Word: lacocca
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Power struggles are nothing new at Ford Motor Co., but the one that climaxed last week was a stunner. After weeks of futile maneuvering to save his job, Lee lacocca, 53, the harddriving, cigar-chomping president of the world's fourth largest manufacturing company, found himself quite bluntly sacked by his equally tough-minded boss, Chairman Henry Ford II. It was the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes quarreling between two of the auto industry's most respected-and often feared-executives. The end came for lacocca following a day of stormy meetings of the ten-member...
...Wheels, sums up a relationship between two strong-willed men that was never warm and has been deteriorating for several years. "The body chemistry wasn't right," said Henry W. Gadsden, one of the several outside directors who hoped that the president could stay on. Both Ford and lacocca can be at times charming, abrasive, cordial and arch. A clash of their personalities was all but inevitable from the moment that Ford, the celebrated heir who liked to remind subordinates that "my name is on the building," elevated lacocca, the ambitious hired manager, to president in 1970. Early rumored...
Ford has grown increasingly preoccupied with providing for an orderly transition before the eventual takeover of his job by another Ford-most likely his only son, Edsel, 29, an executive of Ford of Australia Ltd. The first open signs of Henry Ford's determination to nudge lacocca aside came 15 months ago. In a maneuver that infuriated lacocca, who throughout his presidency had alone reported directly to the chairman, Ford set up a three-man "office of the chief executive" composed of himself, lacocca and Vice Chairman Philip Caldwell...
...change diluted lacocca's control over day-to-day operations, and sent him on a supersecret scouting mission for a possible job as assistant and heir apparent to J. Stanford Smith, chief executive of International Paper Co. The talks came to nothing. lacocca's role at Ford was reduced still further only a month ago when Ford expanded the office of the chief executive to include his brother William Clay Ford, 53, owner of the Detroit Lions football team. At the time the internal structure of the office was modified so that lacocca could no longer report...
...lacocca thought he had a better idea. An eager young sales manager in the 1950s, he figured he would pep up a dull convention of 1,100 Ford salesmen by proving in a live demonstration that if he dropped an egg from a 10-ft-high ladder onto Ford's new crash-padded dashboard, the egg would not break. He was wrong. Until last week, that was one of the very few times that lacocca came close to having egg on his face. After 32 years with Ford, the plain-spoken son of an Italian immigrant was a Horatio...