Word: lacocca
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...money alone could not solve Chrysler's problems. When lacocca arrived, he found management in disarray. Executive responsibilities were ill defined, and there were few of the sophisticated financial tools needed to keep track of operations. The quickest fix lacocca knew was to hire people who understood the same system he did: other Ford executives. Some were called out of retirement, others were wooed away and enlisted with lacocca for the challenge of engineering a turnaround. Today the four top officers are Ford alumni: lacocca; Vice Chairman Gerald Greenwald; Harold Sperlich, president of North American automotive operations; and Executive Vice...
...swept out the old management, lacocca also axed some bad business practices. The most insidious was a device known as the sales bank. Unlike other automakers, which build few cars except those ordered by dealers either for customers or showroom stock, Chrysler turned out a lot of cars that simply sat in inventory. Although theoretically this meant that production lines could be kept running efficiently, the sales bank became a tool to hide mistakes. Managers ordered tens of thousands of cars built so that they could boost production figures, as well as their bonuses. Most of the vehicles were eventually...
...lacocca's next task was to convince car buyers that Chrysler was indeed alive, even if it was not exactly well. Again he turned to his old employer and wooed away Kenyon & Eckhardt, the New York City advertising agency that had represented Ford for 34 years. lacocca's carrot was a $140 million account, the second largest (after Chevrolet) in the auto industry. The agency decided the most sensible way to spend the money was to market the chairman himself...
Kenyon Chief Leo Kelmenson began to find himself on the phone with lacocca at all hours...
...strategy, evaluating results. He recalls: "Lee used to phone late at night, and then I'd hear from him first thing in the morning. Two days later, the advertising would be on the air. It was fast paced all the time, and it went on for months and months." lacocca inherited the design of the front-wheel-drive K-cars. Though they were not brought out until the fall of 1980, they had been practically ready to go into production when he arrived two years earlier. (He still could not resist tinkering with the grille and adding louvers...