them copying a trick from one of my great mentors, Bob Lutz, telling stories. Now these aren't tell-all stories. These are stories that hopefully keep you, your attention and you'll, they're memorable about what the lesson is that you've learned. So we're trying to share and I guess the other important thing is there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in the industry know far, far more about any aspect of the business, any specific aspect of the business than I do. But very few get an opportunity to see and sample multiple companies share and understand best practices and mistakes. So I'm trying to download that just as a reference point. And I hope other people can take this and actually modify it, comment on it and take it into the future.

Because I think it's important. Mentorship is something that has kind of disappeared in the last 20, 30 years. It used to be you were trained. And as we were discussing earlier, I mean, when I got out of college and I was a car guy from like four years old, but when I got my first job and had to design my first part, I had the fundamentals from engineering school, but I was shaken to design that first part. And I had people along the way that started to teach you the different things that are really important. And it's not there now.

Gary Vasilash (4:42)

So Chris, we need to make it clear that your background is in engineering. You're not a business guy, per se. You're not somebody who's going to be like running corporations as a businessman. You were in the trenches, you were working, you were designing parts, you were leading teams that were making things.