At first the VP for Engineering just requested to see the cold start report. Spreitzer stonewalled. There was no such report.
Next the VP for Engineering told the VP for Research that he knew the report existed. Spreitzer’s story changed. There was a report, but it was in rough draft form and needed a lot of editing and verifying. It had technical flaws. It was embarrassing. It could not be released.
Then things seemingly stalled for a while. Nobody asked Tobin or me to do anything with respect to the report because there was nothing to do. The report was written, checked, edited, and ready for printing.
Eventually, the VP for Research weighed in. Spreitzer must deliver the report in whatever form it existed to Engineering Staff.
Soon events sped up. Engineering Staff insisted the report be immediately printed in blue cover format and circulated throughout GM. And Engineering Staff insisted the report be immediately released for public consumption. That months-long approval process I alluded to earlier would be compressed to just three days, an unheard-of timeline.
The cold start study would solve a big problem for GM completely unanticipated by Tobin and me. Forget all those wonderful things the cold start study would do for the world. GM needed to get Congress off its back for perceived issues with the EPA fuel economy tests. The federal government was hearing complaints from customers saying they could not get the fuel economies posted on those window stickers. Who was at fault, GM or the tests? The EPA tests were conducted with fully warmed cars on a dynamometer. Because the tires contacted rotating drums, rather than flat pavement, those tires were over-inflated. Our roughly 15% explained the discrepancy.
Tobin and I published the results in a minor SAE journal. We would have loved to have published the results more prominently, but the highly compressed timetable did not permit it. We refocused our attention on survival.
Spreitzer’s fragile situation became even more fragile. When given the opportunity to show GM how relevant his department could be, he instead buried his most relevant research and demonstrated pettiness and grudges. We could not speak to one another until the day I walked out the door.
Although my prospects at GM should have been bright, they couldn’t have been much worse.
Alan Horowitz, Whitefish Bay, October 13, 2019.