Word: lacocca
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Over the long run, and in that big battle for the international market, Chrysler will need help from other automakers to survive. lacocca talks of plans for a new corporate entity he calls Global Motors. Rather than a megacorporation formed from actual mergers between car companies in different parts of the world, he envisions a setup in which Chrysler would undertake joint ventures with foreign manufacturers to get economies of scale or low-cost labor or design or technological expertise. The combines he talks about do not sound so different from the one GM and Toyota announced last month...
Back in the 1970s, Chrysler was moving in that new direction. It acquired 15% of Mitsubishi in 1971 and 15% of France's Peugeot in 1978. The ideal combination, says lacocca, would be a top Japanese producer at the low end, a high-tech European company for the luxury segment and an American company for the middle of the market. As lacocca sees it, "That would be Mitsubishi, Peugeot and Chrysler or maybe Nissan, Volkswagen and Chrysler...
...lacocca worries much about Chrysler's survival these
...days, he shows little sign of it in public. He delights in twitting skeptics who doubt Chrysler's recovery. And in giving Government officials, including President Reagan, advice about how to manage the economy. Reagan appears to like it; hoping to get some ideas for his speech, he invited lacocca to a small dinner at the White House nine days before the State of the Union message. Not long after that, lacocca spent a few hours hobnobbing with the President at Chrysler's St. Louis assembly plant...
...several years, lacocca has been lobbying for a 25¢-per-gal. increase in the federal gasoline tax. Most proponents of the idea see it as a way to discourage consumption, but lacocca knows it would help Chrysler sell its new cars, which have been designed to go farther on less gas than their U.S. competitors. Chrysler's fleet averages 27.5 m.p.g., vs. 24.3 for Ford and 24.1 for GM. If falling oil prices spur a demand for old-fashioned big cars, Chrysler will hurt the worst. Says lacocca: "What's happening with gasoline is wacko. It's crazy. We needed...