Iacocca Peddles Pedals These Days

He gets out of bed Friday morning at 5:45 and is out in the desert air by 6, riding his red electric bike.

A few early risers in the Indian Wells area recognize the face as he moseys down the road, some of them “maybe wondering if I’ve finally lost my marbles,” he says, chuckling at how incongruous it must look, how unorthodox:

Him, Lee Iacocca, on two wheels.

Father of the Ford Mustang, brains behind the minivan, here he is, Ike on a bike, 74 years old and saddled up on a 65-pound ride with a top speed of 15 mph, putt-putting along, tooling around in transportation that you plug into a wall outlet when you get home.

He’s ready for the questions.

“What do you do when you run out of juice?” someone wants to know, gesturing toward the motor.

“You pedal like hell!” Iacocca answers.

He’s exaggerating. This new E-bike--which goes on sale to the public Monday, only in Los Angeles for now--is no more complicated to pedal than a child’s 10-speed. You can’t go fast and you can’t go far, but you can get around.

Begging the next question: Why should you?

“I know,” Iacocca says. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Why would I, at my age, want to get rid of the Mustangs and Jeeps and minivans that I put in the garage?”

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Back when he was living on the other side of the Lincoln Continental Divide, making automobiles, running Ford and later Chrysler, the last thing that ever occurred to Lee Iacocca was that he would end up a Californian, peddling and pedaling bikes.

“Why in California?” he is asked.

“Because I live here,” he replies.

So associated is Iacocca with the assembly lines and bumper crops of Michigan, he has a hard time making some people comprehend that he’s been a West Coaster for a while, ensconced in Bel-Air in a 12,000-square-foot home that he inhabits alone, divorced from his third wife within months of their moving out here in 1994.

He still possesses trappings of his automotive heyday--the very first Dodge Viper off the line, for instance. Not to mention an original wood-paneled wagon, more made to order for a beach boy than for Motown. As for his 1964 Mustang--an heirloom with a horse on the hood--a few years ago Iacocca gave it to a daughter for her 30th birthday.

Now he makes bikes.

“I want the world’s sexiest bike,” he says. “I want this to be another Mustang.”

Its target audience, though, includes adults Iacocca’s age as well as Generation BMX. Retirement communities, resorts, settings where residents might be moving around by jitney, these are some of the places EV Global Motors, the company Iacocca founded in 1997, is seeking to introduce to the concept of electric bikes.

They are not for freeways. You don’t drive one there. Anyone on an E-bike ($995 retail) is out for shopping or exercise, over no more than a 20-mile range. Beyond that, you can pedal it like a regular bike, or find any standard 110-volt outlet and plug it in. It takes four hours to fully charge.

“Most of the time, it just goes home with you,” Iacocca says, “like a horse going back to the barn.”

If he doesn’t have an Edsel on his hands, a lemon, the idea is this: E-bikes are light, they’re inexpensive, they’re environmentally safe. They are made for kids too old for a bicycle but too young for a motorcycle. They are made for seniors too tired to walk but equally tired of being driven. They’re for Winnebago owners who crave a second car but don’t want to tie one to a trailer hitch.

“People ask me, ‘How big’s the market?’

“I say, ‘How the hell should I know?’ When they came up with SUVs, I said maybe the market’s a million,” Iacocca recalls. “Next thing I know, they were selling 2 1/2 million. So if you ask me how these bikes will go over, I don’t have a clue.”

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Making the right turn at the right time has always been the name of the auto game. Who knows what the public wants? Who knows why one day the Thunderbird is the coolest car on the road, then the squarest, then as obsolete as a Pinto, then, at the Auto Show, being revived for the 21st century?

A few days ago, Chrysler chose not to go into partnership with Nissan, a year after melding with Mercedes.

“Whoever decided not to is a smart guy,” is Iacocca’s opinion. “Mixing so many partners, so many cultures, it’s hard. I know. When I tried to assimilate AMC with Chrysler, I said it’d take a year, tops. Four years later, I was still busting my --- trying to make it work. And they [AMC] spoke English.”

Now all those cars are in Iacocca’s rearview mirror. He’s not an auto maker; he’s an electric bike maker.

“Hey, Thomas Edison pitched the same idea to Henry Ford 100 years ago,” Iacocca says. “Some ideas take a while.”

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com