Lee Iacocca RIP

[eytonxav]

Father of the mustang dead at 94. I remember when he used to do TV commercials, "if you can find a better car, buy it."

 

[Bamaman]

My brother in law once worked for Ford Marketing. Mr. Iacocca came to town for a regional dealer meeting and stayed in a luxury hotel. My brother in law's job was to sit in the hallway outside his hotel room all night long and keep the beer cold.

Mr. Iacocca was one of the old generation of industrialists, and a very strong character.

 

[aja8888]

Great guy. Too bad there are fewer and fewer like him in this country.

 

[travelover]

My brother in law once worked for Ford Marketing. Mr. Iacocca came to town for a regional dealer meeting and stayed in a luxury hotel. My brother in law's job was to sit in the hallway outside his hotel room all night long and keep the beer cold.

Mr. Iacocca was one of the old generation of industrialists, and a very strong character.

Lots of petty stuff at Ford back in those days. When Henry Ford II decided to get rid of Iacocca, he was transferred to a non job and seated in an old warehouse rather than out right fired.

 

[eytonxav]

Lots of petty stuff at Ford back in those days. When Henry Ford II decided to get rid of Iacocca, he was transferred to a non job and seated in an old warehouse rather than out right fired.

And for his next act he brought Chrysler back from the dead.

 

[travelover]

And for his next act he brought Chrysler back from the dead.

Chrysler's first government bail out.

 

[candrew]

My FIL, after retiring from the Detroit P.D., became Lee Iaccoca's personal driver at Ford Motor Company. He always said what a great guy Mr. I was. Used to let FIL take the limo home with him on Friday afternoons after dropping Mr. I off at his home in Bloomfield Hills rather than have to drive all the way back to the motor pool garage in Dearborn.

 

[pb4uski]

Chrysler's first government bail out.

I guess if you call a loan that is later fully paid back before it was due with interest based on the loan's contractual terms a bailout then you are right, otherwise.....

 

[travelover]

I guess if you call a loan that is later fully paid back before it was due with interest based on the loan's contractual terms a bailout then you are right, otherwise.....

Yea, it was paid back and so was the second one . That doesn't mean the K car wasn't a POS.

 

[aja8888]

Yea, it was paid back and so was the second one . That doesn't mean the K car wasn't a POS.

The K car was what was needed at the time. It was affordable, economical and gave Chrysler the revenue it needed to keep a lot of people employed. The Big 3 all made fairly crappy (by today's standards) cars back then. The K cars fit right in.

 

[travelover]

The K car was what was needed at the time. It was affordable, economical and gave Chrysler the revenue it needed to keep a lot of people employed. The Big 3 all made fairly crappy (by today's standards) cars back then. The K cars fit right in.

Uh, no. Even by the crappy standards of the time, the K car was extra bad. The customers did the final development testing.

 

[Telly]

After the Mustang, he took over the Lancelot program at Lincoln. The program's goal was to come up with a personal luxury car to rival the Cadillac Eldorado, which had come out in 1967. The work to date on the project was to do a disguised gussied-up T-Bird. Iacocca said that wouldn't sell as a true luxury car. Changed it all drastically, and the Lincoln Mark III (1969-71) was born, which was the first Lincoln to out-sell Cadillac. Also the first American car to have radial tires standard, rear ABS (really!), fiber optic tail lamp monitors, all sorts of stuff, including a fantastic high-compression 460 V8, with the bullet-proof big-block version of the C6 trans behind it. At the time, a good-handling and fast cruiser. The succeeding Mark IV and Mark V were sales winners, too.

The Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler minivan was a real coup. The concept for a vehicle like that was something Iacocca had played with at Ford, but could not get Ford interested in the idea at all. So at Chrysler, he dusted off the idea, and used the K-car as the basis for it. The Chrysler minivan far outsold all the me-too competition for many years. And what the competition came up with was pretty poor for years. The Aerostar, the Astro, the Japanese short-wheelbase "delivery vehicles" with engines in strange places (Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi). Finally, after three generations of tries, Toyota finally came up with a worthwhile competitor, by copying the Chrysler minivan. Alas, Chrysler's quality on the minivans declined. To me, the 1996 redesign started that long slide downhill.

 

[timo2]

Lots of petty stuff at Ford back in those days. When Henry Ford II decided to get rid of Iacocca, he was transferred to a non job and seated in an old warehouse rather than out right fired.

Milton, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B.

 

[WestUniversity]

Milton, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B.

Sounds like Office Space, “but that’s my stapler”!

 

[bloom2708]

I don't read many biographies, but Lee's was a darn good read.

Quite the career and life. He didn't leave anything on the table.

 

[aja8888]

Uh, no. Even by the crappy standards of the time, the K car was extra bad. The customers did the final development testing.

In case you haven't noticed, that's the way it is with all new models entering the market these days. Doesn't matter who makes them.

 

[38Chevy454]

Iacocca was a true car industry guy. Not the CEO swapped in from another industry (ahem, Ford). He was successful and did perform the lead role in turning Chrysler around. The K-car was not the bad car many here are making it out to be. It was the right car for the time and what Chrysler needed. The minivan variant was a game changer. I don't have the numbers, but I would guess that Chrysler still has the top spot in minivan market as far as sales.

 

[travelover]

In case you haven't noticed, that's the way it is with all new models entering the market these days. Doesn't matter who makes them.

Uh, no it is not. Having worked in the industry for a whole career, I can say that the amount of testing and development that goes into every component would amaze someone from the outside. That doesn't mean that there are never any problems, but considering the complexity of modern cars, it is impressive. Back in the 80's at bankrupt Chrysler, a lot of this testing was just simply not done. It was unfortunate but probably necessary to survive.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

An old friend who's a go-kart enthusiast invited me out to the track he frequents a few years ago. He said the crew out there, a bunch of small-town kids with limited money, liked the turbocharged 4-cyl MoPar cars as cheap rides they could modify for performance -- apparently they'd crank up the boost without too much worry about longevity. Of course, these were cars that were already ~25 years old.