Ed Whitacre never minced words.
That hasn't changed in retirement.
His latest comments about General Motors are a sobering reminder of just how screwed up the world's largest automaker was during its brief bankruptcy and the short period of time afterward when Whitacre ran the company.
The September issue of Car and Driver features an interview with Whitacre about his tenure as GM's chairman and CEO. In it, he makes it clear some of the automaker's executives never learned to change, even after the company landed in bankruptcy court.
Car and Driver asked: "One of your mantras at GM was, 'Management is 100 percent responsible.' In the end, did they ever get it?"
Whitacre: "A lot never did. They'd say, 'We didn't do anything wrong. It's the economy.' Boy I didn't have time to linger with that kind of attitude. They had no flexibility. They'd been in the GM environment too long."