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Lee Iacocca Dies, Aged 94

posted by chromas on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the RIP dept.

takyon writes:

Lee Iacocca, Visionary Automaker Who Led Both Ford and Chrysler, Is Dead at 94

Lee A. Iacocca, the visionary automaker who ran the Ford Motor Company and then the Chrysler Corporation and came to personify Detroit as the dream factory of America's postwar love affair with the automobile, died on Tuesday at his home in Bel Air, Calif. He was 94. He had complications from Parkinson's disease, a family spokeswoman said.

In an industry that had produced legends, from giants like Henry Ford and Walter Chrysler to the birth of the assembly line and freedoms of the road that led to suburbia and the middle class, Mr. Iacocca, the son of an immigrant hot-dog vendor, made history as the only executive in modern times to preside over the operations of two of the Big Three automakers.

In the 1970s and '80s, with Detroit still dominating the nation's automobile market, his name evoked images of executive suites, infighting, power plays and the grit and savvy to sell American cars. He was so widely admired that there was serious talk of his running for president of the United States in 1988.

Detractors branded him a Machiavellian huckster who clawed his way to pinnacles of power in 32 years at Ford, building flashy cars like the Mustang, making the covers of Time and Newsweek and becoming the company president at 46, only to be spectacularly fired in 1978 by the founder's grandson, Henry Ford II.

Also at CNN, Reuters, CNBC, and Detroit Free Press.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by fustakrakich on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:40PM (8 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday July 03 2019, @03:40PM (#862754) Journal

    Or in a 5 dollar coffin

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:34PM (#862778)

    Bury him in a K-car or have a Viking funeral in a Pinto.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:52PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @04:52PM (#862783)

    Troll, eh?

    You're right. Why waste a perfectly good Pinto. Wait! Is there such a thing?

    The other AC is right. A Viking funeral is more appropriate.

    The guy is a bum! Why would anybody defend him??

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @05:09PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @05:09PM (#862797)

      A number of years ago I discovered where all the Pintos had gone. They've all gone to dirt track racing.

      • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Wednesday July 03 2019, @05:47PM

        by epitaxial (3165) on Wednesday July 03 2019, @05:47PM (#862816)

        Once in a great while I see one driving around. Pretty rare sight in the rust belt.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @08:33PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @08:33PM (#862896)

      The guy is a bum! Why would anybody defend him??

      Why is he a bum?

      His "autobiography" was the first corporate book I read. I thought he was rather successful in an era when one could still be upwardly mobile, to go from immigrant parents to the head of US industry.

      • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @09:50PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2019, @09:50PM (#862924)

        Successful by cutting corners that killed people. Pablo Escobar built schools and hospitals also. Should we look on him more kindly for it?

        They are successful businessmen. So what?

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @02:44PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2019, @02:44PM (#863126)

          Here looks like a good place to put this. Lee Iacocca, who spearheaded the attack on autoworkers, dead at 94 [wsws.org]:

          The admiration in the corporate media arises from the central role Iacocca played in the 1980s in implementing a fundamental shift in the policy of the American ruling class. The 1979-1980 Chrysler bailout was the first shot in a corporate offensive against the working class aimed at forcing workers to pay for the historic decline of American capitalism. This class war continues to this day.

          Iacocca was also responsible for the Ford Pinto, a subcompact car with a gas tank that would explode during rear-end collisions. The car prompted Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed, which exposed the resistance of car executives, including Iacocca, to the introduction of safety features, such as seat belts, and their reluctance to spend money on improving safety.

          In August 1979, Democratic President Jimmy Carter appointed Chase Manhattan banker Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve Board. The new Fed chief declared that a “decline in real income was necessary” to fight inflation. He denounced workers’ efforts to protect their living standards. Just a year before, 150,000 coal miners had defied Carter’s back-to-work order during their record 111-day strike.

          Volcker imposed the “Volcker shock,” raising interest rates to record levels—reaching 20 percent in 1980—to deliberately bring on the worst recession since the Great Depression. This drove unprofitable sections of industry out of business and allowed corporate America to use mass unemployment as a hammer to drive down the wages and conditions of workers.

          Chrysler Corporation, the weakest of the US Big Three automakers, had barely escaped bankruptcy in 1974-75. It began hemorrhaging once again. In 1978, it lost a half-billion dollars. By 1979, the company was losing $6-8 million a day, and it would soon lose a total of $1.1 billion, the largest loss in US corporate history. Facing imminent bankruptcy, Iacocca turned to the Carter administration, appealing to it to organize a federal bailout.

          With the assistance of the UAW, Iacocca closed or consolidated 20 plants and eliminated 57,000 jobs, including 12 plants and 30,000 jobs in Detroit alone. Over the course of 19 months, he imposed nearly half a billion dollars in wage cuts, or nearly $10,000 for each autoworker. In today’s dollars that would translate to $35,000 a year.

          UAW Vice President Marc Stepp summed up the pro-capitalist position of the union, declaring, “I believe that the company will have to trim operations down. But what can you do about it? We have free enterprise in this country. The corporations have a right to make a profit.”

          When Iacocca became president of Ford in 1970, the nearly 1.5 million autoworkers at GM, Ford and Chrysler were the highest paid industrial workers in the US, if not the world. By the time he retired from Chrysler in 1992, hundreds of thousands had lost their jobs and cities like Detroit, Flint, Toledo and Dayton had been ravaged by deindustrialization. Autoworkers had suffered a historic reversal that affected every section of the working class.

          In 1970, average CEO pay was $1 million in current dollars and the ratio to workers’ pay was roughly 21 to 1. By 2018, the ratio had ballooned to 312 to 1. Over the last four decades, workers’ real wages, i.e., adjusted for inflation, have flat-lined. During the same period, CEOs have seen a 937 percent pay increase.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday July 04 2019, @03:09PM

            by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Thursday July 04 2019, @03:09PM (#863130)

            "Iacocca was also responsible for the Ford Pinto, a subcompact car with a gas tank that would explode during rear-end collisions. The car prompted Ralph Nader’s book Unsafe at Any Speed, which exposed the resistance of car executives, including Iacocca, to the introduction of safety features, such as seat belts, and their reluctance to spend money on improving safety."

            When you put something blatantly false in your critique, anything else you've typed is tainted.
            The Pinto did not exist at the time of the book, published in 1966. The first Ford Pinto came out in 1971.
            At that time Iaccoca was overseeing the Mustang.
            The book came about due to the Chevrolet Corvair whose wheels tended to tuck under and cause severe oversteer at speed.
            And yes it was critical of industry not improving safety and pollution standards, but the Pinto had nothing to due with it.
            Ford started putting seat belts in all their cars unless specifically ordered without them (not mandatory at the time) in 1964, all cars were mandated in 1968.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed [wikipedia.org]

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