Carl F. Thelin

TELEPHONE CALL FROM WASHINGTON PIRG  

            One afternoon in my sunny office at CAL I got a telephone call where the operator said someone was calling from Washington, but it was a civilian, not one of the sponsors of our research. The caller introduced himself as Dr. Carl Nash, from PIRG – the Public Interest Research Group. That sounded interesting. After some small chit-chat he said, “Are you the man who used to work for the Product Analysis Group at Chevrolet?”

            Whoa! Not many people knew of that. “Yes. What of it?” “We think you were in charge of collecting and analyzing all the documents collected for use by the lawyers. Is that correct?” “Well, maybe. What has that got to do with me now, five years later?”

            “Mr. Thelin, it was suggested that you would recognize if our copies of those documents are genuine. We came into possession of a large set of Chevrolet legal papers. We do not know why someone gave them to us. Maybe they wanted to mislead us so we would make false announcements and be ridiculed. These papers seem to have some very important content. Would you look at some and tell us if you recognize them?”

            “Hey – why would I want to help you guys beat up on GM some more? No.” “Well then, Mr. Thelin, I guess we will have to identify you as one of the GM bad guys who withheld documents that you were legally required to turn them over to other lawyers. We will publicize our findings.”

            Wow! “Why not give a day to think about that. I don’t have so much loyalty to GM that we can’t get together. No way would I do it here at work. Call me here tomorrow, and we might set up a date.”

            Now, I knew that the PIRG was an organization set up by Ralph Nader, which cooperated with the Center for Auto Safety, who in turn supplied material to ATLA, the lawyers who sued GM. I telephoned Frank Allen, the legal staff lawyer that worked with me in answering the plaintiff’s requests for GM internal documents. He was at General Motors and still remembered me. He sounded friendly and did not shame me for leaving GM - then. He did later.

            “Frank – you got a problem. PIRG claims to have a bunch of our docs and wants to show them to me to verify if they are genuine. Did you give them all of those things?”

            “Carl – no – this is a surprise. Did they say what kind of stuff they had?”

            “Yes Frank, Nash rattled off some report numbers, and right away I recognized them as touchy ones. Sounds to me like I ought to agree to look at them and call you to verify what they have.”

            Two fellows came from Washington to my house on a week end with two bankers-boxes of papers. It did not take long to see that they had everything I had ever collected from the Proving Grounds and the Chevrolet Engineering Center. I had to stifle a gasp, because I recognized that these did NOT come out of those suit cases I made up for GM witnesses to use. Each front page had a rubber-stamped directory of names on the upper right corner. The names were a “circulation” list of the lawyers who worked on the 14^th floor of the GM headquarters. Yes, Product Analysis had provided a suit case with copies of everything to the Legal Staff so that they could become familiar with the tools to use with our designated witnesses.

            The PIRG people were glad that I verified the important papers as ones that were genuine, and which I did not recall surrendering to the opposition before. On Monday, I called Frank Allen. All I had to say was “Yes, Frank, they got it all and they got them from a mole on the 14^th floor, not from Product Analysis offices. You have a big problem there.”

            Things were peaceful for a while until I got another call from two other men working as investigators on the staff of a Senate sub-committee formed to look into the allegations by Ralph Nader (PIRG) that GM had violated legal laws by withholding (suppressing) documents that should have been produced by order of the judges in various lawsuits. Now I had to go through copies of the same papers again. Yes, these were genuine copies, and yes, GM did everything to make it difficult for other plaintiff’s lawyers to get them.

            Soon this was in the newspapers and on television. Congress held hearings. The DOT hired independent research firms to conduct tests to verify some of the claims about the Corvair. That was beside the point – just more government work. The issue at hand was no longer whether the Corvair was a danger to the buying public. After accumulating about 220 lawsuits against the Corvair GM gave up that hard-nosed no-settlement attitude and settled them all.

            The real issue for the Senate was the question of the ethics of not responding completely to the orders of the court. When it was all done, GM got a slap on the wrist. They were reprimanded, not because of the Corvair, but because of the GM legal staff’s attitude about withholding (covering up) secret documents. After all the publicity and money spent, they hardly punished GM for pushing procedures to the limit with such great enthusiasm. They fined no individual lawyer that I heard about. No one went to jail.

            Do you credit Ralph Nader and his people for killing the CorvairCorvairs had sleek sculptured sides. The handling, with a rear suspension similar to that of the Corvette and Jaguar, was excellent.

            What did kill the Corvair? The Ford Mustang did it. That iconic coupe was introduced as a 1964 ½ model just before the well-bred 1965 Corvair. The Chevrolet was cute and sporty, a unique model powered with an air cooled six cylinder engine and an available turbocharger. Many car fans knew that the Mustang was just a fancy version of the Ford Falcon economy car. The Mustang killed the Corvair because it had what counts: an available V-8 engine, a real heater, a trunk at the back where it belonged, and a three speed automatic transmission – much better than the awful two-speed Chevrolet Powerglide.  

NEXT: Fall out at CAL