Word: chryslers
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...says Iacocca. "He's coming back to the U.S. after a four-year absence when the culture has changed. I don't play elder statesman, but he needs my guidance for a while. He understands that. There's plenty of responsibility to go around." Concurs Eaton, who pulled into Chrysler headquarters in a new Jeep Grand Cherokee at 7:45 a.m. last Friday for his first full day on the job: "If there weren't any personal chemistry between us, I wouldn't be sitting here right...
...protean treatment by Iacocca of his own proteges hardly inspires confidence that the road will be smooth. The consummate car guy has repeatedly extended and withdrawn his favor since 1978, when he arrived at Chrysler from Ford following his own bitter ouster by Henry Ford II. The first heir apparent was Harold Sperlich, who preceded Iacocca from Ford and developed the K-car line of compact autos that kept Chrysler alive in the early 1980s. Then came financial wizard Gerald Greenwald, also from Ford, in 1979. As Sperlich faded, Greenwald rose to become vice chairman. Just as he was approaching...
Whatever Iacocca's motives were, he and Lutz soon found Chrysler too small for both their reputedly full-size egos. Lutz sealed his fate by being "honest to a fault," in the words of a close observer (who, like many others, spoke only off the record). Lutz declared all too openly that he thought Iacocca was past his prime and that credit for Chrysler's upcoming line of vehicles was as much his as Lee's. While many experts agreed that Lutz had been the chief engineer, an infuriated Iacocca began talking to directors last year about yet another outsider...
...wasn't alone. In the past three years, nine top Chrysler executives have deserted. They included Greenwald, who left in 1990 to lead an aborted worker buyout of United Air Lines' parent company (after pocketing $9 million for his work on that deal, he landed as a managing director for investment banker Dillon Read); and Robert S. ("Steve") Miller, another vice chairman and prospective Iacocca heir, who quit in February to go to Wall Street after telling the board that the right management team for Chrysler would be Lutz as top man and Miller himself...
...this turmoil convinced company directors that the succession issue had to be settled. But the comings and goings had left the company divided into factions. So when board members met on March 14 in Chrysler's opulent suites on the 38th floor of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, they faced four possible choices...