Iacocca Blasts Sony Chairman: Chrysler Corp. Chairman...

Iacocca Blasts Sony Chairman: Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca criticized Japan for maintaining what he called a “rigged market” that owed much of its business success to restrictive national trade policies. Iacocca, speaking to the Magazine Publishers Assn. and the American Society of Magazine Editors, specifically complained about critical remarks by Akio Morita, chairman of Sony Corp., in the recently published book, “The Japan That Can Say No.” “I resent like hell being lectured on fairness by a guy who got to be a multibillionaire in our market--wide open to him--while we were being systematically shut out of his,” Iacocca said. “The guy even has the audacity to say that American car companies won’t even try to sell in Japan. Well, we try all right, but it’s tough. I send a Jeep to Japan and the price goes up 70% to 90%. “Japan is a rigged market . . . if Morita didn’t know any more about electronics than he does about fairness, he’d still be trying to figure out how to put together a crystal radio set.”