
Lee Iacocca Has Died - uptown
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/07/02/auto-industry-icon-lee-iacocca-dies-at-94-he-helped-launch-the-ford-mustang-in-the-1960s-and-later-saved-chrysler-from-bankruptcy/
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
The part about Lee Iacocco introducing the Mustang reminded me about this
passage from

In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters by
Merrill R. Chapman

> In the auto industry, a classic example is the Ford Falcon. The brainchild
> of "whiz kid" Robert McNamara, the Falcon was designed from the get-go as a
> "people's car." In other words, it couldn't go very fast, it got good gas
> mileage, and it was economical to run. Extolling these virtues was the car's
> deliberately plug-ugly design, one that proclaimed the vehicle was in the
> service of the lumpen proletariat, those who only drive and serve. The
> lumpen proletariat didn't appreciate the sentiments the Falcon reflected,
> and although people who couldn't afford anything more bought the Falcon,
> they drove the car without joy and bought few of the optional accessories
> that made selling the car profitable.

> On the other hand, the Ford Mustang when it was released in 1964 was a
> phenomenon, and Ford couldn't make enough of them to meet demand. Mustangs
> were fun, sexy, and desirable. Mustang owners were intelligent and cool
> people with a great sense of value, the type of folks you wished would
> invite you to a barbecue at their place. Of course, the Mustang also
> wouldn't go very fast (though it looked like it could), got good gas
> mileage, and was very economical to run. This is because it was, underneath
> its alluring sheet metal, nothing more than a reskinned Ford Falcon. But by
> dint of good design and the addition of key features that proclaimed the car
> wasn't for old farts (such as a snazzy steering wheel and bucket seats) and
> sporty options (such as high-profit, high-performance engines), the Mustang
> became a car you could aspire to whereas the Falcon was just a cheap set of
> wheels.

~~~
flunhat
Bobby Baker, who was one of Lyndon Johnson's closest aides, had this to say
about Robert McNamara (who was Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War):

"The biggest disaster in the history of this country was [Robert] McNamara.
Henry Ford was my good friend and he said, “The best thing that ever happened
to me was getting rid of that bastard.” He almost wrecked Ford back then, and
he really wrecked the Defense Department. The Vietnam War - President Johnson
did not know how to get out - that was the greatest tragedy of his
Presidency."

Source: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/836424-baker-
text.ht...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/836424-baker-
text.html#document/p22)

(The whole interview is really worth reading and is full of sordid tales about
the Senate in the 1960s).

~~~
noelherrick
If you believe that the tragedy of the Vietnam war was due to one man, I have
a bridge to sell you. The sheer hyperbole of saying that greatest disaster in
American history was a single man should make you immediately question the
speaker. Note that this quote was from a 2009 interview - so Baker had Nixon,
9/11, Iraq/Afghanistan and all the other much, much darker times in American
history to choose from.

I would also reject that the idea that he was a particularly bad actor in the
Vietnam War. There were so many presidents and generals that didn't realize
what was happening and messed things up royally. Just read about how out of
touch Westmoreland was. This is like blaming the goalie or the kicker for
losing a game when it's actually the combined efforts of the whole team over
the entire game that wins or loses a match.

The other speaker in the quote is Ford - who we should note is called by
Iacocca as 95% jerk - apparently, he didn't get along with anybody.

Other people credit McNamara and his fellow Air Force buddies as turning Ford
around after World War II. Wikipedia even says that Henry Ford II made him
president (although it was only for 5 weeks).

(I'm not a defender of McNamara, but I also think this lopsided view of him is
unjustified - we need to have nuance in the way we view people)

~~~
flunhat
I agree with you -- I just think it's funny how these two completely different
sources dunked on McNamara. Bobby Baker seems like he wanted to redeem his
image (and Lyndon Johnson's image, too, I think), so you can see this as an
attempt to shift blame.

------
ddebernardy
Passage from an ebook by Charlie Cook (The New Profit Rules):

> Lee Iacocca became president of the near-bankrupt Chrysler Corporation in
> 1978 with an ambitious recovery plan. Had he approached Chrysler’s problems
> sequentially – making cuts in operations, then making changes in marketing,
> next making improvements in product lines - the company would have been
> belly up long before his full plan went into effect.

> Instead, Iacocca took on every problem at once; firing inept management and
> replacing with his own trusted team, putting two new untested products on
> the road at once, offering a new, better warranty without possibly knowing
> what the future cost could be to the company, even placing himself in the
> company’s commercials as pitchman.

> Iacocca’s understanding of the critical need for speed is exemplified in one
> classic story. In 1981, no major American car manufacturer had built a
> convertible car for five years. Sensing an opportunity, Iacocca asked his
> lead engineer how long it would take to make a convertible for him to test a
> new convertible. The answer? Three years.

> Iacocca didn’t understand why it should take so long. It would take him 4
> hours to take a chainsaw to a sedan and end up with a convertible, he said.
> Within a few days, Iacocca had a freshly-topless car to drive around to see
> if women would stare at him (his key indicator). They did, and the LeBaron
> convertible was born. It was a huge success, selling 21,000 units over
> projection in the first year.

------
vadym909
Most Americans may not realize it, but Iacocca was a hero to many
international younger generation kids -especially engineers, mainly because
his book Iacocca was the first inside glimpse of a top american car company
with a story of a hero operator vs owner. The book can still be found on the
streets of any developing country. RIP!

~~~
sharadov
Right on! It was the first business book I read, was probably 15. And yeah am
from India, where you bought it from the footpath book sellers.

~~~
gepiti
Me too (same age Greece)

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EvanAnderson
My wife and I identify thrift stores, in part, by the number of copies of
"Iacocca" (his autobiography) that are on the shelf. ("This one has a high
Iacocca coefficient...") I suppose I should actually read it at some point.
Maybe this is a good occasion to do so.

(I tried reading "Future Shock", our other perennial thrift store classic, and
couldn't make it thru.)

~~~
cpeterso
_> My wife and I identify thrift stores, in part, by the number of copies of
"Iacocca" (his autobiography) that are on the shelf._

Another thrift store metric is the number of copies of "Jerry Maguire" VHS
tapes. A video performance group called Everything Is Terrible has collected
over _15,000_ Jerry Maguire tapes. They've hosted pop-up video stores that
only rent Jerry Maguire. Their new project is raising $500,000 to build a
Jerry Maguire pyramid in the desert.

[http://www.jerrymaguirepyramid.com/](http://www.jerrymaguirepyramid.com/)

 _> (I tried reading "Future Shock", our other perennial thrift store classic,
and couldn't make it thru.)_

Orson Welles narrated a 40-minute 1972 film version of Future Shock. It's
available on YouTube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwXenBokU)

------
WalterBright
Thank you for the Mustang, Lee! I had a '67, and adored that car. It looked
great, was easy to work on, and I had to have one after a high school buddy
offered me a ride in his, and he promptly floored it. Wow! I burned up a lot
of tires on mine.

All the fellows had a muscle car, or was trying to get one. What a great time
to be in high school! None of these silly "boom cars" or whatever.

------
braythwayt
_“We at Chrysler borrow money the old-fashioned way. We pay it back.”_ —Lee
Iacocca

A refreshing alternative to this generation’s public bailouts of private
businesses.

~~~
throw20102010
I think we're looking at Mr. Iacocca with some rose-tinted glasses. He sought
government bailouts, fought against requiring seatbelts in cars (because a few
dollars worth of nylon would "ruin" his margins), and also fought against
environmental standards, particularly requiring catalytic converters (to be
fair, catalytic converters probably did ruin his margins).

He is definitely an icon, but do not forget that he was a cutthroat
businessman that would do anything to make sure his businessed thrived.

[https://nader.org/1979/10/25/iacoccas-gw-commencement-
speech...](https://nader.org/1979/10/25/iacoccas-gw-commencement-speech-on-
auto-safety/)

~~~
Aloha
That link isn't very fair, in 1956, he pushed ford to roll out safety as a
sales point, they got plowed over by GM that year, and determined rightly,
that safety doesn't sell. He was in favor of seat belts, opposed to airbags (I
still think airbags have a poor rate of return - dollars for lives saved).

~~~
behringer
How many lives saved until airbags are worth the cost?

~~~
nate_meurer
Please don't do that. Although airbags are much less controversial now than
when they were first introduced, there is still legitimate debate about cost
vs benefit, especially given that airbags themselves are quite capable of
causing injury.

~~~
behringer
Please don't do what? Debate the topic?

Learn to communicate respectfully.

~~~
nate_meurer
No, the debate is fine of course. But you framed your question as an oblique
attack, implying some sort of ethical deficiency on the part of the parent. It
presumes the least charitable interpretation of Aloha's comment -- that they
are doing nothing more than comparing lives to dollars using a binary
criteria.

In reality, the debate over mandating safety technology is nuanced and not at
all straightforward. Airbags are a great example. Yes they save a lot of
lives, no question. But they're also explosive devices aimed at your head from
two feet away, which can easily add tens of thousands of dollars to your
hospital bill. Ask all the folks whose wrists are broken by airbags that
deploy in otherwise relatively minor fender benders. Never mind the fact that
airbags are a lethal threat to small or frail people like kids and the elderly
and disabled.

Airbags themselves are quite expensive. They add thousands of dollars to the
purchase price of a new car, and they cost thousands of dollars to replace,
_if_ their deployment didn't cause your insurance company to total your car,
which it frequently does.

I keep only liability insurance on my car, because that's what I can afford,
but that also means I probably can't afford to fix my car even after a minor
accident if the airbags deploy. I appreciate the airbags' protection in the
event of a catastrophic wreck, but I also live in just a little bit of fear of
them because they can conceivably total my car and break my arms if I get
rear-ended. It happens often enough that there are attorneys who have built
careers on airbag lawsuits.

So yeah, there's lots of room for argument here, and no surprise that there
are strong feelings about it. And it also shouldn't surprise you that passive-
aggressive comments to the tune of, "So exactly how much _is_ a life worth to
you?" might get you frowned at a little.

~~~
behringer
It was a valid question to the statement. He's saying the costs are too high
for the safety they provide. Obviously this is categorically false on its
face, considering car companies wouldn't use them if they didn't save lives.

Secondly, I welcome a debate, instead all I got, before this last fine post,
was you asking me to "please stop." and little else added to the conversation
that isn't already obvious. My statement may have been a loaded question, but
it was certainly not a passive aggressive statement on the order of politely
being asked to sod off.

~~~
Aloha
Car companies use then because they are mandated to do so - when they were
offered an an optional thing in the early to mid-70's virtually no one bought
them.

~~~
behringer
Mandated why? Because they work.

~~~
Aloha
Airbags were mandated because not enough people wore seatbelts.

I'm not saying airbags are worthless, they're not - they work, but is the
reduced injury in most cases worth the cost? I don't know - when worn with a
Seat Belt, Airbags don't generally save lives, but they reduce injury level -
the core issue is, we pass regulations with the idea that everything we do
ought to be perfectly safe.

A good example is backup cameras, a backup camera adds somewhere between 250
and 1000 dollars of cost to a car, yet only about 200 people or so a year are
killed in such a way that they might have been prevented by backup cameras. We
sell 17 million cars a year or so every year, which means, the added cost of
backup cameras is somewhere between 4.25 and 17 million dollars a year -
meaning assuming the regulation 100% effective, we spend 21,250 to 85,000
dollars per death prevented - most of which could be prevented if the operator
of the vehicle just did a walk around before pulling out of a parking space.
Is that 17 million a year well spent? Airbags lead to a similar set of
questions, is the cost injuries prevented enough to offset the cost of the
airbags?

I don't know, I would suggest we should be asking these questions, rather than
just scream 'for the children' and put another rule in place - because in the
end all of these rules add a cumulative cost - and the poor pay it first. Bear
in mind, I'm not suggesting we get rid of all emissions and safety standards
for everything, I'd just like some more choices in what I find acceptable for
my personal risk level - I, for example, might not buy a car with 16 airbags
or however many you can get now - I might chose to only buy an option with two
airbags, or none at all (one of my cars is without airbags). Similarly I might
chose a backup camera as an option, because it will save me body damage when
backing in or out of parking spaces - but I should still get that choice.

------
mulmen
A titan of the automotive industry.

His autobiography was influential in my formative years.

As the son of an immigrant his is an inspirational tale of what is possible
when we open our arms.

RIP Lee.

------
Shivetya
Henry Ford II really did Chrysler a favor by firing Lee Iacocca but also in
firing Hal Sperlich who came up with the minivan concept while at Ford that
Henry Ford did not like at all. Needless to say he was hired by Chrysler and
given the green light to produce it on the K car platform that was the
platform to save Chrysler

Now I cannot find backing for this story, I seem to recall at the introduction
of one of the new models, perhaps the minivan, the door handle either did not
work or detached.

------
linksnapzz
One of the other things that Iacocca did, which I don't see mentioned as
often, was the acquisition of AMC from Renault.

Lee wanted the Jeep brand; IIRC Hal Sperlich and others didn't think it was
worth it, but Lee got his way. Along with the Cherokee, Wrangler & Wagoneer,
they also got the highly-underrated AMC design and engineering teams.

What I found fascinating about that was how well the corporate integration was
handled-AMC/Jeep wasn't run as a separate subsidiary for very long, and AMC
people were integrated into roles of responsibility in the new organization,
and products gradually began to incorporate components from both prior
companies.

Compare that with GM, which owned Adam Opel for almost ninety years without
fully integrating its operations, or the way Daimler handled its merger with
Chrysler....

------
RickJWagner
One of the great business marketers of the 80s.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Iacocca. I really enjoyed some of your works.

------
wjp3
The first car I drove was a 1964.5 white fast-back mustang that my dad
refurb'ed in the late 80's, with me being his "shop gopher". I remember to
this day the sound of that engine firing up when I was behind the wheel. Even
though it sounded the same as every other time it started, it still felt
other-worldly. The gas pedal had that slight resistance to it, so when I
pressed harder and the raw power pushed me back into that seat, the
exhilaration felt has rarely been matched all these years later.

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mzs
This was a particularly good obit: [https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lee-
iacocca-20190702-sto...](https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lee-
iacocca-20190702-story.html)

------
cntlzw
paywall

