Chrysler Couldn’t Have Done It Without Him
In the town where I lived before leaving for Los Angeles, there were a heck of a lot more Chryslers on the road than there were Mercedes-Benzes.
(As opposed to here, where Mercedeses are driven by pizza delivery boys.)
A German automobile could be seen in Detroit about as often as a Dodge Dart in Stuttgart. Oh, you did spot an occasional Volkswagen here or there, but usually a 20-year-old one with 200,000 miles on the odometer and a Make Love Not War sticker on the bumper.
In 1979, Chrysler and VW attempted a merger.
Lee Iacocca ran the company then. His was a powerful presence. By some, Iacocca wasn’t viewed as an auto mogul so much as an autocrat. He was seen as Chrysler’s savior. His mission was to keep America’s third-largest car maker from going belly-up in the scrap yard beside dead Edsels.
Chrysler was an endangered species.
The company it did later merge with, AMC, had long failed to come out with a winner. I remember something called a Gremlin, which was a Pinto without the glitz. I remember something called a Pacer, which looked like a combination of a bulletproof popemobile and a golf cart.
As for luxury models, well, what can I say? Ricardo Montalban did countless TV ads, telling us about a Chrysler Cordoba that came with “rich Corinthian leather.” I never knew if Corinthian leather was superior to regular leather, but, like most people, I believed in Ricardo. He would never steer us wrong.
Sales, alas, failed to go through the rich Corinthian roof.
By the time Iacocca’s bid to take Chrysler global came along, Detroit was filled with resentment for foreign cars. Yet the ’79 VW merger seemed the right move at the right time. Resentment turned overnight to excitement.
Then the stock price rose so dramatically due to the rumored merger, the deal became too expensive to do. The merger was called off.
I wondered if Chrysler could ever recover.
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Lee Iacocca today is acting chairman of two Los Angeles companies. One of them is Koo Koo Roo Inc., the chicken chain. The other is EV Global Motors, which later in 1998, I am told, expects to introduce a brand new line of battery-powered vehicles.
Battery-powered bicycles.
I met Iacocca a couple of times in Detroit, briefly, at social functions. He was a celebrity coast to coast, but in particular there along what I called the Lincoln Continental Divide. His social life was chronicled the way Donald Trump’s is in New York. I know newspaper reporters in Michigan who have written more about Iacocca’s marriages than Liz Smith has about Liz Taylor’s.
He was huge. He did his own national TV spots, the way that Wendy’s burger guy does now. He wrote an autobiography that outsold every nonfiction book but the Bible, or that’s my recollection anyway. Bible first, Iacocca second, Chuck Yeager third. (Every man to his own gods.)
I couldn’t help but think of Iacocca over the past 24 hours, as Chrysler pulled off one of the biggest deals in industrial history.
The man kept the company afloat. He wheeled, dealed, coaxed and cajoled. He went to Washington for help and he went to the average American worker for help. Had it not been for Iacocca, this uber-deal with Daimler-Benz would never have seen the light of day.
There was little mention of him in the Detroit media as of Thursday. I checked. An editorial alluded to the retired executive in passing, but that was about it.
But every Chrysler employee who benefits from this $40-billion coup--the biggest foreign takeover ever of a U.S. company--still owes Lee Iacocca a debt of gratitude.
A German bank will be the merged company’s top shareholder, with roughly 12%. Kirk Kerkorian, the richest man in Las Vegas who doesn’t sing or box for a living, will own a reported 7.52%. This doesn’t surprise me, since Kirk Kerkorian owns 7.52% of everything in the Western Hemisphere, possibly including my house.
The deal valued Chrysler’s stock at $62 a share. Not bad for a company that once teetered at death’s door.
Better Kirk Kerkorian than Jack Kevorkian.
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The new company is called Daimler Chrysler, which to me sounds like a dealership owned by somebody named Mel Daimler.
I asked a friend to flip through a greater Detroit telephone directory, to see how many Mercedes dealerships there were. He found two.
These should multiply like rabbits.
It’s a great day for Chrysler, and for everyone who saved it. I suggest that in Germany very soon, the company should manufacture a new auto called a Der Baron.
