When cars were America's idols

If you were to walk up to a typical New York executive in the 1960s -- think Don Draper in AMC's "Mad Men" -- and tell him that General Motors Corp. would be in bankruptcy by 2009, he would have thought you were delusional, or perhaps a Communist. GM was more than just the world's largest and most admired corporation; it was the final vindication of the American Way, the perfected and even divinely inspired example of democratic capitalism that stood opposed to the airless atheism and nullity of the Soviet system.

Or imagine that you were somehow able to drag Nikita Khrushchev from the United Nations podium into the street to confront -- no, behold -- a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Nearly 19 feet long from its Jayne Mansfield-like bumpers to its rocket-like tail lamps, a lyric in steel and mirrored chrome, as bright and beautiful as a ripe plum is sweet, and yet just ever so slightly obscene. Khrushchev would have dropped his shoe.

Surely a company, a country, that could produce such an object would last forever.

At the height of its power, GM represented 10% of the national economy. It controlled more than 50% of the light-vehicle market. Its products, research and management methodologies were the standard of the world. Along the way, GM had, rather accidentally, invented American consumerism. Longtime Chairman Alfred Sloan's program of "planned obsolescence" -- making annual, often minor changes in the products in such a way as to make last year's model hopelessly unfashionable -- put Americans on the acquisitive treadmill they are panting on yet today.

Another of Sloan's big ideas was the "Ladder of Success," whereby the company's brands -- Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac -- corresponded to ascending social status. The Ladder of Success was, in fact, an automotive caste system, a program of class stratification. Armed with the power of modern scientific marketing and advertising, GM was able to weld an existential link between who we are and what we drive.

A society obsessed with mobility had found its muse. Chollos and homeboys cherished that '62 Impala. Redneck country boys had to have that 400-cubic-inch Trans Am. Texas moms loved their blot-out-the-sun Suburban. Playas rode up on Escalades and Hummers with 22-inch wheels. The diversity of GM's product offerings became a lens through which to diffract American life, which is another way to say GM traded in automotive identity politics.