In 1992, General Motors, the largest automobile company in the world, came to China to break into the car market. At the time, the number of cars sold in China was miniscule―less than the total sold in the U.S. state of Michigan. However, GM knew that the sales potential on the Chinese Mainland was vast and so, like Volkswagen, Citroën, Chrysler and Peugeot, it formed a joint venture with a Chinese firm, confident that its vast experience and technological know-how would guarantee success in the Middle Kingdom’s nascent automotive industry. The results were disastrous.

GM built a plant to assemble pickup trucks, believing hordes of farmers and blue-collar workers would snap them up, as their counterparts did in the States. Ultimately, fewer than 30 of the trucks were sold in the first two years of production―30 units from a US$132 million joint venture. Thus begins Michael J. Dunne’s account of GM’s fall and rise in the high-stakes mainland car market.

Dunne, an Asia-focused automotive expert with a background at GM, briskly catalogues the strategies, misconceptions and stumbles of the Detroit car giant, and its ultimate colossal success in China―it currently sells upwards of two million vehicles each year between its various ventures.

Dunne rarely gets bogged down with piston-headed car geekery. His focus is the GM executive culture and the way it initially clashed with then slowly adapted to the Chinese way of doing business. But neither is this a hard-nosed business book. It’s more “Wacky Racers” than textbook. Highlights include negotiations between Peter Badore, the ultra-competitive vice-president of Chrysler, and the Chinese board members from their Shanghai joint venture, in which Badore speaks for 16 hours straight just to bore the Chinese so much that they agree to the American’s price for car parts. Dunne, himself a Detroit native, celebrates incidents like this as ballsy American ingenuity, beating the Chinese at their own game. When the Chinese employ similar tactics to get the better of the Americans, he is less celebratory. Indeed, skewed perspective bogs down the book. When the Chinese move the goal posts, it’s a shameful breach of trust. When the Americans or even the German automakers fluff their way in and out of deals, lie, cheat and borrow each other’s ideas, Dunne sees it as all part of the cut and thrust of the big-bucks car game.

At other points, the narrative gets a bit wooly and repetitive. Whole chapters pass where nothing really happens. And when he runs out of things to say about China, he turns to the U.S. and outlines GM Detroit’s collapse and bailout by the Obama administration. Interesting material, but it sheds little light on the China experience.

Ultimately, there’s nothing particularly unusual about GM’s ride in China. The Westerners acted like Westerners, the Chinese like Chinese. Eventually they all figured it out and made a pile of money. To those not familiar with China, the car firm’s story is an interesting prism through which to explore the excitingly vast numbers of the Chinese marketplace and cultural barriers that surround it. But to us lot living here, it’s a familiar journey.

DETAILS

Title: American Wheels, Chinese Roads: The Story of General Motors in China

Author: Michael Dunne

Publisher: Wiley

Where: Garden Books or Amazon

How much: US$29.95