Hey Scotty,
What is Lee Iacocca‘s legacy with respect to the auto industry?
What is Lee Iacocca‘s legacy with respect to the auto industry?
For AMC fans it's bulldozing all of the pre-1980 AMC parts and tooling when Chrysler took over the company in 1987. (All that was left were parts at dealers that didn't send them all back and parts in private hands.)
Not only does that make restoration of those cars more difficult today, at that time it meant if you had something like an 8-year-old or older AMC vehicle, something still fairly common then, there were virtually no factory parts available.
It was a very hostile takeover, he only wanted the Jeep name. Sad it had to be that way.
He was the inspiration behind the original Mustang. Gale Halderman actually designed it. I knew Gale from the All-Ford car show, I got his autograph.
I saw the Mustang debut at the 1964 NY World's Fair!
That's cool! I have a map of the 1964 World's Fair somewhere. The former owners of our house saved everything. We're still going through boxes 2 years later.
Reinvigorated Ford (Mustang, and a few others).
Saved Chrysler while starting a whole new automobile segment (Minivan).
Killed AMC. Saved the Jeep name, but killed the Jeep legacy/engineering.
Left Chrysler with no-one to strong to follow, only for Chrysler to die a slow death towards Daimler and eventually Fiat.
