I just got around to listening to this today and thought some of you might enjoy it. The interviews by former GM employees (tales of engines put in backwards, bolts not tightened, wrong model front ends put on cars and generally dysfunctional attitudes all around) are pretty enlightening to just how crappy the American auto industry was...

Here's the description, as provided:

A car plant in Fremont California that might have saved the U.S. car industry. In 1984, General Motors and Toyota opened NUMMI as a joint venture. Toyota showed GM the secrets of its production system: how it made cars of much higher quality and much lower cost than GM achieved. Frank Langfitt explains why GM didn't learn the lessons – until it was too late.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

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