Word: mcnamara
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even within the Ford hierarchy, businesslike Bob McNamara was to many little more than an awesome name. Up daily at 6, he was at his desk in Dearborn no later than 7:30, seldom left before 6. He rarely attended the hail-fellow parties other automen love, even more rarely invited the brass to his home-a modest, $50,000 English Tudor house near the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, far from the mansions of most other auto executives in Bloomfield Hills and Grosse Pointe. An ardent mountain climber, McNamara reads widely and well (current choices: The Phenomenon...
...Ford, McNamara played a major role in bringing out the compact, best-selling Falcon (and a lesser one in putting together the ill-fated Edsel). He also dismayed car connoisseurs by changing the sporty Thunderbird from a two-seater to a four-seater-a decision, however, that more than tripled "T-bird" sales. As a reward for such judgments, McNamara has become a millionaire, and last year earned $410,000 (about $150,000 after taxes). Last week McNamara announced that in addition to taking a mammoth salary cut to serve as Defense Secretary (statutory pay: $25,000, plus...
...McNamara was suggested for Defense by Manhattan Banker Robert Lovett, himself a onetime Secretary of Defense (1951-53), who had first been offered the job in the Kennedy Administration. The Pentagon, highly fond of retiring Secretary Thomas Gates, sighed at the thought of educating the fourth Secretary in eight years, and some recalled the memory of the lackluster regime (1953-57) of another automan, General Motors ex-President "Engine Charlie" Wilson. (In an echo of Wilson's oft-quoted remark, a newsman asked McNamara: "Do you believe that what's good for Ford is good for the country...
Detroit associates expect that McNamara will be dutifully efficient in following Jack Kennedy's lead; they also expect that his austere manner and lack of defense experience may lead to personal difficulties until he gets the feel of Washington and his new job. Once he does, it will be clearly good for the Pentagon and the U.S. if the man from Ford can go on making "an awful lot of right decisions...
...Henry Ford II, 43, chairman and chief executive officer of the Ford Motor Co., reassumed the post of president vacated by Robert S. McNamara, who resigned to become Defense Secretary (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Ford is filling the post only temporarily, touching off a guessing game as to who will be the next president. Among the most likely candidates: John Bugas, 52, vice president of Ford's international group; James O. Wright, 48, chief of Ford's car-and-truck division (McNamara's job before he became president...