Tom Stallkamp, a former president of Chrysler Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG, has a warning for Detroit and its Japanese and European rivals as they begin to emerge from the crisis that affected all auto makers but sent two U.S. companies into chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.
The Detroit auto makers chased each other's tails like dogs in a backyard for decades while a wolf in the form of Japanese auto makers sat ready to pounce, Mr. Stallkamp says.
Now, "it's Detroit, Germany and Tokyo and I worry those three dogs are not watching the wolf outside, which is China and India," he told an industry conference in Detroit.
In a presentation entitled, Thirty Years Later: Forgotten Lessons From Chrysler, he pointed to Detroit's isolated and insulated culture as a key reason for Chrysler and General Motors Corp., collapsing into bankruptcy protection.
But that's not all.
"We have perfected the art of adversarial relationships. We pissed off everybody we dealt with," he said.
Chrysler, GM and Ford Motor Co. have learned some lessons, he noted, including the need to collaborate with their suppliers and change the culture.
They may not have enough time, however, to repair themselves completely before "formidable competitors" from India and China arrive. A full-fledged assault on North America by auto makers from those countries is expected later in the decade.
Mr. Stallkamp is now industrial partner at Ripplewood Holdings LLC, an investment firm that lost out in the bidding for GM's Adam Opel GmbH division to Magna International Inc., before GM changed its mind and decided to hand on to Opel itself.
He started in the business with Ford in 1972 and was president of Chrysler when it merged with Daimler-Benz AG in 1999 to form DaimlerChrysler AG, which was touted by then-Daimler chairman Juergen Schrempp as an automotive marriage made in heaven.
It was anything but, Mr. Stallkamp said, describing the deal as in reality an acquisition of Chrysler by Daimler and a clash of cultures that was never resolved.
The marriage ended in divorce in 2007 when Daimler effectively paid private equity firm Cerberus Capital to take Chrysler off its hands.
By then, Mr. Stallkamp was long gone, having departed in 2000, followed soon after by other members of the so-called Dream Team that made Chrysler one of the most profitable global auto makers in the 1990s. One of his key contributions was establishing a collaborative relationship with suppliers that allowed parts makers to keep some of the money they helped Chrysler save with cost reduction efforts. That system was scrapped after the Daimler merger.
One of Detroit's failings is that it hasn't looked to other industries and adopted their best practices, he noted.
He pointed to Dell Corp. and Federal Express as two companies that could provide lessons for auto makers.
The Detroit companies also need to expand their geographic horizons, he said, including the new Chrysler, which is now under management control of Italian auto maker Fiat SpA.
"That's one of my worries about Chrysler and Fiat," he said. "It's still dominated by North America and southern Europe."