Rick Johnson’s amazing adventure with the auto industry

While reporting in Europe, I began traveling to automotive installations behind the Iron Curtain — Skoda in Czechoslovakia, Wartburg in East Germany, the GAZ works in Gorky, Moskvitch in Moscow and, of course, Togliatti, that automotive capital on the Volga where the Lada factory was Russia’s version of Henry Ford’s Rouge.

My big scoop of 1987: Moskvitch planned to enter the U.S. with a small car; a story that went viral in the only way a story could in those days — it was picked up by CNN.

All the Muscovites needed to do was develop a serviceable engine, and if they ever do, I’ll ring the scoop bell one last time.

I was then transferred to Tokyo, where American journalists were being stonewalled by Japan’s emerging auto giants. Yet I found I could interview any Japanese CEO or senior executive I wanted — almost any time I wanted.

The same had been true in Europe. Automotive News could open any door.

The peripatetic Keith Crain had blazed a trail across the global auto industry you could drive a 1950 Dodge Power Wagon through.

Indeed, Tokyo was the best pure reporting experience of my life. I arrived in August 1991 just as Japan’s bubble economy began to deflate. It was the first month Toyota Corolla sales declined — ever.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, Chrysler was coming on strong. Bob Lutz and Co. even tried to challenge the Corolla with the Dodge Neon. My most delicious scoop while in Japan was uncovering the details of Toyota’s teardown of a defenseless Neon, having gotten my hands on internal Toyota documents that absolutely cannonaded with belittlement of Chrysler’s engineering prowess.

In 1993, my Tokyo colleague Mary Ann Maskery and I wrote that Mazda CEO Yoshihiro Wada was about to be fired.

OK, my theory has always been that the story saved Wada-san’s job. Instead of firing him, Ford — a few days later — installed three senior executives in Hiroshima to protect its 24.5 percent investment in the company and nudged Wada into a window seat, though, yes, he remained CEO.

Summoned to Mazda’s Tokyo offices on the Monday the story appeared, I was escorted into the inner sanctum, where the CEO sat across from me — two chairs set up in a big room — and gave me a Jack Smith-style dressing down, complete with a prosecutorial demand for our sources. (This is where I learned something about the fine points of going out on a limb.)