Word: iacocca
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Obviously, he is a star or something. After saving and then rebuilding Chrysler Corp. against all odds, Lido Anthony Iacocca, 60, is now achieving another, more ephemeral sort of American miracle: he has become an industrial folk hero in a supposedly postindustrial age and, more improbably still, a corporate capitalist with populist appeal, an eminence terrible admired by working class and ruling class alike. Not since William Randolph Hearst has there been a tycoon who has occupied the national imagination as vividly as Iacocca...
Much of the rest of the world is at least very, very curious. In Japan, 200,000 copies of Iacocca have been sold in one month. It is first on the London Daily Mail's best-seller list, a bootleg edition is available in Bangkok, and the book is considered a must-read among the Saudi technocratic elite. Says Michigan Governor James Blanchard of his state's favorite son: "Iacocca is the most revered businessman in the world...
From the Keller Building to the design dome is only a quarter-mile, but a general rides, as Iacocca did one recent afternoon in the back of a black Chrysler Fifth Avenue. At the styling dome, six subordinates awaited him, two clutching clipboards and pencils. Iacocca had come to decide how he wants several new cars to look. One seductive prototype parked in the dome will be manufactured beginning in 1988 as a co-production of Chrysler and Maserati, the Italian high-performance carmaker. Iacocca stands in one place, arms folded, studying the maroon convertible as it rotates slowly...
...almost seems like Detroit's go-go days again. And some of the resonances from the old times seem ironic. "In many ways," reckons a member of the Ford family, "Iacocca and Henry Ford are alike." Iacocca, for instance, can be an unreasonably terrifying boss. Says one chewed-out executive: "He's vitriolic and explosive." Ford had Iacocca do his dirty work; former Chrysler executives say that Iacocca has relied on Gerald Greenwald, his vice chairman and suave heir apparent, to deliver the bad news. Iacocca's definition of management by consensus is revealing. "Consensus," he says, "is when...
...most of his life, Iacocca says frankly, his politics have been a function of his class. "When we were poor," he writes in the book, "we were Democrats. But when times were good, we were Republicans." As recently as the 1970s he called himself a Republican, and two years ago he was approached about the job of Transportation Secretary by the Reagan Administration. "I'd happily serve a President on either side to run economic policy," he says. "I would like to be the economic...