General Motors Building

Date: 1981
Place: 5th and Central Park South
Modus operandi: Walking about
Weather: Lovely
Time: 11 am
Gear: Leica M3, 35mm Summaron
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Dazed and Confused
My age: 30

Say what you may of Detroit steel, few would dispute the assertion that the last time a Detroit product had class was made about, oh, 1949. That’s the problem with Detroit and with GM in particular – their products have no class. Conjur up the image of a Corvette owner and you have Bubba himself, belly obscuring his toes from view, with a can of Budweiser in one hand, a Big Mac in the other. And it’s not just price. Take any small, inexpensive charmer from Renault, Peugeot, Citroen or Fiat and you have something fun and appealing. And as for class, well that only grows in Maranello and comes in red.

Now all of this is hardly news, for I would have written much the same in 1980 when I snapped this picture. (And I had been adulating Ferraris for many years already. A British tifoso). GM had just managed to completely beffudle its Buick, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and, yes, Cadillac loyalists by making all of the sedans look alike. So your $40k Caddy looked like Bubba’s Chevy Impala. So while the leech-like unions can claim a fair share of the credit (debit?) for destroying GM, management must be first in line for that prize. Rarely in post-industrial history has so great a business, the absolute franchise of its time, been so thoroughly destroyed by pencil pushers who don’t know a crankshaft from a rear seat.

In 1981 GM was having one of its perennial losing years so this picture was no longer possible a year later. GM had left by then. You see, in 1981 GM still occupied the ground floor concourse of the GM building in New York where it displayed its wares. It was the work of a moment to see GM’s vulgar display window was reflecting one of the architectural gems of Manhattan, the Plaza Hotel. Shame that it is now owned by a latter day vulgarian, Donald Trump. A Corvette man at heart if ever I saw one.

Today the GM’s concourse is occupied by a giant cube with an Apple on it. Say what you may, at least that business brought class back to the GM building.