Auto industry legend Lee Iacocca, 94

Lee Iacocca with US President Bill Clinton at the White House in September 1993. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

THE man who had a hand in creating the original Ford Mustang, and who once saved Chrysler from bankruptcy, is dead.

Lee Iacocca was 94. He died at his Bel-Air, California home. The Washington Post reported Iacocca’s daughter, Lia Iacocca, disclosed the legendary auto industry executive died from complications from Parkinson’s disease.

A July 2 statement issued by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said; “The company is saddened by the news of Lee Iacocca’s passing. He played a historic role in steering Chrysler through crisis and making it a true competitive force. He was one of the great leaders of our company and the auto industry as a whole. He also played a profound and tireless role on the national stage as a business statesman and philanthropist.”

News agency Reuters said Iacocca’s nearly five-decade career in Detroit — he started at Ford Motor Co. in 1946 — made him one of the first American celebrity CEOs as publications like Time, Newsweek and the New York Times Sunday Magazine portrayed him in articles as the avatar of the US auto industry.

Iacocca’s autobiography made bestseller lists in the mid-1980s, Reuters noted.

The report said Iacocca encouraged his design teams to be bold, which led to sports cars that appealed to baby boomers in the 1960s, fuel-efficient models when gasoline prices soared in the 1970s, and the first family-oriented minivan in the 1980s. This Chrysler Town & Country minivan — and platform-mates Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager — was the bestseller in its segment for 25 years. Well, Iacocca created this segment.

But he first made his name at Ford, when apart from devising clever marketing schemes, he went on to help create the Mustang; both Time and Newsweek featured him and the car on their covers in April 1964.

After he was fired from Ford — Henry Ford II personally sacked him — in 1980 Iacocca was hired two weeks later as president of Chrysler. Later on he pulled the then-struggling Chrysler (now Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) from the brink of collapse. Iacocca managed to secure $1.2 billion in federally guaranteed loans. But these required plant closures, pay cuts for factory workers and layoffs of white-collar staff. Despite these Iacocca saved more than 500,000 jobs. And he paid off the government debts seven years ahead of schedule.

Iacocca kept Chrysler afloat again in the late 1980s to the early 1990s amid a bad US economy. He retired in 1992 and settled down in Bel-Air, California.