Outsiders: The Auto Task Force Takes on Detroit Culture

(MoneyWatch)  Steven Rattner makes a virtue out of necessity. Let's face it, the uncrowned king of President Barack Obama's automotive task force is not an expert on the auto industry. If a tire went flat on his '08 Lexus LS 460 (he also owns an '07 Audi S4 convertible, an '06 Mercedes-Benz R350 SUV and an '05 Lincoln Town Car) he'd undoubtedly call Triple-A. Those "foreign cars" are a red flag to the Detroit News, but the important thing is, can this guy fix Detroit?

Rattner is a former New York Times journalist turned investment banker and Democratic fundraiser. He is the rare reporter who decisively turned his back on newsrooms in the early '80s and never looked back, but he stayed with what he knows as a specialist in media. According to the Times, which wrote an admiring profile of Rattner April 6, he has amassed a "personal fortune," and his Quadrangle Capital investment firm has launched two successful private equity funds.

It was Rattner who personally told GM CEO Rick Wagoner that he was being ousted at a private Treasury Department meeting. Rattner and his colleagues are not giving a heave-ho to Chrysler CEO Robert Nardelli, however. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Unlike Mr. Wagoner, who had been at the helm of GM since 2000, Mr. Nardelli is considered an auto-industry outsider who has only been in charge at Chrysler since the company was acquired by Cerebus Capital Management LP n 2007."

So there it is. Wagoner had a lot of support in Detroit, and specifically on GM's board, because he was seen as "one of us," an insider who'd spent his whole career at the company. But to Rattner and the other outsiders, this is no virtue--it's what reinforced GM's entrenched culture and made it resistant to change.

With Wagoner--and much of the old-guard GM board--ousted, the company can apply some fresh thinking. And it's looking increasingly like that fresh thinking will include a surgical bankruptcy. "If it's required, that's what we'll do," said GM CEO Frederick "Fritz" Henderson (who took over March 29) in a TV interview last weekend.

Flickr photo/Esthr