PHOTO GALLERY: Iacocca's hits, misses on wheels
Over an automotive career that spanned the late 1940s to the early 1990s, Lee Iacocca, former president of Ford and former chairman and CEO of Chrysler, was one of Detroit's most successful executives when it came to product planning.
FORD
The Cardinal would have been Ford's first front-wheel-drive car in the U.S., but Iacocca, general manager of the Ford division, canceled the project in 1962 before it got off the ground. Rather than being ahead of the pack, Ford did not offer a small, fuel-efficient, front-wheel drive car in the U.S. until four years after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, when consumers begged for four-cylinder engines that were stingy on gasoline. Developed by Ford of Germany, the Cardinal was meant to appeal to Volkswagen buyers who were snapping up Beetles at a furious pace. Iacocca was underwhelmed when he first saw it. "It was a fine car for the European market, with its V-4 engine and front-wheel-drive," he wrote in Iacocca: An Autobiography. "But in the United States, there was no way it could have sold the 300,000 units we were counting on. Among other problems, it was too small and had no trunk." The other problems: In the 1960s, fuel economy was a tough sell in the U.S. And the car looked like it was designed by committee, Iacocca wrote. "We simply can't afford a new model that won't appeal to younger buyers," Iacocca wrote in his autobiography.
FORD
While some inside Ford were leery of another new product so soon after the Edsel flop, Iacocca was determined to market a sporty, fun and affordable car to the growing hordes of young Americans. The Ford Mustang became an instant smash when it was introduced in 1964 and remains one of America's most revered automotive nameplates. It helped Iacocca land one promotion after another at Ford, and remains the most defining product achievement of his storied career.
FORD
Iacocca, eager to counter rising gasoline prices and Japanese imports, longed to market a small, front-wheel drive car in the United States beginning in the 1970s. While Henry Ford II thwarted his efforts in the U.S., Iacocca successfully marketed such a car in Europe -- the subcompact Ford Fiesta -- starting in 1976. It went on sale in the United States in 1978, was later dropped, and then revived in 2010, and remains one of Ford's most enduring car nameplates.
Iacocca created the Lincoln Continental Mark III by directing Ford design chief Gene Bordinant to "take the Thunderbird and put a Rolls-Royce grille on it" and do it "on the cheap." Critics called it "...a Thunderbird designed by seven guys named Vinnie." The Mark III, first marketed in 1969, epitomized all of Iacocca's styling excesses -- padded vinyl roof, porthole rear side windows, and a pseudo-spare tire bulge in the trunk. Others called it a Mafia staff car. But it proved popular and almost matched the sales success of Cadillac's rival Eldorado. While another scribe called it "far-fetched and vulgar, a two-seater sports car stretched to the length of a limousine," Iacocca and Ford laughed all the way to the bank. Ford made a profit of $2,000 for every Mark III sold, Iacocca claimed. "We make as much selling one Mark as from ten Falcons," Iacocca once said.
FORD ARCHIVES
In 1969, Iacocca convinced his boss, Henry Ford II, to purchase controlling interest in Alejandro De Tomaso's Italian specialty-car company. Iacocca quickly hatched plans to import the steel-bodied, 3,100-pound Pantera with a top speed of 150 mph. The finished car was unveiled at the 1970 New York Auto Show. Priced at $10,000, it cost twice as much as a Corvette, but much less than a Ferrari. Ford's Lincoln-Mercury division dealers were charged with selling the first of the 1971 cars. But the "bargain exotics" were shoddily built with poor crash protection and inadequate rust proofing. They were so problematic that Elvis Presley reportedly fired a gun at his Pantera after it would not start. Ford pulled the plug on the Pantera project in 1975 but it would not be the last time Iacocca flirted with an Italian carmaker.
FORD
The Ford Pinto proved popular with a price below $2,000. But it was eventually scrapped when Ford settled hundreds of product-liability cases in which the car's rear-mounted gasoline tank caught fire during a rear-end collision. The Pinto also featured a fuel filler neck that sometimes, in a collision, was ripped out on impact, allowing gas to spill and possibly ignite. As part of Ford's senior management and perhaps the Pinto's biggest champion, Lee Iacocca accepted responsibility, but in his autobiography he denied Ford tried to save a few bucks and knowingly made a dangerous car. "The auto industry has often been arrogant," he wrote, "but it's not that callous."
The Plymouth Reliant, pictured, and Dodge Aries -- Chrysler's K-cars -- were already in development when Iacocca arrived at Chrysler in 1978. But he had to launch them as the company was emerging from near-bankruptcy, and he did so with great ceremony by wrapping their arrival in the American flag. They were billed as America's only 6-passenger cars rated at 25 mpg. While the boxy cars were nobody's idea of refinement, they sold well enough after a botched launch -- too many high-priced models with extra equipment at the start -- and provided the platform for additional vehicles, many of them named LeBaron.
CHRYSLER
Detroit automakers had largely abandoned the U.S. convertible market when Iacocca, wanting to have fun again in the early 1980s, decided to use Chrysler's K-car platform to introduce the Chrysler LeBaron convertible. "Let's just build it," Iacocca said, rejecting some pleas inside Chrysler for more consumer research. "We won't make any money, but it'll be great publicity. If we're lucky, we'll break even." It was an immediate hit, with first-year sales of 23,000, well above the 3,000 Chrysler planned. And in the ultimate compliment, rivals GM and Ford soon hatched plans for new convertibles.
CHRYSLER
Lee Iacocca first campaigned to create the minivan while at Ford in the 1970s after the first OPEC crisis but didn't get to realize one of his major product dreams until he joined Chrysler. The Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager -- introduced in 1984 and quickly embraced by waves of Americans because of their low step-in height, roominess, decent fuel economy and noses with an engine up front to provide crush space in the event of an accident -- turned out to be some of the most successful products introduced by a Detroit automaker. They produced billions of dollars in profits for Chrysler over the years. "If you're not number one, then you've got to innovate," Iacocca often said of the strategy behind the creation of the minivan.
While senior management was largely opposed to the move, Chrysler, at the urging of Iacocca, acquired American Motors Corp. from French automaker Renault in 1987. The venerable Jeep brand was the main prize in the deal. Iacocca saw conquest, new challenges, more scale and favorable headlines with AMC back under American ownership. With the Wrangler, Cherokee and new Grand Cherokee, Jeep volume surged from 200,000 units a year to half a million. "If you told me that in just twenty years about every brand in the world would need an SUV ... I would have said you were crazy," Iacocca said in his 2007 book, "Where Have All the Leaders Gone. "But the SUV is a phenomenon."
CHRYSLER
In addition to the Jeep brand, a primary reason Chrysler acquired American Motors under Iacocca's watch in 1987 was to gain access to a new front-wheel-drive sedan -- aimed at the Ford Taurus -- and an assembly plant in Canada. The AMC deal even spawned a new brand -- Eagle. It was Chrysler's first new brand since 1929. Chrysler marketed the large Vision sedan, pictured, under the Eagle banner. But the brand never gained traction in the U.S. and was scrapped at the end of the 1998 model year.
CHRYSLER
In the late 1980s, Iacocca leveraged a friendship with Maserati President Alejandro de Tomaso to market Chrysler's TC by Maserati. It was nothing more than a Milan-built Chrysler LeBaron -- one of the famous K-cars -- with a few pricey components under the hood. Iacocca was infatuated with the project, convinced it was the start of something big. For 1989, the TC featured a 200-hp, 2.2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder Chrysler engine with a Maserati-designed 16-valve cylinder head. In 1990 and 1991, Chrysler dumped the turbo four-cylinder engine for a Mitsubishi V-6 engine, further neutering the car's Italian ties. Over time, reliability and fit-and-finish proved subpar. Reviews were harsh. With a $29,000 price, the TC by Maserati began piling up on dealer lots, forcing Chrysler to discount it by $4,000. Chrysler managed to sell just over 7,000 copies over the course of three years. In his 2013 book, "Straight Talk on Leadership: Icons and Idiots," former Chrysler President Bob Lutz estimated the company lost more than $500 million on the project.
