Iacocca was tycoon celebrity of the TV age
Long before Lee Iacocca ran Ford Motor Co. and then Chrysler Corp., there were corporate leaders who captured the public’s imagination, like John D. Rockefeller, Walt Disney, Estée Lauder and Henry Ford.
But Iacocca was among the first of the celebrity chief executives of the Andy Warhol era of quick corporate fame and
broad political influence. He showed that a company boss could be as adept at winning over consumers and Washington as maneuvering in the corporate boardroom.
Along the way, he helped transform big business’s relationship with the U.S. government. After obtaining a government lifeline for Chrysler in 1979, Iacocca proved that a company could survive and prosper with a bailout from Washington — a path others tried to follow during the global financial crisis nearly three decades later.
People who couldn’t tell a Dodge from a Chevy had reason to know Iacocca, who died Tuesday at age 94. He, rather than his cars, was the star of many of Chrysler’s television commercials. He wrote best-selling books that were read by blue-collar and white-collar workers alike.
When the 1986 movie “Platoon” was later released on videocassette, viewers first saw a “tribute” — Chrysler and HBO Video refused to call it a “commercial” and didn’t disclose financial terms — from Iacocca standing next to a military Jeep. “I hope we will never have to build another Jeep for war,” he said somberly, and ended the spot by saying, “I’m Lee Iacocca.”
Iacocca started to change the image of corporate leaders from gentlemen golfers to obsessive managers who worked hard and partied hard. He socialized with Frank Sinatra and other celebrities. He seldom visited the plush
Bloomfield Hills Country Club, a longtime hideaway for auto executives in the Detroit suburbs, and stayed at the fanciest hotels in New York and Europe.
“That was not him, playing golf — his focus was the business,” said David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Michigan.
That pop culture familiarity has persisted for years. A fictionalized version of Iacocca is set to appear this November in the film “Ford v Ferrari,” starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale, about Iacocca’s effort in 1966 to build a car fast enough to beat the Italian carmaker’s.
Iacocca’s desire to dominate every opponent, in Detroit and in Washington alike, was remarkable even in an auto industry known for strong-willed leaders with outsized egos.
“His ego was gigantic, and if you were to oppose him, you’d be overwhelmed,” Gerald Meyers, former chairman and chief executive of American Motors, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
In addition to the 1979 bailout, Iacocca pushed the introduction of the modern minivan in late 1983 and Chrysler’s acquisition in 1987 of American Motors, with its valuable Jeep brand.
Iacocca was already wellknown in business and auto circles in the 1970s when he sought a lifeline for Chrysler from Washington, bringing government and industry together in ways that would have been almost unthinkable in earlier decades.
Europe had a history of close partnership between businesses and government going back to the dawn of the industrial age. The Spanish crown oversaw the construction in the 18th century of the Royal Tobacco Factory in Seville, one of the earliest attempts at mass production and immortalized in the opera “Carmen.” Britain and France nationalized their coal, gas supply and electricity industries right after World War II.
But while Washington and American big business could be cozy, corporate leaders have long resisted direct government meddling in their affairs. Iacocca, like other auto executives, blamed new clean air regulations, fuel economy rules and car safety standards for many of Ford’s and Chrysler’s problems. He opposed seat belts and other innovations the auto industry has since embraced. That dislike of government interference persisted in pockets of the industry for many years.
At a dinner party I attended in Washington in 1991 as a young reporter for The New York Times, a senior General Motors executive launched into a loud soliloquy. Washington, he said, was a city that did not really matter because, unlike Detroit, it did not actually make anything. His audience, mostly diplomats with a smattering of American policymakers and journalists, sat in stunned silence.
By then, that attitude was already changing.
In 1979, Iacocca persuaded President Jimmy Carter and Congress to provide a federal guarantee for $1.5 billion in loans to Chrysler. At congressional hearings he verbally sparred with lawmakers, and Chrysler took out newspaper advertisements pressing for the bailout with his signature at the bottom.
Iacocca’s headstrong ways did not always serve him well. Until 1978, he was a rising executive at Ford, famous for overseeing development of the Mustang muscle car and landing his face on the cover of Time magazine.
Iacocca was also mentoring a young William C. Ford Jr., who went on to become the longtime executive chairman of Ford Motor. “I will always appreciate how encouraging he was to me at the beginning of my career — he was one of a kind,” Ford said in a statement on Tuesday.
But Iacocca’s personal relationship with Bill Ford’s uncle, Henry Ford II, the all-powerful chairman of the company, had deteriorated by 1978. Henry Ford II ousted Iacocca, making the famous remark “Well, sometimes you just don’t like somebody.”
Out of a job, Iacocca was quickly in touch with Harold K. Sperlich, the engineer who had designed the Ford Mustang for him 15 years earlier, and who had just taken a senior post at Chrysler. Sperlich quickly helped persuade Iacocca to follow him there and take over. Iacocca arrived at Chrysler and discovered its finances were crumbling quickly in the face of high oil prices and rising car imports from Japan.
Before Twitter and before cable television, Iacocca showed that corporate executives could use star power and the media to gain national power, said Bill Russo, a former chief executive of Chrysler China.