He was one of those unique personalities that America’s auto industry sometimes produces – a larger-than-life presence who changed the course of automotive history.
Revered
by some, reviled by others, Lee Iacocca was a force to be reckoned
with, both publicly and privately. Father of the Mustang, midwife to the
minivan, rescuer of Chrysler Corp., restorer of the Statue of Liberty,
Lee Iacocca died Tuesday at his home in Bel Air, California, Macomb
County Executive Mark Hackel and longtime auto executive Bob
Lutz confirmed to the Free Press. He was 94.
During
the height of his career in the 1980s, Iacocca was arguably the most
popular business figure in the world. Pictures of him, often with his
trademark cigar, were on magazine covers and TV screens. His 1984
autobiography became an international best -seller. He was in global
demand as a speaker.
There even were movements to
draft him as a presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988, and as a U.S.
senator in 1991. Iacocca – probably wisely – sidestepped all those
drives.
His death was met by an outpouring of tributes and sadness late Tuesday.
"He
was one of the great leaders of our company and the auto industry as a
whole," Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said in a statement. "He also played a
profound and tireless role on the national stage as a business
statesman and philanthropist. Lee gave us a mindset that still drives us
today – one that is characterized by hard work, dedication and grit."
And Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said Iacocca had a deep and lasting impact on the auto industry.
“Lee
Iacocca was truly bigger than life and he left an indelible mark on
Ford, the auto industry and our country," he said. "Lee played a central
role in the creation of the Mustang. On a personal note, I will always
appreciate how encouraging he was to me at the beginning of my career.
He was one of a kind and will be dearly missed.”
Lido Anthony Iacocca was born Oct. 15, 1924, in
Allentown, Pennsylvania, where his family ran a small hot-dog eatery –
the forerunner of a Coney Island-type chain now known as Yocco’s, a
Lehigh Valley corruption of the Iacocca name. The family eventually
expanded its interests into real estate and other businesses.
Iacocca’ parents immigrated through Ellis Island from Italy – his father, Nicola, in 1902 and his mother, Antoinette, in 1921.
The future auto executive – the younger of two
children – went to public school, graduating 12th in the Allentown High
School class of 1942. Because he had rheumatic fever a couple of years
earlier, Iacocca was rejected and classified 4F when he tried to join
the Army Air Force after high school.
Disappointed
that he couldn’t help fight World War II, he threw himself into the
engineering program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Iacocca ripped through eight straight semesters, with no summers off,
graduating with honors in industrial engineering in 1945.
Even
before finishing at Lehigh, Iacocca had set his sights on working for
Ford Motor Co. He won a job with the automaker upon graduation but, at
the same time, was offered a fellowship for graduate work at Princeton
University.
The Ford recruiter told him to take the
fellowship; the company would hold a spot for him. He completed a
master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Princeton in 1946 and
arrived by train in Detroit with $50 to start work as a Ford engineering
trainee.
Quickly bored with the nitty gritty of
engineering, Iacocca started what would become his life’s work –
marketing – by selling Ford executives on the notion that he should
switch to sales.
He started that same year as a
lowly fleet salesman in Chester, Pennsylvania. By 1949, he was a zone
manager working with 18 dealers. Ten years after switching to marketing,
Iacocca won the attention of Ford headquarters in Dearborn by
developing a finance program to move slow-selling 1956 models: Customers
could make a 20% down payment, then make three years of $56 monthly
payments. Financing for new cars was just coming into vogue; Iacocca
called his version "56 for ’56.’’
The program took
off, and so did Iacocca’s career. By 1960, he was head of car and truck
sales for Ford Division. Later that year, at age 36, he was named vice
president in charge of the division.
Fired from Ford
Iacocca’s first major achievement as head of Ford
Division was also his first major contribution to automotive history –
the Mustang.
Iacocca and his team members were
looking for a car that would have youthful appeal, with head-turning
style, strong performance and a low price, he wrote in his
autobiography. They used the engine, transmission and axle from Ford’s
popular but plain Falcon, designed a whole new body for that platform,
and brought it to market in the spring of 1964 with a base price of just
$2,368, including bucket seats, wheel covers and carpeting as standard
equipment.
During Mustang’s first sales weekend, 4
million people visited Ford dealerships. The car appeared simultaneously
on the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines.
The
Mustang set a U.S. record of 418,812 sold in its first 12 months, and
Iacocca got a promotion to vice president in charge of all car and truck
development for both Ford and Lincoln-Mercury divisions.
By December 1970, 24 years after joining the company as a trainee, Iacocca was president of Ford.
But
his relationship with Chairman Henry Ford II, at first warm, grew
chilly with time as conflicts developed between the two strong
personalities
Henry Ford II fired Iacocca on July 13, 1978. When
journalists asked for a reason, Ford responded, “It’s personal, and I
can’t tell you any more. It’s just one of those things.”
To
protect some of Iacocca’s benefits, Ford agreed to make the firing
effective Oct. 15, Iacocca’s 54th birthday. But as a final humiliation,
he exiled Iacocca from Ford World Headquarters in Dearborn, known
locally as the Glass House, and assigned him a small uncarpeted office
in a company parts depot off Telegraph Road in Detroit.
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