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Former General Motors chief dies

DETROIT - Roger B. Smith, who led General Motors Corp. in the 1980s and was the subject of Michael Moore's searing documentary Roger & Me, has died, the automaker said Friday. He was 82.

Mr. Smith died Thursday in the Detroit area after an unspecified, brief illness, GM said.

He was appointed chairman and chief executive on Jan. 1, 1981, and led the world's largest automaker until his retirement on July 31, 1990.

During Mr. Smith's tenure as chief executive, Detroit-based GM introduced its first front-wheel-drive midsize cars, formed a joint venture with Toyota Motor Corp. to manufacture cars in California, created the Saturn brand and acquired Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft Corp.

"Roger Smith led GM during a period of tremendous innovation in the industry," current GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said in a statement. "He was a leader who knew that we have to accept change, understand change, and learn to make it work for us. Roger was truly a pioneer in the fast-moving global industry that we now take for granted."

Moore has become an Oscar-winning documentary maker, but he became famous with Roger & Me, which explored how GM's plant closings and layoffs affected his hometown of Flint, Mich.

The 1989 film chronicles Moore's fruitless attempts to interview Mr. Smith about the devastation in Flint, although magazines and documentaries have alleged that Mr. Smith granted interviews to Moore before the film's release.

Moore has acknowledged a five-minute interview with Mr. Smith about a company tax abatement at a 1987 shareholders' meeting, but said that was before he started working on the movie.

Mr. Smith often faced questions about the documentary, which contained interviews of people who said they lost their homes after GM plant closures in Flint.

[Last modified November 30, 2007, 23:08:25]