{"id":226944,"date":"2022-06-21T13:08:13","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T17:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=226944"},"modified":"2022-06-21T13:08:24","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T17:08:24","slug":"obit-vocal-insightful-auto-analyst-maryann-keller-dead-at-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2022\/06\/obit-vocal-insightful-auto-analyst-maryann-keller-dead-at-78\/","title":{"rendered":"Obit: Vocal, Insightful Auto Analyst Maryann Keller Dead at 78"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It was supposed to serve as the showcase for the new General Motors product line-up coming to market in 1986, but Maryann Keller was anything but impressed. Sitting at the head table at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, the analyst and pundit turned to GM CEO Roger Smith and suggested that the automaker was likely to lose as much as six points of market share \u2014 about as much as Toyota held in the U.S. that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maryann
Auto analyst Maryann Keller was a straight shooter who often rankled those who were the subject of her opinions. She died at 78.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t the first time that Keller expressed her unabridged views in an open forum. And it wouldn\u2019t be the last. More than two decades ahead of when the bottom would finally fall out, the Wall Street analyst warned that Detroit\u2019s automakers were heading for collapse. Her harsh assessments, along with a natural ability to coin a quote, made Keller a star with the media and a fixture that automakers ignored at their own peril.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everyone in the auto industry listened to what she said, as did everyone on Wall Street,” said John McElroy, host of Autoline: Detroit and a longtime automotive journalist who frequently worked with Keller. “She was extremely influential because she called it like she saw it and didn\u2019t mince her words.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keller, who had faded into semi-retirement in recent years, died June 16 at 78. But she leaves a lasting legacy as someone who correctly predicted many of the changes that helped transform the auto industry during the past four decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking truth to power<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Repeatedly named the top auto analyst by Institutional Investor, Keller\u2019s fame rose even as GM\u2019s star went into descent. Her attendance at the automaker\u2019s annual luncheon at the Chicago Auto Show came at a time when it was struggling to figure out the formula to head off aggressive forays by Toyota, Nissan, Honda and other Japanese carmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smith, who served as both GM\u2019s chairman and chief executive officer, was investing tens of billions of dollars on new factories and the products they would build. Yet each year saw its sales and market share slide. And 1986 would be no exception. As she predicted, much to Smith\u2019s frustration, the Detroit giant went on to lose an unprecedented six points of share that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maryann
Keller once told then-GM Chairman Roger Smith the company would lose six points of market share in one year \u2014 she was right.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Keller seldom disguised her frustration with GM management, Smith in particular, writing in one of her closely read books, “He is like a cook who gathered all the ingredients for making a cake, then just tossed them in the oven randomly, thinking they would come together on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An equal opportunity critic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When Smith finally retired, three years later, Keller had little positive to say about his successors \u2014 and her dire forecasts foreshadowed its near bankruptcy in 1992. The automaker was able to hang on, however, only stumbling into Chapter 11 in 2009 as the U.S. economy went into meltdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keller wasn\u2019t exclusively focused on the foibles of GM, however. She actually began standing out early in her career, in 1979 warning then-Chrysler Corp. was running out of money and likely would go bankrupt, recalled McElroy, for whom Keller wrote a monthly column when he edited Automotive Industries magazine. “No one else on Wall Street called that. She burst onto the scene and never looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keller later declared the \u201cmerger of equals\u201d that formed DaimlerChrysler in 1998 dead on arrival. And she frequently complained about the troubles crippling Ford, especially its lack of fuel-efficient powertrains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Only themselves to blame”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Maryann
For many years, Keller was the one female voice in a male-dominated profession.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

She wasn\u2019t always spot on. Keller dismissed Tesla\u2019s plan to sell vehicles through its own distribution network, for one thing. And she didn\u2019t back the Obama administration\u2019s planned bailout of GM and Chrysler when they filed for bankruptcy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Detroit 3 have only themselves to blame for the fact that two-thirds of the American public thinks they should be allowed to fail,” Keller wrote in a column published in trade publication Automotive News. \u201cHaving watched and written about the utter incompetence of executive management and corrupt automotive corporate and union cultures, it is a sentiment that I understand.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keller wasn’t always critical about the industry. She predicted early on the rise of key Japanese brands \u2014 and had a personal preference for BMW, among the Europeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rare woman<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Born on New Year\u2019s Eve, December 1943, Keller grew up in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, a small, long-struggling community just across the bay from where she would eventually reign as one of the most powerful observers of the auto industry \u2014 and as a rare female star in the male-dominated world of stock pickers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Keller first warned that Chrysler could go bankrupt in 1979, said McElroy, she received a lot of pushback. But calling that crisis right, opened the doors. “She smashed through the glass ceiling on Wall Street.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Maryann
Keller eventually lent her considerable skills to charity after leaving the auto industry.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But she didn\u2019t think her gender was as much an issue on Wall Street as in the auto industry itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Have (women) reached the highest levels of their corporation?” Keller lamented in a 2020 interview with Automotive News “Apart from Mary Barra, the answer is no,\u201d she said, referencing GM’s current top executive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A chemist by training<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Keller didn\u2019t set out to become one of the automotive world\u2019s most oft-quoted figures. Her first love was science and she initially enrolled in Rutgers University as a chemistry major, graduating with honors in 1966. She then landed a job providing market research about the chemical industry. But the big shift came when Keller was recruited by Kidder Peabody, the Wall Street firm hiring her to do research on the automotive market. She had fallen in love with her first car, a British Triumph TRA3, and took to the new role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I was first assigned to autos,\u201d she said in an interview with Forbes, \u201cI didn\u2019t know which car company made which nameplate. Yet, the job took and she became the first female auto analyst in 1972 \u2014 a job she continued for the next 17 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was a voracious reader and a dogged pursuer of even the most arcane facts and figures, which helped her stand out from the more hidebound analyst crowd of that era. And she was more than happy to accommodate when journalists called, typically prepared with a pithy quote followed by lots of insightful details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning to new challenges<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By the time of the automotive meltdown during the Great Recession, Keller had already backed out of her daily career. But she kept close to the industry, at one point running the automotive division for Priceline.com. Just four years ago, she joined \u00a0Autotech Ventures, a transportation-focused venture capital firm. There she served on the advisory board overseeing a $120 million fund focused on ground transportation startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Keller also made a late-game move into charity work, among other things working with Stamford Hospital Network to help steer its response to the COVID crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her two books, \u201cRude Awakening: The Rise, Fall and Struggle to Recover at General Motors\u201d and \u201cCollision: GM, Toyota, and Volkswagen and the Race to Own the 21st Century,\u201d are still considered critical reading by those trying to understand how the auto industry got where it is today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keller leaves behind her second husband, Jay Chai, a Korean-American executive who served as a consultant for General Motors and has spent years working with Asian businesses investing in the U.S. She had no children of her own, but Jay brought three into their marriage, two of whom survive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keller died June 16. No cause of death has been released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone in the auto industry listened to what she said, as did everyone on Wall Street. “She” is Maryann Keller, who died at age 78. Find out more about her at TheDetroitBureau.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4344,7,8,5,1908,1164,905,3541,1347],"tags":[6569,6567,6570,6568],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226944"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226960,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226944\/revisions\/226960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226944"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=226944"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=226944"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=226944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}