'He always filled the ball park:' Colleagues, rivals pay tribute

Notable comments, quotes and reaction through the years about former Chrysler CEO and Chairman Lee Iacocca, who died July 2, from former colleagues, journalists and others:

"He's like Babe Ruth. He hit home runs and he struck out a lot. But he always filled the ball park."

-- The late Ben E. Bidwell, Chrysler’s retired vice chairman, in The New York Times, Dec. 18, 1992.

“His talent knew almost no bounds. While his ‘car guy’ gut feel failed to evolve in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, (he was convinced that Americans would always love vinyl roofs, Greek-temple grilles, opera windows with little gold stripes, and fake wire wheel covers), he was nearly infallible when those design trends ruled.”

-- Bob Lutz, former president of Chrysler, on Iacocca in his 2013 book, “Icons and Idiots”

“How much pasta can the man eat, anyway?”

-- UAW President Douglas Fraser, the lone Chrysler director to vote 'no' on a new three-year employment contract between Iacocca and Chrysler at the end of 1983 that effectively tripled Iacocca’s salary.

"The public debate about Iacocca has been running since 1964, when he appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek for inventing the Ford Mustang, while other (more retiring, less conniving -- your choice) executives remained anonymous. But Iacocca has never played by the same rules as everyone else. Even his bad ideas are bold, brash, and visionary. How many other CEOs would have tried to merge their companies with Volkswagen, Fiat, and Ford? Linking up with one of them would have solved some short-term financial problems. But Chrysler could not have emerged as a productivity and design leader if it were tied to another automaker."

-- Journalist Alex Taylor III, in Fortune, on June 24, 1996.

“He has become an industrial folk hero in a supposedly post-industrial age, and more improbably still, a corporate capitalist with populist appeal… admired by working class and ruling class alike.”

-- Time, April 1, 1985

"I felt like his $100,000-a-year bride, a woman who received a salary. I was there to fulfill what Lee wanted … [After he retired in 1992] it was like hell. He was so unhappy. And there was never any time for me. . . . It was just Lee, Lee, Lee, all day long, all night long. . . . His favorite saying was: 'You pick one out of the herd and try to make it work.' . . . That's what I was -- I was picked out of the herd."

-- Restaurateur Darrien Earle, Iacocca’s third wife, who received a $100,000-a-year household allowance from him but still chafed under the restrictions of corporate life, to a Detroit radio station after the couple divorced in 1995.

"Lee Iacocca was truly bigger than life and he left an indelible mark on Ford, the auto industry and our country.  On a personal note, I will always appreciate how encouraging he was to me at the beginning of my career. He was one of a kind."

-- Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford

"The world has lost a great leader. I always asked myself, 'What would Lee do?' when faced with tough choices. He was a true visionary and the last authentic automotive tycoon; a tough minded but big hearted man of action."

-- Jim Press, former head of Toyota Motor Sales USA and former president and vice chairman of Chrysler LLC 

"He played a historic role in steering Chrysler through crisis and making it a true competitive force. He was one of the great leaders of our company and the auto industry as a whole. ... Lee gave us a mindset that still drives us today – one that is characterized by hard work, dedication and grit. ... His legacy is the resiliency and unshakeable faith in the future that live on in the men and women of FCA who strive every day to live up to the high standards he set."

-- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles statement

“Lee Iacocca loved America, the auto industry and the people who make it run — from the shop floor to the showroom.”

-- Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors

“Lee was a visionary, inspiring all who came to work with him to reach beyond. He took the organization with him and cared for all of us on the path. He was the greatest marketing mind I ever encountered by a mile, and came to define the customer focus that has so defined America’s commercial success. Justifiably proud of his many accomplishments, he was willing to share. One of the greatest honors of my career was his public proclamation that I was the chief architect of two of his most successful babies, the original Ford Mustang and the first minivan at Chrysler. So many powerful moments in automotive history would not have happened without this great man.”

-- Hal Sperlich, former vice president of Ford, president of Chrysler and member of the Automotive Hall of Fame

“I’m a hip shooter. I’ll admit it. But Lee, Lee is a hip shooter deluxe.”

-- The late UAW President and Chrysler director Douglas Fraser, in a 1985 cover story in Time on Iacocca.

“Iacocca, until the oil embargo, and government regulations got very difficult, was a good executive. But Iacocca… let me put it another way. Iacocca was an extremely intelligent product man, a super salesman. It didn’t make any difference what he was selling. He was very imaginative, very bright, very quick. But when it finally came down to 1974, ’75, he got lost all of a sudden. Completely. He got himself into a blue funk over products. I never developed product lines. That wasn’t what I thought my job was. I approved products, but I didn’t develop them. I could say no, or I could say yes, or I could suggest ideas. But I didn’t do the development work. But then our development work became terrible, and it changed all the time. We never had a good program for any duration … He thought he was paying proper attention. But he got thoroughly confused in his later years by what the hell to do, and he had a new program every two to three months. The organization was totally discombobulated.”

-- Henry Ford II, in a series of interviews from 1980-84 with historian David Lewis, on what went wrong between Ford’s longtime chairman and CEO, and Iacocca, president of Ford, until Ford fired Iacocca in 1978.

“For a time being Iacocca was overwhelmed by his bitterness. The firing was the final mortification. It was as if the last few years Henry Ford had confirmed all of Iacocca’s darkest suspicions, that despite his immense salary, his lavish perks, his title of president, he was an employee, the crude little Italian who worked for and had been tolerated by the WASP owner.”

-- Historian David Halberstam, in The Reckoning

“Power, it seems, can be as effective an aphrodisiac as mere beard stubble or a washboard torso. And by that standard Lido ‘Lee’ Iacocca, 62, may be the new Italian Stallion -- a sex symbol for the Corporate Age ... Just look at the guy's vital statistics. He may be America's best-paid exec ($11.5 million in 1985); his autobiography, Iacocca, topped best-seller lists for months (2.6 million copies in print); he has overseen the refurbishing of a great lady (the Statue of Liberty) and a dinosaur (Chrysler); and some people want him to run for President -- he has joked about sharing the ticket with Dr. Ruth.”

-- Fred Bernstein, in People magazine, 1985
 

“Lee Iacocca’s influence over the style and substance of modern business leadership already approaches mythic proportions.”

-- The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 1989

“Intimidation is an important fact of life with Lee. But it’s always pointed, articulate. It’s aimed at a business problem, it’s not personal, and it’s not incoherent expletives.”

-- Robert S. (Steve) Miller Jr., Chrysler’s vice chairman and CFO, in The Washington Post, in December 1987, amid widespread speculation Iacocca would run for U.S. president.

“Thanks to you, Lee, we’re here today. Chrysler came roaring back when people left it for dead.”

-- Former Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli, to Iacocca, at a town hall-style meeting at the Chrysler Technical Center in Auburn Hills, Mich., on June 2008.

“His ambition exceeded his morality.”

-- Harley Copp, Ford’s director of engineering technical services, in testimony in one of many product liability lawsuits against Ford Motor Co. by Pinto owners in the 1970s. Iacocca, who pushed to introduce the Pinto while president of Ford, at one time stopped talking to Copp because of his criticism of the notoriously flammable Pinto.

“The model was totally completed by the time Lee saw it. We conceived the car, and he pimped it after it was born.”

-- Eugene Bordinat, head of design at Ford in the early 1960s, in an interview with Time magazine in 1985, about the evolution of the first Mustang.

"Here's a guy who knows good cars, and when he speaks he tells the truth. People trust him…”

-- Nissan public relations chief Jason Vines, in a 1999 interview with Automotive News, on Nissan approaching Iacocca to be its advertising pitchman the year before.

"He was an American hero. No one else could have done that. He did a helluva job."

-- Veteran Chrysler dealer Hoot McInerney, in a 2006 interview with Automotive News, on Iacocca saving Chrysler.

“Few people understood the sizzle that existed between the car and a driver better than Lee Iacocca. Personable and tough, fun but aggressive, Iacocca did not so much arrive at the president’s office at Ford as wrap it around himself. He had his cars, his Mustang, his Cougar, his Continental Mark III, his Maverick and Pinto. Whether or not Iacocca deserved as much credit as he received for such bestsellers, there was an unmistakable swagger in an Iacocca Ford.” -- Historian Douglas Brinkley, in his 2003 book, “Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress”

"When Lee first meets someone, he finds something the person is interested in, and within 10 minutes that person is spellbound."

-- Carroll Shelby, in People, in 1985

“No one else could have been the spokesman for the company in the time and place in which he found himself. It was like war conditions. He had to take responsibility, and he had to take responsibility, publicly. In the beginning, when he was under so much pressure because of what was happening, we would set up a shoot and he’d be yelling and screaming, ‘Who the hell wrote this stuff?’ … It’s still a struggle [today]. He bitches like crazy.”

-- Ron DeLuca, vice chairman of Bozell, which oversaw Chrysler advertising from 1978 until Iacacca’s final commercial appearance, in USA Today, Sept. 23, 1992, months before Iacocca retired.

“He stayed on too long. Until you’re in your 60s, you can’t know this, but you just aren’t as good as you once were. Things move too fast, decisions have to be made too quickly.”

-- Donald Petersen, retired chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Co., who worked for and with Iacocca at Ford in the 1960s and 1970s, in a 1992 interview with The Associated Press.

"Iacocca and his gray-haired friend [General Motors' Bob] Lutz are the only reasons that there is a viable U.S. auto industry. The only person close to Iacocca in skill set is Lutz, and he is now busy saving the other guys."

-- Fred De Van of De Van Photography, Pine Hill, N.Y., on Iacocca's return as a pitchman for Chrysler in 2005.

"Mr. Iacocca plays second banana to a dreadful Jason Alexander. Tell them to look at the old and corny but charming and effective Dave Thomas spots for Wendy's, then demand to put him in with his very own gruff but effective personality and I may have voted yes."

-- Stanley Becker, retired chief creative officer of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, on the debate over Iacocca’s return as a pitchmen for Chrysler in 2005.

"The No. 1 reason this is a bad move is that the baby boomers looking at Iacocca will see how he looks, it will remind them how old they have become and no baby boomer wants that reminder. No. 2, the others don't know or care who Iacocca is. Gwen Stefani or Usher would be better and this is coming from a pre-boomer aged 61."

-- Sid Wilkins, a senior partner in Wilkins & Wilkins International, Palo Alto, Calif., on Iacocca’s return as a pitchman for Chrysler in 2005.

"The only thing Lee likes about the Japanese system is that their retirees don't leave when they're 65. Japanese executives remain honored advisers."

-- Gerald Greenwald, then-president of Olympia & York Developments and a former Chrysler executive, in The New York Times, on Dec. 18, 1992, on Iacocca's pending retirement.

“Charisma used to be for politicians or for evangelists. Then Lee Iacocca became Chrysler’s chairman. Suddenly charisma in business is interesting.”

-- Toronto Globe and Mail, Dec. 20, 1987

“I told him, 'One thing I'll do that will end up as a benefit to you is make you hate the government so badly that the idea of getting them off your back will motivate you to make this a success.'”

 -- Treasury Secretary G. William Miller, who required Iacocca to file monthly reports on the status of Chrysler’s turnaround under the U.S. government’s loan guarantee program in the early 1980s.

"When Lee Iacocca walks into a room lately, it's like the President or Robert Redford coming in. Heads turn. You can't help but go, 'Wow.' "

-- Keith Crain, then publisher of Automotive News, in People in 1985

“In an industry where strong executive rule is a matter of course, Lee A. Iacocca defined authority with such force that his persona and that of the Chrysler Corporation are virtually indistinguishable.”

-- The New York Times, July 14, 1991

“He seems [to be] a sort of Rodney Dangerfield who gets all the respect in the world, or George C. Scott’s Patton, turned happy and unthreatening.”

-- Time, April 1, 1985

“Confronted with a crisis, Lee Iacocca has always responded by stirring things up.”

-- Fortune, April 20, 1992

“Iacocca, above all else, is a salesman. His enthusiasm is infectious.”

-- Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1987

“His is the best auto marketing mind I have ever had the privilege to see in action.”

-- Donald E. Peterson, retired chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Co., in Leader Magazine in 1992