Lee Iacocca: a legend passes on

I mentioned to Bill Vose yesterday -in a post- that Lee Iacocca had died at 94 due to complications of Parkinson's.

This man was a titan in the auto industry and for 30 years helped steer the Ford lineup.
He brought us the Mustang ... and also the Pinto.
After moving to Chrysler in the late 1970's he introduced the K car and the now ubiquitous mini van.

He was passionate about the American auto industry, having grown up in the heart of steel country.
And always pointed out that it was the worker (and not the executive) that knew how things worked and how to get goals accomplished.

Anyway, I just wanted to express my gratitude for his years of dedication and following his heart.

Well said, Jim.  I also noted that he'd passed away yesterday.  He certainly changed the course of automotive history.

Yes, he was quite the marketing guru. I have said that for years. Mustang, the prototype of what became the production Mustang in April 1964 was taken to car shows, the powers that were there at Ford said, "the only people who are interested in it are teenagers". He saw the demography and rightly decided those teenagers were the baby boom generation and would be reaching adulthood starting in 1963 on. As they say, the rest is history.

When another great genius came to him as head of Ford in 1962 looking for an American V8 for his aluminum bodied sports car, Iacocca agreed to sell him Ford's new lightweight V8 that was replacing the 1940s designed Y-block, again the rest is history, the Cobra set records everywhere and a friendship was forged. When Iacocca wanted a little more "spice" in the Mustang, Shelby came up with the GT350 in 1965 using a stripped down fastback body with the Cobra's 289, which a 306 hp along with the lightened body and suspension changes turned the Mustang into a Corvette eater.


When the Ford family decided Iacocca was a threat as he was controlling Ford's vehicles and production, he was canned, being the marketing man he was, Chrysler was recovering from bankruptcy, so he went to Chrysler with what would have been a Ford FWD car design, that Ford scrapped when he was fired and gave us the K car, a moderate sized FWD family car. I was working at Tysinger Motor Company in Hampton VA when the Dodge Aries came out, on a whim we tried the seating out, 6 people including one very rotund salesman, yes it was snug, but 6 people could fit in the K sedans. It did get to be somewhat humerus when the bulk of Chrysler's line up became K based, the joke was they were built with sliding side rails so they could be in any wheelbase desired. The Aries/Reliant fairly soon spawned the "super Ks" essentially a heavily optioned version sold as the Dodge 400, Chrysler Lebaron and some older nameplates like New Yorker came back. In 1984, Iaccoca surprised everyone when Chrysler Corporation announced the Caravan and Voyager mini-vans. Virtually all of the mini-vans today are based on that design, FWD so a flat floor and plenty of people or cargo room.

He also brought AMC/Jeep into the Chrysler fold.
Releasing the hugely popular and profitable Cherokee.

He divided the Renault and Mitsubishi offerings into Eagle, which brought us the very first crossover.

Yup, a lot of history there.