Lido Anthony "Lee" Iacocca was an American automobile executive best known for the development of the Ford Mustang, Continental Mark III, and Ford Pinto cars while at the Ford Motor Company in the 1960s, and for reviving the Chrysler Corporation as its CEO during the 1980s.
60 Facts About Lee Iacocca
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Lee Iacocca was president and CEO of Chrysler from 1978 and chairman from 1979, until his retirement at the end of 1992.
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Lee Iacocca was one of the few executives to preside over the operations of two of the United States' Big Three automakers.
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Lee Iacocca was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Nicola Lee Iacocca and Antonietta Perrotta, Italian Americans who had settled in the steel producing region of Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley.
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Lee Iacocca was said to have been christened with the unusual name "Lido" because he was conceived during his parents' honeymoon in the Lido district in Venice.
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Lee Iacocca graduated with honors from Allen High School in Allentown in 1942.
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Lee Iacocca attended Lehigh University in neighboring Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he graduated with a degree in industrial engineering.
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Lee Iacocca then began his career at the Ford Motor Company, working at first as a Ford engineer.
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Lee Iacocca's campaign went national, and Iacocca was called to the Dearborn headquarters, where he quickly moved up through the ranks.
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On November 10,1960, Lee Iacocca was named vice-president and general manager of the Ford Division; in January 1965 Ford's vice-president, car and truck group; in 1967, executive vice-president; and president on December 10,1970.
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Lee Iacocca participated in the design of several successful Ford automobiles, most notably the Ford Mustang, the Continental Mark III, the Ford Escort and the revival of the Mercury brand in the late 1960s, including the introduction of the Mercury Cougar and Mercury Marquis.
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Lee Iacocca promoted other ideas that did not reach the marketplace as Ford products.
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Lee Iacocca convinced company boss Henry Ford II to return to racing, claiming several wins at the Indianapolis 500, NASCAR and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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Lee Iacocca was fired on July 13,1978, even though the company posted a $2 billion profit for the year.
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In 1968, Lee Iacocca foresaw the need for domestically produced, small, fuel-efficient vehicles, and proposed a vehicle that weighed less than 2,000 pounds and would be priced at less than $2,000.
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Lee Iacocca was described as the "moving force" behind the Ford Pinto.
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Lee Iacocca was strongly courted by Chrysler at a time when the company appeared to be on the verge of going out of business and had just sold its loss-making Chrysler Europe division to Peugeot in an effort to generate cash because the company was losing millions already in North America.
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Lee Iacocca joined Chrysler and began rebuilding the entire company from the ground up and bringing in many former associates from Ford.
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Also from Ford, Lee Iacocca brought to Chrysler the "Mini-Max" project, which, in 1983, bore fruit in the highly successful Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager.
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Lee Iacocca had been hired by Chrysler, where the two would make automotive history together.
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Lee Iacocca arrived shortly after Chrysler's introduction of the subcompact Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon.
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Lee Iacocca led Chrysler's acquisition of AMC in 1987, which brought the profitable Jeep division under the corporate umbrella.
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Lee Iacocca retired as president, CEO, and chairman of Chrysler at the end of 1992.
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In 1995, Lee Iacocca assisted in billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's hostile takeover of Chrysler, which was ultimately unsuccessful.
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The next year, Kerkorian and Chrysler made a five-year agreement which included a gag order preventing Lee Iacocca from speaking publicly about Chrysler.
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In July 2005, Lee Iacocca returned to the airwaves as Chrysler's pitchman, along with celebrities such as Jason Alexander and Snoop Dogg, to promote Chrysler's "Employee Pricing Plus" program; the ads reprise the "If you can find a better car, buy it" line, Lee Iacocca's trademark of the 1980s.
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In 1984, Lee Iacocca co-authored an autobiography, titled Lee Iacocca: An Autobiography.
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Lee Iacocca donated the proceeds of the book's sales to type 1 diabetes research.
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In 1988, Lee Iacocca co-authored Talking Straight, a book meant as a counterbalance to Akio Morita's Made in Japan, a non-fiction book praising Japan's post-war hard-working culture.
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Lee Iacocca partnered with producer Pierre Cossette to bring a production of The Will Rogers Follies to Branson, Missouri, in 1994.
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Lee Iacocca invested in Branson Hills, a 1,400-acre housing development.
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Lee Iacocca started a merchant bank to fund ventures in the gaming industry, which he called "the fastest-growing business in the world".
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Lee Iacocca joined the board of restaurant chain Koo Koo Roo in 1995.
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Lee Iacocca sat on the board of the merged company until stepping down in 1999.
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In 1999, Lee Iacocca became the head of EV Global Motors.
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Lee Iacocca continued to serve on the board of the foundation until his death.
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Lee Iacocca was one of the main patrons of the research of Denise Faustman at Massachusetts General Hospital.
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In 2000, Lee Iacocca founded Olivio Premium Products, which manufactures the Olivio line of food products made from olive oil.
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Lee Iacocca donated all profits from the company to type 1 diabetes research.
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Lee Iacocca was an advocate of "Nourish the Children", an initiative of Nu Skin Enterprises, since its inception in 2002, and served as its chairman.
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Lee Iacocca helped donate a generator for the Malawi VitaMeal plant.
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Lee Iacocca led the fundraising campaign to enable Lehigh University to adapt and use vacant buildings formerly owned by Bethlehem Steel, including Lee Iacocca Hall on the Mountaintop Campus of Lehigh University.
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Lee Iacocca played Park Commissioner Lido in "Sons and Lovers", the 44th episode of Miami Vice, which premiered on May 9,1986.
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Lee Iacocca was married to Mary McCleary on September 29,1956.
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Mary Lee Iacocca died from type 1 diabetes on May 15,1983.
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Lee Iacocca married for the third time in 1991 to Darrien Earle.
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Lee Iacocca resided in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles in his later years.
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Lee Iacocca died at his home on July 2,2019, at the age of 94.
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Lee Iacocca's funeral was held on July 10,2019, at St Hugo of the Hills Roman Catholic Church and he was buried at White Chapel Memorial Cemetery in Troy, Michigan.
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Politically, Iacocca supported the Republican Party candidate George W Bush in the 2000 US presidential election.
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Lee Iacocca endorsed New Mexico governor Bill Richardson for President in the 2008 US presidential election.
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On December 3,2007, Lee Iacocca launched a website to encourage open dialogue about the challenges of contemporary society.
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Lee Iacocca introduced topics such as health care costs, and the United States' lag in developing alternative energy sources and hybrid vehicles.
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In 1985, Iacocca received the S Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
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The high amount of publicity that Lee Iacocca received during his turnaround of Chrysler made him a celebrity and gave him a lasting impact in popular culture.
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Lee Iacocca's success serving as Chrysler's pitchman influenced other companies to feature executives in their marketing, such as how fast food chain Wendy's has successfully utilized company founder Dave Thomas as a corporate mascot since the early 1990s.
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Lee Iacocca's image was invoked by rival automaker Ford in the marketing campaign for the 1993 Mercury Villager minivan, which depicted a competing car company led by an unhappy boss with a physical resemblance to Lee Iacocca viewing the Villager with consternation because it is outselling their minivan.
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The 2009 film Watchmen, which is set in an alternative history 1985, took this in a unique direction by showing Lee Iacocca being assassinated by the film's antagonists, which has been said to have angered Lee Iacocca when he learned about it.
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In Ordinary People, a song from Neil Young released in Chrome Dreams II and Bluenote Cafe, Lee Iacocca is quoted in the lyrics as a notable representative of the capitalistic world.
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Lee Iacocca, portrayed by Jon Bernthal, is a major character in the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari, which is a dramatization of the 1960s Ford GT40 program.