General Motors was Republican, not Eastern sophisticated Republican but heartland conservative Republican—insular, suspicious of anything different. Zora Arkus-Duntov, a top GM designer and an émigré, once complained to a friend of the insularity of the culture and noted that the problem in the company was that it was run in every department by men “who believe that the world is bordered on the East by Lake Huron, and on the West by Lake Michigan.”
