The Van Lee Iacocca pitched to Ford before he joined Chrysler
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I'm glad Chrysler hired him.
sprice
Active Member
Iococca was one of the last true car execs that was in the "car" business. He was a man that read the market and produced, or tried to produce a vehicle where he read the markets was heading. Delorean was another "car" guy and probable many others I missed. There is no personality in the big three. Iococca stood in front of his product and sold it. Who does that now? "Lead, follow, or get out of the way"
If not I'd be driving Fords now.
azblackhemi
Old Man with a Hat
Why didn't he design the Chrysler mini van with a 440? If that Ford had a 460...
3175375
Senior Member
My bet is that the fuel crisis at the time caused the idea to shrink to a smaller displacement platform.
I do see hints of the Aerostar minivan styling side windows.
azblackhemi
Old Man with a Hat
I know, it was more of a rhetorical question. Or maybe wishful thinking.
What Ford did to compete against Chrysler....
Carmine
Old Man with a Hat
My guess is the caption was written by a millennial who discovered this interesting (and widely circulated) photo, who had no understanding of the market back then, but said "why not" . I wouldn't bet, but I doubt it was even available in an E-series back then. Vans were rather light duty haulers until about 1% started getting ordered with big blocks in the mid-70s.
3175375
Senior Member
Big block - meh...
Could have gone this way:
I can just think of the ‘door open chime’ on that thing. LoL
Carmine
Old Man with a Hat
You nailed it. They're interchangeable PC empty suits. Ralph Giles is the only current auto executive that can see his reflection in a mirror.
Brian (of PT Cruiser fame, the designer) jumped ship to GM when GM hired Lutz. Now he's some honcho with Cadillac design, or higher, I believe. I believe that Gilles penned the design of the current Chrysler 300.
There's a video of Ralph introducing the second-gen Charger SRT8(?) to Jay Leno. Leno's driving the car, with Ralph as the passenger and a camera person in the back seat. Leno does a so-so burnout. Ralph was not impressed, so at the end, Ralph tells Leno "Let me show you how to do a proper burnout" . . . and then proceeds to build lots of expensive tire smoke. Very nice!
Those were the days!
CBODY67
There's a video of Ralph introducing the second-gen Charger SRT8(?) to Jay Leno. Leno's driving the car, with Ralph as the passenger and a camera person in the back seat. Leno does a so-so burnout. Ralph was not impressed, so at the end, Ralph tells Leno "Let me show you how to do a proper burnout" . . . and then proceeds to build lots of expensive tire smoke. Very nice!
Those were the days!
CBODY67
1970FuryConv
Old Man with a Hat
And now Chrysler has been sucked up by a global conglomerate. **** Robert Eaton and Bob Lutz!
From my experience at Chrysler around that time, I felt that all the Chairmen had their strengths and weaknesses, but some were more outspoken than the others.
I personally liked Lynn Townsend for two reasons, he brought Chrysler out of the depths in the 1960s and also strongly supported Elwood Engle's fuselage designs when a lot of other top execs didn't like them at all - so I personally am glad he prevailed, but after the early 70s he wasn't prepared for what came next.
Then the next big chairman that took over was Iacocca who did some really smart moves and was a salesman as noted, and brought Chrysler back from the dead but he too got stale after a while.
Here is just one excerpt that noted some of the thinking that prevailed in that whole time frame from Allpar.............................
Many problems were present in Townsend's reign; the company had taken a cost-based approach to emissions control, while Japanese and German automakers invested in technology to improve driveability while cutting emissions. Bureaucracy had grown; the brands had been allowed to poach each others' turf for far too long, so that a low-end Chrysler was less of a car than a high-end Plymouth, and Dodge stretched from economy (Dart) to near-luxury (Polara), treading on the turf of both brand-mates (these issues started long before Townsend). While Townsend had rooted out inefficiency on his arrival, a fresh look was needed to deal with the detritus of decades under the same leader.
Despite Townsend's strong start and general success, Lee Iaccoca never asked for his opinions. Government-backed loans, the K-car, and even more cuts in personnel, with Lee Iaccoca taking a dollar-per-year salary to boost morale and promote a communal spirit, allowed Chrysler to survive; his cost-cutting and investment in new vehicles pushed Chrysler on to strong profits. Unfortunately, just as Townsend was perhaps in office a few years too long, Iaccoca seemed to stagnate in his leadership; to his credit, he allowed other leaders, including Thomas T. Stallkamp and Bob Lutz, to dramatically change the way Chrysler engineered cars, leading to massive profitability and a string of award-winning, class-leading cars and trucks before Chrysler was acquired by Daimler-Benz in 1998.
I personally liked Lutz a lot just because he was strongly behind the design of the LH cars, such as the 93-97 Chrysler Concorde, Dodge Intrepid, Eagle Vision etc. that I still believe are stunning vehicles in both design and driving/handling/ride excellence. I bought two of them when new because I liked them so much and still do. I have yet to drive any new vehicle that is any better in those respects than they were. He was outspoken then and forceful and still is sought after in the automotive press for his opinions on current matters.
Link to the article: Lynn A. Townsend, President of Chrysler Corporation in...
I believe that a quick read through most all of it gives a better perspective of each of their strengths and weaknesses but it seems the best take-away is that any executive needs to know when to depart so that some new thinking that might better match evolving circumstances can be brought to bear in order to keep a company alive and alert to impending issues that require forward and creative thinking................
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You dig that 460 Van that much
Better than supporting the foreign alternatives..
GM would likely be out of the question.
imperialman
Active Member
As a former owner of an Aerostar ,I have to admit I LIKED it! Decent gas mileage, comfortable, and you sat up high which I liked
rapidtrans
Senior Member
Chrysler had minivan mockups in styling in the mid/late 70s that looked to be based on the Omni-rizon cars. I only saw the design sketches but a brother did see the mock-ups at the time. Supposedly that project was stopped to rush out Lido’s Imperial coupe. Lido insisted on a luxury car for Chrysler. Minivans ended up based on the bigger K car a few years later.
Lutz and Eaton both had worked in Europe for many years and obviously had friends who were in Daimler, back then. As working associates and such.
Lido's time at Ford (start to finish) was chronicled in his autobiography of the early 1980s. Quite interesting and a seldom-seen account of executive life in the car companies, back then. Which followed deLorean's similar book of a year earlier (circa 1981). In the Iacocca book, it mentioned that he discovered a few ex-Ford guys at Chrysler were already working on a fwd minivan when he got there.
There was a second Iacocca book which got far less fanfare, writen pre-Daimler. At that time, there were rumblings that Iacocca wanted to run Chrysler again. The book mentioons that he was seeking the backing of Mr. Kerkorian (the largest stockholder and alleged good friend) to do that. According to the book, Bob Eaton got wind of a cocktail party in Las Vegas to gain support for Iacocca's return to Chrysler, so Eaton flew to Vegas.
Then, if you follow the timeline from that day until the later announcement of the alleged "Merger of Equals", it all kind of fits together. Eaton very probably went to Daimler (or others?) and quietly shopped the possibility of the merger. At the time, Mercedes was struggling with financial problems, engineering and quality problems, as Chryser was minting golden eggs with their very successful new vehicles. Other than the golden eggs in Chrysler's bank account, Chrysler had the talent to fix most of what Mercedes was having issues with. Especially the golden egg things! Given that history, it was no real surprise that Daimler bit for the proposal, to me.
The result was that the combined D-C was too big for Iacocca to gain entry to. Which was obviously what Eaton desired. It also would give him and Tom Gale freedom from Iacocca's demands on styling cues and such.
One of Lutz's main deals was cost controls, mentioned in his book "GUTS". In the second edition, there's an extra chapter on the D-C deal. Somewhat unlike his other comments in the book, he does not have much bad to say about the merger, although the rest of the second edition is exactly as the first edition.
After the merger, a good bit of Chrysler's then-dream team jumped ship to Ford and GM. Chris Theodore went to Ford and worked on the Ford GT. Brian Nesbit (PT Cruiser) went to GM after Lutz did, working magic behind the scenes. Lutz did his work at GM to make things better, cost and manufacturing-wise, but like so many other GM successes, they were not apparently continued after his projects were finished.
At the time, many were afraid that Chrysler would crumble with these desertions. But if those people sought and hired people of their same mindset and orientations, there should have been at least two layers of younger employees to keep things going for a while, until Cerberus came around to bail out Mercedes from the damage they'd done to Chrysler.
On the other side of things, Dr. Z and Wolfgang were probably the kids in the candy store while at Chrysler. End result was that Daimler learned all of the Chrysler "secrets" and fast-moving orientations and adapted them to Mercedes (along with the prior Chrysler golden eggs vanishing!). The Chrysler-ization of Mercedes happened. Probably didn't set too well that Chrysler's new 300 had lots of Mercedes items in it, even if they were from a prior generation of Mercedes. Or that Dr. Z's company car was a Chrysler SRT8!
Kind of funny how that when Chrysler is Chrysler, it's sucessful and makes money (which got Kerkorian excited due to their alleged lack of increased stock dividends), being an attractive take-over object for others. It's obvious that North American operations are now funding lots of European operations, too. Chrysler is still the cash cow.
Funny thing is that in the first Iacocca book, the last chapter discusses Chrysler's future. Which Iacocca claimed needed an international partner for Chrysler to survive. He mentioned FIAT at the best partner, due to its large international sales network. At the time, I scoffed at that thought. But fast-forward a few decades . . . .
Those are my recollections,
CBODY67
Mike66Chryslers
Senior Member
A lot of what you've speculated about w.r.t. the Daimler-Chrysler "merger of equals" was the topic of the book "Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off With Chrysler". It's an interesting read.
There is one important detail that they don't cover too well, because the people in the know presumably didn't want to talk. That was exactly how the message got so confused that Kerkorian thought he'd be doing a friendly takeover but Chrysler treated it as a hostile takeover. The Chrysler exec that Kerkorian met claims he made it clear that Chrysler was not interested in his proposal.
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