Book Review - Car: A Drama of the American Workplace

Today's guest blogger/reviewer is Simon Hunsinger, also from Ms. Carr's first year English 9/10 class. This book sounds like a great choice for both youth and adults - I think my husband the engineer would really like it!


Car: A Drama of the American Workplace, a 346-page work by Mary Walton, follows the team at Ford Motor Company tasked with engineering the 1996 Ford Taurus. Walton, a former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, followed the team’s engineers over a period of five years as they worked long hours in a damp basement, and the result is a deeply personal account of the people behind the making of a car.

The protagonist of Car is the Taurus team’s director, Dick Landgraff, a bad-tempered, dictatorial man who is completely dedicated to beating the Taurus’ Japanese competitors at Honda and Toyota. Landgraff runs the Taurus team with the ferocity of an Army sergeant. When he learns that the engineers from climate control had made their knobs a few dollars over budget, Landgraff shows no mercy.

“What’s the absolute cost of these teeny tiny knobs?” The knobs, he was told, accounted for $3. They were high-quality polycarbonate. “Who says we have to have polycarbonate?" he demanded. “How many warranty costs are we saving with polycarbonate?”…Of course they didn’t know. Landgraff knew they wouldn’t know. (Walton 138)

Walton describes with exquisite detail the conflicts between the engineers as they struggle over every aspect of their project, from headlights that weren’t bright enough to stopping the door moldings from falling apart. The incompetence of the engineers injects Dilbert-like humor into the tense mood, and the plot roars into a heated climax as the Taurus team rushes to complete their car as their deadlines loom ever closer.

Walton has made an otherwise dull business book into a fast-paced, wildly entertaining drama. Throughout the book, the reader can’t help but root for the Taurus engineers, flawed as they may be, as they struggle to deliver a competitive product. Car manages to be at once thrilling, very informative, and genuinely funny, a tough feat to pull off in journalism.