Lee Iacocca
Lee Iacocca
Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacoccais an American automobile executive best known for spearheading the development of Ford Mustang and Pinto cars, while at the Ford Motor Company in the 1960s, and then later for reviving the Chrysler Corporation as its CEO during the 1980s. He served as President and CEO of Chrysler from 1978 and additionally as chairman from 1979, until his retirement at the end of 1992...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth15 October 1924
CityAllentown, PA
CountryUnited States of America
The biggest mistake in my life was hiring Eaton as chairman without checking him out first, ... I didn't know him and hired the wrong guy, an error of judgment. When you make a bad people choice it hurts a lot of people for a long time.
Boys, there ain't no free lunches in this country. And don't go spending your whole life commiserating that you got the raw deals. You've got to say, "I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it." It's called perseverance.
They're going to Orlando, and I'm going to Palm Beach. If it were just me, I wouldn't do this. But because there are eight or nine of us, it makes sense to fly this way.
People say to me, ''You were a roaring success. How did you do it?'' I go back to what my parents taught me. Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make something happen.
Something's got to happen in this town to turn it around, or we're all going down the tubes,
Al Gore's extreme ideas about cars could cost a lot of Michigan families their jobs.
You've got to say, ''I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it.'' It's called perseverance.
We believe the combination of these two companies will produce very powerful synergies and puts us on a solid platform from which we should be able to realize our full growth potential.
I was stunned. It was a complete takeover. Chrysler had $12 billion in cash and was stronger at the time and should have bought Daimler.
We at Chrysler borrow money the old fashion way. We pay it back.
If it hadn't been for Henry Ford's drive to create a mass market for cars, America wouldn't have a middle class today,
He was eccentric. He was no prince in his social attitudes and his politics. But Henry Ford's mark in history is almost unbelievable.
I gotta tell ya, with our $2.4 billion in profits last year, they gave me a great big bonus. Really, it's almost obscene.
I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That's a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers.