To Our Readers: Dec. 13, 1993

It was the Motown version of Yalta. For the first time ever, the heads of the Big Three auto companies agreed to sit down together for a joint magazine interview. Robert J. Eaton of Chrysler, John F. Smith Jr. of General Motors and Alex Trotman of Ford held the historic parley last week when they met with TIME’s editors at the Detroit Athletic Club. Seated at a circular table, the captains of the car industry engaged in a revved-up but civil discussion about everything from the gas tax and NAFTA to government regulation. The result is part of this week’s cover package.

This one-of-a-kind cover story is the brainchild of William McWhirter, TIME’s chief Midwest business correspondent. McWhirter came up with the idea of a combined article on GM, Ford and Chrysler early this year, but it took months of back-and-forth negotiations before all three were persuaded to cooperate. Actually, he says, “once one agreed, the others not only followed suit but competed with each other for the kind of access we were given.”

McWhirter has followed his share of stories for TIME since joining the magazine in 1963. He served four tours in Vietnam from 1965 to 1975, hanging on to the end, as part of TIME’s team covering the fall of Saigon. He later went on to head bureaus in Johannesburg, Bonn and the Caribbean, where he earned an Overseas Press Club award for his reporting on the Grenada invasion. McWhirter returned to the States in 1988 as a senior business correspondent and became Detroit bureau chief in 1991. Just in time, he says, to witness the revival of Motown. “It was like watching dying patients come back to life.”

Joining McWhirter for the lively interview with the Big Three were managing editor James R. Gaines, assistant managing editors Ann Morrison and Joelle Attinger, and business editor Sam Gwynne. Considering the rivalry, Morrison found the encounter “surprisingly informal and cordial.” Attinger, tongue in cheek, credits the furniture arrangement. At the last minute, a rectangular table was replaced with the more egalitarian round one.