W. Edward Deming was a statistician. Not the kind of background you'd expect to find for someone in the car business. He wasn't what you'd call a "car guy." But his understanding of how to pay attention to the details of manufacturing and to foster team work while you're at it put the Japanese car makers on the road to success after World War Two.
Unfortunately for the US auto industry, he was a prophet who wasn't embraced in his home country until much later. By that time the Japanese had cornered the market on quality and the Big 3 auto companies had to play catch up.
Ironically, the car that was used by Pontiac as a test case for applying Deming's principles was sabotaged by the cost control "bean counters" who saddled it with an engine that was too heavy and sluggish. But the worst problem was that it had a tendency to catch fire. The resulting lawsuits doomed the Fiero and tore apart the fragile labor/management accords that had been built around its development. One more step that positioned GM for its ultimate decline.