Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / TL:DR - Iacocca: The Man, The Myth & The Legend

Transcript

TL:DR - Iacocca: The Man, The Myth & The Legend · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts,
• 0:04
  but we've expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we
• 0:08
  want to share our stories with you.
• 0:10
  Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings
• 0:13
  together a top notch collection of knowledge and information
• 0:17
  through our podcast, Brake Fix.
• 0:22
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 0:24
  And on this edition of Too Long, Didn't Read, our sub series here on
• 0:28
  Break Fix, I'm going to be covering my article on the review of Lee Iacocca's
• 0:33
  autobiography, Iacocca, An Autobiography by Lee Iacocca, with William Novak.
• 0:41
  I was never planning on diving deep into the history of Lee Iacocca, but after
• 0:45
  reviewing A Faster Horse, a documentary surrounding the creation of the sixth
• 0:50
  generation Mustang on Netflix, the film stirred up a name I hadn't heard in years.
• 0:55
  Lee Iacocca.
• 0:56
  This mysterious, legendary, near mythical name was thrown
• 1:00
  around a lot when I was a kid.
• 1:01
  But who was this masked man?
• 1:03
  Not knowing any better, I always put Lee up there with Ross Perot,
• 1:07
  Kissinger, Rockefeller, and others as some old business dude.
• 1:11
  Pretty generic and never really knowing what people were truly on about.
• 1:14
  Later, admittedly, still not knowing much, I came to realize one thing to be true.
• 1:19
  Like John Z.
• 1:20
  DeLorean, Iacocca was an icon and a car guy.
• 1:24
  In October, as fate would have it, I stumbled across this 34 year old tome.
• 1:28
  A well kept copy of Iacocca's autobiography was hiding along
• 1:32
  the shelves at a vintage store.
• 1:34
  And for the low, low price of 1, why not grab it?
• 1:38
  After a few days of light reading, every great story has a beginning
• 1:42
  and most recounts of a person's life all start at the same time.
• 1:46
  It was never easy for me.
• 1:47
  I remember sitting on the porch with my family singing and dancing
• 1:50
  down to Mississippi as quoted by Steve Martin as Navin R.
• 1:54
  Johnson in the 1979 movie, The Jerk.
• 1:57
  So you can imagine how this goes.
• 1:59
  Iacocca, born and raised by Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania, does
• 2:03
  some schooling and ends up working for Ford in the late 1940s.
• 2:06
  Mic drop.
• 2:07
  Saving time, I'll also condense Iacocca's early years for you.
• 2:11
  After getting his mechanical engineering degree at Lehigh University and being
• 2:15
  recruited by Ford Motor Company, he and 50 other new engineers were in a year long
• 2:20
  rotational program exposing them to all aspects of how Ford operated internally.
• 2:25
  After graduating from that program, he and a few others decided they
• 2:28
  would much prefer to be in sales.
• 2:30
  Iacocco knew that if he stayed in the shadows at Ford, he may very well have
• 2:35
  designed some cool feature, part, or even a car, but he would be stuck where he was.
• 2:40
  His ambition, and maybe his ego, drove him to seek higher ground
• 2:44
  out in front of the customer.
• 2:46
  Even today, there is no formal training for salespeople.
• 2:49
  They say people are just born with it.
• 2:51
  Whatever that means.
• 2:52
  But like most people that want to move ahead quickly, sales
• 2:56
  is the place to earn or burn.
• 2:58
  If you under promise and over deliver management is happy and the recognition
• 3:02
  and opportunities are lavish.
• 3:04
  So why is Lee's story important to the automotive industry,
• 3:07
  let alone motor sports?
• 3:08
  Fast forward to 1961.
• 3:11
  Iacocca has steadily moved up the ranks.
• 3:13
  The overall impression depicted of Ford at the time was that the
• 3:17
  company had plateaued and lost touch with the changing market climate.
• 3:20
  The cars had become lackluster and unattractive, most notably with the
• 3:24
  introduction of the bargain basement Ford Falcon some years earlier.
• 3:28
  By this point, Iacocca was what, by today's standards, would be called
• 3:31
  a business unit manager, and he was leading a clandestine tiger team of
• 3:36
  engineers to develop a car that would reignite interest in the Ford brand,
• 3:39
  especially after the Edsel fiasco.
• 3:42
  In Iacocca's opinion, it was better to seek forgiveness from the upper
• 3:45
  management than beg for their permission.
• 3:48
  Quote unquote, Project Cougar, the original name for
• 3:50
  the Mustang, was underway.
• 3:52
  Iacocca is often credited as, quote, the father of the Mustang.
• 3:56
  And as the project lead, some of that is probably true.
• 3:59
  But the credit is also given to Joe Oros, the design studio head.
• 4:03
  However, through an internal competition, Dave Ash is the engineer that put pen
• 4:07
  to paper and created the Mustang design that won over six other submissions.
• 4:12
  In what was typical cost cutting measures of the times, the
• 4:15
  original Mustang was built upon a slightly modified Falcon chassis.
• 4:19
  The price point was right, the timing was right, and the Mustang took the
• 4:22
  world by storm in retrospective.
• 4:24
  Iacocca didn't become famous inside of Ford because of the car, but
• 4:28
  because of the sales numbers it drew.
• 4:31
  The Mustang sold 418,812 cars in its first year at a price point of $2,368.
• 4:39
  That's just shy of 1 billion.
• 4:41
  With a B in gross sales in 1965 dollars.
• 4:45
  The adage in sales is, quote, you're only as good as your last two quarters,
• 4:49
  and Iacocca had definitely locked in his future for the next few years.
• 4:54
  Held in some regard as a fixer, Iacocca was moved to the Lincoln Mercury division.
• 4:58
  He had repeat successes for the dying brand by pushing the new Cougar, based
• 5:02
  on the Mustang, and the Mark III, based on the Thunderbird, to debut riding
• 5:06
  the coattails of the Mustang hype.
• 5:08
  After his three peat of successes, Iacocca was eventually moved into the position of
• 5:13
  president of Ford Motor Company, making him Henry Ford II's right hand man.
• 5:18
  Timing always seemed to be on Iacocca's side, at least according
• 5:21
  to the picture painted in the book.
• 5:22
  For example, he dodged a bullet when interim Ford president Simon Bunky Knudsen
• 5:28
  undid the Mustang Mania by making it bigger, wider, heavier, and more costly.
• 5:33
  Sales plummeted.
• 5:35
  Iacocca would also see successes in Europe with the launch of the
• 5:37
  Fiesta during the oil crisis.
• 5:39
  The Fiesta was a name that until recently had all but disappeared
• 5:44
  from the automotive landscape.
• 5:45
  Fast forward again to 1979.
• 5:48
  Sparing you the details, Iacocca is forced to resign from the Ford Motor Company
• 5:52
  and takes the helm of a nearly dead Chrysler Corporation a few months later.
• 5:57
  Successes with the K cars, for example the Aries being the most famous,
• 6:01
  these front engine, front wheel drive vehicles boosted sales during a
• 6:05
  tough economic downturn in the 1980s.
• 6:08
  Along with the debut of the Dodge Caravan, the first real people mover in
• 6:11
  the United States that appealed to the masses in the same way that the Volkswagen
• 6:15
  Type 2 microbus did in the 1960s, this helped return Chrysler from the grave.
• 6:20
  Pushing to acquire American Motor Company for their Jeep line was
• 6:23
  another bold and prosperous move for Chrysler under Iacocca's tenure.
• 6:27
  It really seemed as though Iacocca had some sort of Midas touch, but in his
• 6:31
  book, he's quite humble about all the vehicle successes and places more of the
• 6:36
  credit on managerial, organizational, and cost cutting procedures he
• 6:40
  implemented inside of the companies.
• 6:42
  At Chrysler, he was also very fortunate to be able to recruit from his network of
• 6:45
  former co workers, who were also dismissed from Ford to help right the ship.
• 6:51
  I feel that the reconstruction period at Chrysler during Iacocca's tenure
• 6:54
  can be easily summarized in this parody video of Dodge Aries owners.
• 6:59
  So take a look.
• 7:00
  So what does this all have to do with motorsport?
• 7:02
  Two very important things.
• 7:04
  One, had it not been for Iacocca's determination to prove Henry Ford
• 7:09
  II wrong about the need for a 2 plus 2 sports car in the mid 1960s, the
• 7:13
  Mustang would have never been born.
• 7:16
  The Ford Motorsports Program took on a whole new direction as
• 7:19
  popularity with the Mustang grew.
• 7:21
  Ford could now leverage another vehicle, more importantly a production vehicle,
• 7:26
  instead of something highly specialized like the GT40 in their racing endeavors.
• 7:31
  It also gave the weekend warrior a car he could easily access,
• 7:34
  modify, and take to the track.
• 7:36
  Two, Iacocca had the vision to re partner with Carroll Shelby, as he
• 7:41
  had in the past at Ford, to greenlight Project Viper in the late 1980s.
• 7:46
  Under Iacocca's tenure, we saw the first Viper hit the streets in late
• 7:49
  1992, and like the Mustang in 64, it was something new, something
• 7:54
  special, and something unforgettable.
• 7:57
  The Viper's development, housed in a separate facility with only 50 people
• 8:00
  assigned to it, also gave birth to the SRT division, whose badge still graces many
• 8:05
  high performance Chrysler products today.
• 8:07
  Both the Mustangs and the Vipers have had great racing careers,
• 8:11
  are both highly sought after, and continue to turn heads today.
• 8:14
  Had it not been for Iacocca's vision to greenlight these programs and his love
• 8:18
  for all things automobiles, I believe the motorsports and the automotive landscape
• 8:23
  would have looked very different today.
• 8:25
  Can you imagine a world without the Mustang or even the minivan?
• 8:29
  Unfortunately, many of the Chrysler vehicles produced during the
• 8:32
  resurrection aren't something held in high regard as collector's items.
• 8:35
  And even on a recent trip to a used auto parts center, I counted four
• 8:40
  Iacocca era Chryslers stacked together.
• 8:43
  A LeBaron, a New Yorker, an Omni, and a Shadow.
• 8:46
  But these cars, describe them however you like, were some of the cars
• 8:50
  that kept Chrysler from going under.
• 8:53
  I learned a lot from this book, and it hit close to home in many ways.
• 8:56
  I was able to expand my knowledge, not just about the inner workings of the
• 9:00
  automobile industry, but also about being an effective manager, what it takes to be
• 9:04
  a charismatic leader, and also navigating through the turbulent world of sales.
• 9:08
  This book holds many pearls of wisdom that are still relevant today.
• 9:12
  Looking back, Iacocca is often regarded as a titan of industry and a hero.
• 9:17
  Though I am doubtful that Mr.
• 9:18
  Iacocca, at 94 years old at the time of this article, would ever
• 9:22
  be reading this review, I will tip my hat to him just the same, with
• 9:26
  the utmost respect and sincerest sentiment on the behalf of all of us.
• 9:30
  Thank you, Lee.
• 9:38
  We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcasts brought
• 9:42
  to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 9:45
  If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
• 9:47
  to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
• 9:52
  And if you'd like to learn more about the content of this episode,
• 9:55
  be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.
• 9:59
  org.
• 10:00
  We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through
• 10:04
  our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans,
• 10:07
  families, and friends through Patreon.
• 10:10
  For as little as 2.
• 10:12
  50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional
• 10:16
  Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team
• 10:21
  of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster.
• 10:26
  So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.
• 10:30
  patreon.
• 10:30
  com forward slash GT motor sports, and remember without you,
• 10:35
  none of this would be possible.