If there is an underdog story that has become a trope in some of our favorite Hollywood movies, it would go something like this: a powerful, commanding figure takes control of a once great, but ...

I first thought Ford CEO Jim Farley was briefing me on a new car. It turned out to be something altogether more ambitious: a completely new way to make a car. Or, more precisely, electric vehicles.

In the mid-1980s, Toyota gave Detroit’s largest automaker a crash course on how to build cars and implemented it at its worst-performing plant. NUMMI transformed from GM’s worst plant to industry ...