The son of a hot dog vendor from Italy, Lee Iacocca joined Ford in 1946 and grappled his way to the top using a flair for marketing ruses
carmakers can be roughly divided by specialisation. Europe’s are regarded as the best at sophisticated engineering. Japan’s are the masters of mass-production techniques. What American car firms do best is marketing their products. That reputation was acquired largely thanks to the efforts of an American business legend, Lee Iacocca, who died on July 2nd at the age of 94.
Brash, tireless and in the seclusion of the boardroom wreathed in a cloud of cigar smoke and profanities, Mr Iacocca presented a public image when boss of Chrysler as the patriotic car guy urging his countrymen to buy American.
He made his name at Ford when he was in charge of the Mustang, unveiled in 1964. Sports-car looks coupled with a relatively modest price tag, backed up by a clever promotional campaign, made the “pony car” an instant bestseller and an enduring classic. It also helped to propel Mr Iacocca to the top job at Ford in 1970. But the salesman’s pushiness and a bluntness that bordered on insubordination were distasteful to the patrician Henry Ford II, chairman and grandson of the firm’s founder.
Mr Iacocca skipped across Detroit to revive a dying Chrysler. Once there he used his powers of persuasion and an ad campaign that asked “Would America be better off without Chrysler?” to wrest a $1.5bn loan guarantee from the government to ensure the firm’s survival.
His involvement in an attempted hostile takeover of his former firm by Kirk Kerkorian, a corporate raider, thrust him briefly back into the limelight in 1995. But his salesman’s touch was deserting him and the bid failed. Aside from cars and cigars Mr Iacocca flirted with politics. He considered running in the presidential election in 1988, but eventually got cold feet, perhaps concluding that America wasn’t ready for a businessman in the Oval Office, no matter how hard he sold the idea.
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