• Obama administration’s main adviser during industry crisis says management at big car firms was ‘stunningly poor’ • GM said to have ‘perhaps the weakest finance operation’ he had seen in a major company Barack Obama’s former “car czar” has attacked the “stunningly poor management” he encountered at Detroit’s carmakers as he worked to avert a collapse of America’s biggest auto firms earlier this year. Steve Rattner, a former private equity executive, served as treasury secretary Timothy Geithner’s top adviser on the crisis-stricken automotive industry between February and July – a period when the US  government stepped in to rescue both General Motors and Chrysler.