The June issue of Wired Magazine has an article about the auto industry. I don't see it at http://www.wired.com yet. Some might want to buy the hardcopy issue for this article alone.
Detroit's Big Three automakers have for decades been notoriously hostile to outside innovation; Flash of Genius and Tucker, films that decry the industry's insularity, are both based on true stories. No small U.S. company has grown into a big carmaker in the past 50 years -- one of the reasons that the automobile itself hasn't changed more fundamentally during that time. "It's as if the computer industry were still dominated by Wang and Data General and DEC, and they were still selling minicomputers," says Henry Chesbrough, executive director at UC Berkely's Center for Open Innovation.