lacocca: An Autobiography
Iacocca, Lee & Novak, William
IACOCCA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Lee Iacocca, with William Novak/Bantam Books/$19.95
P.J. O'Rourke
You see the poor bastards at every airport in the country and all the Ramada Inns, Avis counters, and...
...He blasts America as "a nation enamored with investing in paper" as though the cash represented by stocks, bonds, and certificates of deposit were all jammed in a sock under Carl Ichan's mattress...
...To say the least, testifying before congressional and Senate committees has never been my idea of fun and games...
...The man works hard...
...Horrible Yves Saint Laurent buckles peek out the bottoms of the waistcoats...
...But let's be fair...
...And General Motors is investing 1.5 billion dollars in a new domestic small car division, presumably not for kicks...
...They said: "This guy is going to lead us to the promised land...
...The union loved me...
...What's more, he likes to have a few shooters and get wide: Henry tried to be sophisticated and European...
...He discusses the overseas retail prices of Japanese cars without reference to Value Added Tax, indicts the Japanese for exporting unemployment to the United States (How do they pack it...
...They are America's young management meatballs...
...Every nitpick in his life must be of compelling interest to us, his co-adulators: When I was in sixth grade there was an election for captain of the student patrol...
...When Henry's father died, Eleanor Clay Ford had taken over the family and put her son Henry in charge...
...The patrolmen all wore white belts with a silver badge, but the lieutenant and the captain got to wear special uniforms with special badges...
...O'Rourke You see the poor bastards at every airport in the country and all the Ramada Inns, Avis counters, and Beef-and-Blank restaurants...
...I loved the idea of wearing that uniform, and I was determined to be the captain...
...That's a euphemism for feeling lower than whale shit...
...He took a risky job at a troubled company and managed to put it in the . black...
...Iacocca calls the Mustang II "a terrific design...
...After the third bottle of wine, all bets were off...
...To sum up: nothing stands still in this world...
...get off your asses and do what needs to be done for the black community," then later that day used the word "coon...
...It has overtaken In Search of Excellence as the nation's most popular business book...
...There is persistent name-dropping done mostly with a degree of deftness thus: Once, at a private dinner with Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach and a friend of mine . . . And every now and then we are treated to a passage of the following kind: Once [Henry Ford] and his wife, Cristina, came to our house for dinner...
...Iacocca's book is filled with managerial balloon juice...
...The audience was breathless as a shining white Cougar drove onto the sand...
...He claims the Chevrolet Vega had a "pancake aluminum engine...
...They're dressed in poly-blend vested suits and don't know not to wear a belt with the vest...
...And the following explains better than John Stuart Mill himself could what it is Lee Iacocca does for a living...
...And Iacocca: An Autobiography is literature for our time...
...It is adequate...
...the speed of the boss is the speed of the team...
...Well, Lee is not going to take this lying down, not when he's got a whole book of his own to say things in...
...Henry used tax shelters...
...Thomas, we unveiled the new Cougar...
...As for Lee Iacocca, he's being bruited about as a 1988 Democratic presidential candidate...
...She also kept him somewhat in line...
...Does it spoil...
...This much can be blamed on the amanuensis, William Novak, who should know better and ought to be held by his heels and shaken until his brains run out his ears and some more useful innard slides down and fills his skull...
...My copy looks like some origami instruction manual, it is so dog-eared from marking idiocies...
...It sucked...
...Oh, let's not be fair...
...Actually I always thought he hated women-except for his mother...
...He says, "Now, it's true that you can't make money on small cars-at least not in this country...
...One sick bunny, that Henry Ford...
...He...
...A couple of months after I arrived [at Chrysler] something hit me like a ton of bricks...
...He is a paranoid egomaniac...
...on the island of St...
...the softest, plushest ride in the world...
...And every man jack of them has a copy of Iacocca: An Autobiography under his arm...
...He exhibits general ignorance of business principles...
...Iacocca's idea of engineering: The [Mercury] Marquis had achieved...
...The meatball knows it...
...Of course, self-love cannot be displayed in full bloom without a leafy green background of hatred for others...
...It is the New York Times' number one nonfiction bestseller...
...A banker-grey two-piece chalk stripe with a button-down shirt and a pindot tie and at least you'll "really look" like you've got some sense...
...And Henry Ford and women...
...In addition to being decision-makers, managers also have to be motivators...
...Check under Brooks Brothers...
...He berates the Federal Reserve Board for being primarily concerned with banking...
...They have shoes with metal dingles, vinyl briefcases, Seiko watches...
...But when she died in 1976, his whole world came tumbling down...
...Rapier thrust follows rapier thrust: Lee wanted a signed photograph of Henry Ford, but Henry never got around to signing it...
...The man is consumed by pride and besotted with vanity...
...First, there is the beastly style, coarse, disorganized, repetitious, and bulked with oatmeal filler: During that time the factories were simply not operating, which meant that both the machinery and the workers were idle...
...His idea of design: My plan was to create a new car using the same platform, engine, and even the roof, but to make enough changes so that the car really looked new and not like a spinoff of the T-Bird...
...My parents were there, too, and Henry spent half the night telling them how great I was and that without me there wouldn't be a Ford Motor Company...
...Henry told his executives to...
...Unfortunately, the crisis at Chrysler was so severe that I never really got to know them...
...With Iacocca in the next office, his head as large as a haystack and barber-ing from nine to five about what a big lasagna he is, who wouldn't need a drink...
...He says, "The K-car is a sensational product...
...That is, it stinks...
...Lee Iacocca is a hero for our time-a conceited, big-mouth, glad-handing huckster who talked the government into loaning his company piles of money...
...Moreover, Iacocca exhibits specific ignorance of the automobile business...
...It's a wonderful story, except for one problem: it's not true...
...The meatballs in the airports would be better off reading the phone book...
...The only way you can motivate people is to communicate with them...
...Iacocca launches a rhetorical assault the likes of which has not been heard since Cicero accused Marc Antony of screwing the pooch...
...Anything can be excused by genius, and Iacocca has been called one...
...And he'd just got done telling Lee's mom and dad what a swell kid they'd raised, too...
...The man deserves no better...
...The door opened, and out stepped singer Vic Damone, who began to entertain...
...Over 1.4 million copies have been printed, and each is being read by someone who painfully traces his way down the page with a finger and moves his lips...
...John Riccardo and his wife, Thelma, were two of the finest people I've ever met...
...And he proudly takes credit for the stupid seatbelt interlock ignition system that appeared on 1973 cars and disappeared as quickly as owners could unhook it...
...But Honda does, at its Marysville, Ohio plant...
...But where's this genius parked...
...No one who's lived through it can ever forget...
...Also, there's the earthy wit: This was probably the greatest jolt I've ever had in my business career...
...They are too clinical and blame-evading...
...and he claims this for the United Auto Workers' reaction to his ballyhooed 1980 salary of $1 a year: From that day on I was their pal...
...We need older, stricter words...
...At a beach lit by clusters of brilliant torches, a World War II landing craft pulled up to the shore and lowered its ramp...
...This book is rubbish...
...If he can just read carefully enough he'll crack the code: "How I Bturned personal failure, corporate debt, the two-bit K-car, and a goofy last name into glory, fame, and worldwide respect...
...Henry sold the company plane to the Shah of Iran for five million dollars and "The company lost a bundle on the deal...
...But then came the Depression...
...a number of journalists have reported (or repeated) that my parents went to Lido Beach in Venice for their honeymoon and that I was named Lido to commemorate that happy week...
...Darn that old Henry Ford, anyhow...
...We were running out of cash...
...On another occasion, he took me to meet his good friend L.B.J...
...The rest of the problems are Iacoc-ca's own...
...But it was all a facade...
...When I thought about it, I was bereft...
...The secret is in there...
...But those are not the terms...
...Chapter ten begins with the sentence, "In 1975, Henry Ford started his month-by-month premeditated plan to destroy me...
...IACOCCA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY Lee Iacocca, with William Novak/Bantam Books/$19.95 P.J...
...O'Rourke's review of Peter Collier and David Horowitz's The Kennedys: An American Drama appeared in the February American Spectator...
...It had nothing of the kind...
Vol. 18 • May 1985 • No. 5
