Lee Iacocca Has Died
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
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.
A cheap set of wheels that notoriously disappeared Argentinian activists.
"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...
(The whole interview is really worth reading and is full of sordid tales about the Senate in the 1960s).
Not sure things have changed that much in the meantime, to be honest. Nowadays you've got the US Dept. of Education being run by the sister of the guy that runs one of the biggest and most despicable mercenary companies in the world, and regarding sex-related blackmail I still regard the escort-related thing that happened to Eliot Spitzer as a blatant set-up. If it matters I'm not an American and I've never set foot in the States, these are just my opinions on the American political life as seen from half a world away.
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)
Except nobody bought. A car is more than its functionality. It is also a symbol.
Also, if you read the article, it makes it sound like McNamara understood Iacocco's genius salesmanship, and promoted him into a position he could be effective.
In the same article, it talks about how Iacocco was president during the Pinto debacle, so it would seem that he had both successes and failures.
Overall, I think we need to have a little more balanced view than a simplified retelling of history that says that Iacocco was a hero and McNamara was a tone-deaf robot. Both contributed greatly to Ford and both had their blind spots.
On the other hand, Steve McQueen never chased bad guys through San Francisco in a Falcon...
> 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.
(I tried reading "Future Shock", our other perennial thrift store classic, and couldn't make it thru.)
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/
> (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:
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.
A refreshing alternative to this generation’s public bailouts of private businesses.
https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/
Of course, the government should have gotten a much better return for the risk they took, but for a program that has been reviled as $600bn giveaway, and is remembered that way, a $100bn profit is an incredible gain.
https://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire/statements/2012/oct...
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...
But in comparison to bank bailouts, Those arrangements were far less costly for taxpayers.
https://www.thebalance.com/auto-industry-bailout-gm-ford-chr...
The problem with TARP was the government should have got a lot more equity in return for what it provided (for example, Goldman Sachs and Warren Buffett also invested, and got better terms, but the government's impact was even greater, and should have gotten as good terms, if not even better ones than Buffett and Goldman).
It depends on how much you value your life and your body parts. I value them quite highly ;)
Learn to communicate respectfully.
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.
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.
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.
1. The government requires Chrysler (like every other manufacturer) to put in catalytic converters and other things
2. But for anti-trust/collusion reasons manufacturers aren't allowed to collaborate on developing these things and splitting the cost
3. As the smallest carmaker it has been most expensive for Chrysler to do, as there are fewer unit sales to amortize the costs over
4. Since government regulations are partially responsible for putting Chrysler in this position, the government should help with a bailout
Again it's been a long time since I read the book so maybe I'm remembering it wrong.
For #2 one could argue "just source those things from a 3rd party supplier then". I don't know if that argument was ever made.
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.
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.
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....
Rest in Peace, Mr. Iacocca. I really enjoyed some of your works.