通用有望迎来女掌门

    每到周五下午，通用汽车公司（GM）的一群高管和工程师们就会离开底特律市中心的总部，前往位于密歇根州密尔福德市的试车场，进行所谓的“节孔试驾”。这个活动是由通用汽车北美业务总裁马克·罗伊斯发起的，高管们会在新车研发的各个阶段对车辆和竞争对手的同级车型进行试测，给出评估。每次试驾都是新车的一道坎，如果在某一个阶段试驾失败了，新车研发就要推迟，直到这个环节得到改进，比如2012款雪佛兰科鲁兹就遇到过这样的经历，有时甚至可能因此直接把一款新车毙掉。比如通用曾想在美国销售2010款的雪佛兰奥兰多，但试驾人员们试驾了这款在韩国生产的MPV后，觉得这款车的手动档版本的内饰不够吸引人，因此把它的销售计划砍掉了。

    许多个试驾日里，在这支主要由男性构成的试驾员队伍中都能看到一位女性的倩影，她就是通用汽车公司最高层的管理者之一、负责全球产品研发的高级副总裁玛丽·芭拉。芭拉今年51岁，是一位公认的女强人。在底特律的大男子主义文化里，最需要男子气概的工作莫过于产品研发，也就是创造和设计新车型。因为它需要敢于拿数十亿美元冒险的勇气、能够领导数千名工程师的韧性、做几百个决策的胆量——另外还得敢驾驶汽车在测试道路上高速飞奔。它是汽车行业的终级挑战，有些最成功的产品研发人的名字至今仍然如雷贯耳，比如福特（Ford）的卢·沃拉迪，他凭1986版的福特金牛获得了成功；再比如克莱斯勒（Chrysler）的平台团队之父弗朗索斯·卡斯丹，1992年凯迪拉克的新车使用了车厢前移式设计，这也是他的手笔；还有曾年当过海军飞行员的鲍伯·卢茨，他一直都是个“纯爷们”，而且他在2000年以后为通用汽车的设计赋予了崭新的生命。

    因此，当2011年1月，通用董事长兼CEO丹·阿克森宣布，要让玛丽·芭拉接替一位拥有46年从业经验的工程师，负责公司的产品研发时，人们一定不免吃惊。因为芭拉相对来说知名度较低，而且她之前的工作还是人力资源。另外，芭拉过去的时间大半花在了装配厂，没有把多少时间花在试驾跑道上。因此她的产品研发经验非常有限，却要负责整个通用的全球产品研发。一夜之间，芭拉就成了通用公司有史以来任职最高的女子，同时也成了全球汽车业级别最高的女性。

    On Friday afternoons, a group of top GM (GM) executives and engineers leave headquarters in downtown Detroit and heads for GM's proving grounds in Milford, Mich. for "knothole drives." Originated by Mark Reuss, head of GM's North American operations, the drives allow the executives to test new vehicles -- along with their competitors -- in successive stages of development and offer an assessment. The drives act like gates. Failure at any stage can cause a delay while refinements are made, as in the case of the 2012 Chevrolet Cruze, or outright cancellation. Plans to sell the 2010 Chevrolet Orlando in the U.S. were scrubbed after testers determined that the interior design of the manual-transmission version of the Korean-made van was unappealing.

    Many Fridays, the largely male contingent includes a woman, Mary Barra, senior vice president for global product development and one of GM's highest-ranking executives. Barra, 51, is a certified glass-ceiling breaker. In Detroit's macho culture, no job more reeks of testosterone than product development -- creating and engineering new models. It requires the willingness to risk billions of dollars, the tenacity to direct thousands of engineers, and the guts to make hundreds of decisions -- some while driving at high speeds around a test track. It is the ultimate challenge for alpha-male car guys and the names of the most successful practitioners still resonate: Ford's Lew Veraldi, who championed the revolutionary 1986 Ford Taurus; Francois Castaing, the father of Chrysler's platform teams and the engineer of its 1992 cab-forward cars; and Bob Lutz, one-time Marine jet pilot and full-time über-male, who brought new life to GM design in the 2000s.

    So you could feel the reverberations all the way to Eight Mile Road when GM chairman and CEO Dan Akerson announced in January, 2011 that he was replacing a much-loved engineer who had 46 years on the job with Barra, a relative unknown whose most recent job had been running, of all things, human resources. Moreover, she had spent more of her career inside an assembly plant than she had on a test track, and she would be overseeing GM's global product portfolio with limited product development experience. Instantly, Barra had been elevated to the most important job at GM ever held by a woman and became the highest- ranking member of her sex in the global auto industry.