On March 29, 2009 President Obama fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner. 

Roger Smith and Rick Wagoner's failures are titanic in market share, money, jobs, customers, workers and residents of GM's factory towns. 

A little over fifty years ago (1959) Detroit's auto industry was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the industrialized manufacturing world. Sitting atop a throne and heralded as one of America's greatest crown jewels of business success Detroit was, at the time, starting to be proclaimed in the media as "the design capital of the U.S.A." wrote Jane Fiske Mitarachi (now Jane Thompson) the editor of Industrial Design magazine in 1955. And yes, General Motors was shoulders above the rest of the auto makers as the sole leader of an Automotive Design Arts and/or Styling Renaissance Movement. Not surprisingly, GM was the epitome of business success and way out in front when it came to Design & Manufacturing. Now, half a century later in 2008, America's auto capital -- Detroit -- is perceived by the media and general audience as the laughing stock of the global automotive economy. It's time for a change. 

In 1980, GM still had a auto design manufacturing monopoly owning 46 percent of the U.S. vehicle market. By the time Roger Smith took over a year later as GM's CEO, the slide had started. And, unbeknownst to Smith at the time, it would continue to slide, dropping to 35.1 percent by the time Smith retired in the summer of 1990.

GM CEO Wagoner did a number on Detroit, too, for his collateral damage contributed towards making the national media put a countrywide "national disgrace" label around Detroit's neck moving forward. Naturally, that's very harmful and another reason leaders in Detroit's auto world today should make significant strides towards changing their reputation.

This Collier's magazine commentary explains exactly where GM was around 50 years ago.