Roger Smith was the prime example of an 80s era business man. He had no quams about laying off workers and closing plants, went on a buying spree to diversify the company, and parachuted with fat lined pockets just before everything fell apart.

Smith wasn't really evil. He moved GM to the forefront of automated assembly, bought into the defense related industry when it was an expanding field, created and funded a new car division that rivaled Toyota 7 Honda at the time, and was the deciding person in killing off the FWD Camaro & Firebird at the 11th hour.

But it was HIS policies and leadership that made GM come close to bankrupcy (far closer than today), that left GM with next to NO cash on hand (compared with something like 20 billion in the bank today), and left one of the very few automobile engineers ever to make it to CEO of an auto company, Robert Stempel, to take the heat and last in the job a mere 12 months.

Despite what Buickman says (as if the guy has any credibility left), it was recovering from the Smith era that product programs (including the revised "W" cars and the C5 Corvette and many other programs) were shelved till the late 90s as GM scrambled for cash....... no, it wasn't some guy over in North America or finance named Rick Wagoner.

This also created the stage that enticed GM's board of directors to try a different approach in management, and pull in people who had extensive experience in "marketing" outside the auto industry (the "Proctor & Gamble" guys), and have them run things.

These guys looked at the profit margins of trucks. Just as in the soap & disposable goods business, they moved resources to the big profit makers, & moved them out of the low profit vehicles. The result? Non competitive cars that sent people to other brands, and GM caught with their pants down when fuel prices spike and truck sales drop...... again, not Rick Wagoner as a certain guy says.

Smith made GM broke, and it's still feeling the effects (admittedly indirectly) today.