Spreitzer was visibly shaken. He had called the whole department into the conference room to tell us that management was terribly displeased with the department, and it needed a whole new mission. All projects must cease immediately, regardless of how close to completion.
The cold start project was completed, though. The blue cover report was ready to be printed. The report could have been distributed, literally, the next day.
Morale hit an even lower low. Months of dedicated work by talented researchers across our department were being trashed. Personally, I was doing some boring short-term assigned projects, and none of them held any career value for me, so I was fine with the announcement. Anyway, I had been pushing for projects more relevant to GM’s products for over a year, and any new direction of the department would likely align with my interests.
Later that day Tobin and I went to Rothery to ask about the disposition of the cold start report. Later, Rothery got back to us, saying Spreitzer didn’t want the report printed. We were stunned.
The report’s final number was actually a range: 13% to 17% of all automobile fuel consumption. Most of this approximately 15% was technically recoverable. That’s a lot of barrels of wasted imported oil in the middle of an energy crisis. We desperately needed to publish these numbers.
Tobin and I decided to go directly to Spreitzer. We expected him to want to delay the report until he could get his reorganization plan underway, but we were not expecting him to say, “burn the report and all your drafts,” which he did say. Our reaction was that this was insane, and that Spreitzer was reacting out of malice rather than self interest. We naively thought we could convince him with reason and logic.
After carefully planning our arguments we went back to Spreitzer. He heard none of what we had to say. He told us the report was technically flawed, per some information relayed to him from Leonard Evans. He told us the concept was of no interest to GM, and if it was of interest it would have already been done, probably better a long time ago.
Today, Leonard Evans is a well-known and highly controversial figure in automobile safety studies. Back then he worked in a neighboring department in GM, Traffic Science, recently merged into ours. He knew Rothery well. Evans had a theory of cold-start fuel consumption he would share with anyone. That his theory did not seem to agree at all with Engineering Staff’s well-regarded work on the subject did not discourage him.
Running for cover, Rothery disavowed any knowledge of the origins of the cold-start study.
We all were aware of Tobin’s and my appeal options. An appeal up the chain of command would likely fail, since Spreitzer’s boss was a career naval officer, not a transportation expert; getting his support would be almost impossible. However, Spreitzer’s status in GM was tenuous, so Spreitzer might be motivated to head off any appeal we might want to make.
I went back to Spreitzer with a proposal. Let me talk to people within GM but outside of the Research Labs to see if (a) the research is novel and (b) there is any interest in it. I told him I would drop the matter if there was little interest. Spreitzer agreed. He was convinced I would return humiliated, and his problem would be solved. I did not bother to clear my contacts with Spreitzer, as would normally be done. I was putting all my eggs in this one frayed basket. I was running full steam on emotion and adrenaline. Fear and righteousness were my constant companions. The situation had gotten totally out of hand, and I was giving no thought to where any of this would lead. If I lost the battle my future at GM would be over; if I won the battle my future at GM would be terrible, anyway.
After two days I had my list of appointments, and then I set off on my trek to meet with the dozen or so people, each of whom dealt with a different component of a car.
I never reached the end of my list.
Alan Horowitz, Whitefish Bay, October 13, 2019.