Mary Barra Quotes

I'm a car nut. My father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership.

I remember that my dad worked on cars from the '70s and '80s, and that's where my love came from: appreciating - even if it was a piece of crap - how much he loved American muscle.

Before 2000, we were unable to design a single car; all the cars were designed in Japan, Europe or somewhere else. We were just converting.

I've always been into cars. Cars are part of our genetic makeup. It's unavoidable.

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

It was not until I started racing for car manufacturers that I found a car I could really get attached to. I am the son of a car dealer, so up until then, cars just came and went.

Both of my parents have been actors; there were a lot of show tunes on in the car all of the time. I grew up with that.

Growing up in Southern California, it's all car culture. When I was a kid, I knew every single model of every single car dealer; I knew every style of every year.

The only magazines I read are car magazines.

My first job at General Motors was as a quality inspector on the assembly line. I was checking fits between hoods and fenders. I had a little scale and clipboard. At one point, I was probably examining 60 jobs an hour during an eight-hour shift. A job like that teaches you to value all the people who do a job like that.

A lot of the jobs I had revolved around metal fabrication and creating and building and maintaining equipment.

Everyone thinks because we love cars and our dad was in the business, we love the mechanical end of cars.

I will build a motorcar for the great multitude. It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one.

I am not a politician. I am an engineer who has spent most of his career working in factories that manufacture the world's most advanced devices.

I love mechanical things, older cars especially.

I was a young boy. A stock car guy used to live across the street from us. He'd work on his car, and both of my older brothers became gearheads.

I love cars; I like the idea of manufacturing something, having a product, a hard product to sell and promote, but as time went on, I recognized that car companies are so bureaucratic and so ossified that it would take forever to work your way up. And so I went into consulting.

We have teams of people working on electric cars. So you never know - you may find Virgin competing with the Tesla in the car business as we do in the space business.

In the movies, every crazy old fart needs a cool old car. Jack Nicholson drove a spiffy yellow 1970 Dodge Challenger two-door in 'The Bucket List.' In 'Gran Torino,' the cranky pensioner played by Clint Eastwood not only owned a 1972 GT Sport, he also used to build cars like that at the Ford plant.

There's not a single doubt in my mind that the whole of Chrysler organization views itself as an American car producer.

I know the automakers are important to the United States. We care about the automobile industry.

My dad was an assembly line worker at AC Spark Plug, which was a division of General Motors, and his job was to build and then inspect the little spark plugs as they came off the line.

I came out of a blue-collar town, a GM town, and my father worked at GM, so I was very familiar with that kind of industry and that also informed my work.

Building cars is highly specialized, it's hard, and it's capital intensive.

When I see a shoe, I deconstruct it in my head. It comes from spending childhood summers around my grandad's denim factory in Bury, watching the machinists turn fabric into clothes.