mmarshall

As auto enthusiasts, we all spend a great deal of time, particularly here on Car Chat, discussing our own opinions of the auto industry, how it should be run, what our likes and dislikes of certain vehicles are, what we think will sell or not sell, and what should be offered and/or discontinued, etc.... But, let's be realistic.....the real decisions (when not being dictated by new regulations from DOT / EPA / NHTSA) are made by the auto executives, marketers, and bean-counters, though sometimes the stylists, depending on the actual company and its policies, also have some say. So, keeping in mind that those who occupy the big executive suites, and make all those management $$$$$, sometimes have to actually do some managing, who do you think have been the best ones...and/or the worst ones......shaping the modern car industry? (for purposes of this thread, I'd define "modern" as the industry after the inflation, gas-crises, fuel-economy/safety/emissions regulations, and changing public tastes of the 1970s). I lived through that time as a long adult, though I realize that a number of you here are substantially younger than that.

Anyhow, I'll start out by saying that I have the highest opinions of Bob Lutz, Marry Barra, and Chung Moon Koo, and the lowest opinions of Henry Ford II, Roger Smith, and Ferdinand Peich. The others are somewhere in the middle...though Lee Iacocca gets strong feelings from me on both sides.

I like Lutz because he was not the kind of guy to just sit behind a desk and sign papers all day long...indeed, that stemmed from his time as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps (military pilots HAVE to be sharp) Lutz's first love was cars, and it showed. He believed that if companies built good credible products, the money and profits would naturally follow...but he also believed in offering niche vehicles to enthusiasts. That held up his advance at Chrysler, where classic businessman Lee Iacocca never liked him, and, when Lido retired, he got the board to select Bob Eaton as his replacement rather than Lutz. That, IMO, was Chrysler's loss. Lutz, of course, also served at GM, BMW, and a number of other companies. Mary Barra, IMO, was a real breath of fresh air after decades of bottom-of-the-barrel management at GM....particularly the Roger Smith disasters of the 1980s. She inherited what can only be described as a bankrupt mess (and the ignition-switch fiasco), and her astute management (and some help from the reorganization/buyout) completely turned the corporation around. Chung Moon Too, at Hyundai, accomplished the nearly impossible, within a few years, turning what were some of the most poorly-built vehicles in the industry (and the butt of late-night jokes) into what today are some of the best.....and excellent values for the money. Unfortunately, though, his career and notable accomplishments at Hyundai were somewhat overshadowed, later, by an arrest and scandal....but the quality of today's Hyundai and Kia vehicles, nevertheless, bears the mark of his leadership and policies.


OK....now the bad guys. Henry Ford II, who was the grandson of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford (Edsel Ford was Henry's son) had the temperament, personality, and manners of a baboon....combined the stubbornness of a mule. When he didn't want to do something, God Himself couldn't make him see otherwise, He was famous for having his head in the sand....which is why Ford was the last of the Big Three to get a FWD compact, and would not use any non-American-sourced drivetrain components (Henry is famous for saying "No car with my name on it will ever have a Japanese engine"). He was also famous for hiring, promoting, and firing people like clockwork, just so they would never be a threat to him or his family fiefdom. His nickname "King Henry" was well-earned. Roger Smith, at GM, was also stubborn....but in a different kind of way. His motto was "GM is in business to make money, not cars".....though I will give him credit for finding the funds (and determination) to start up the excellent Saturn division and its innovative cars and customer-service....at that time, something the auto industry had probably never seen before. But, except for that, he gave us some of the most poorly-built and disappointing GM products in history. Chrysler, next door, was also building junk and trying to market it as 'high quality".....Smith, unlike Iacocca, didn't even try and sell his 1980s vehicles on quality (he couldn't).

And, in some ways, the worst of all......VW/Audi Chairman Ferdinand Peich. Perhaps the ultimate German/Austrian aristocrat of the auto industry, he ruled with an iron fist that would have cowered King Henry. Bob Lutz, in a column for Road and Track magazine, tells of the time he was at a dinner for auto execs, and sat next to Peich at the one of the tables. He complimented Peich on the latest (at that time) Golf/Jetta, and asked Peich how they managed to get that level of assembly and fit/finish. He told Piech he had been trying to get that at his firm for years now, with little success. Piech answered...."Ah, Mr. Lutz......you like that? At my company, it was very simple. I simply called all of my designers, engineers, plant-managers, and product-inspectors to a meeting and said...I'm sick and tired of looking at sloppy workmanship and misaligned panel-gaps. I have all of your names....and your positions. You all have six weeks, from this day, to start turning out better-made vehicles. If I do not see credible results by then, I will ask for all of your resignations. Problem solved". Lutz, of course, was stunned, as he knew GM or Chrysler could not be run that way. While it has not (yet) been proved, or him formally charged, there is also evidence that Peich was behind the VW/Audi diesel-emission scandal, ordering the diesel engineers to pass emissions tests any way they could, legal or illegal.

And, of course, Lido (Lee Iacocca). He, IMO, was both a good and bad guy. At Ford, he gave us the Mustang, the first American pony car (though the much-slower-selling Plymouth Barracuda arguably beat it to the market in early 1964)..the Mustang was one of the most successful new-vehicle launches of all time. Later, at Chrysler, when he finally got to work together with his old colleague Hal Sperlich (both them had been fired by King Henry, and then re-hired at Chrysler), he gave us the first FWD minivan...a concept that King Henry, at Ford, had turned down. He also, deftly and skillfully, managed to put together a Federal loan, intended to deal with the company's imminent bankruptcy (one of several such loans in the company's history). Lido, later on, said that, had he known the company was actually in that bad a shape, he probably have not taken the job. So, on one side, he was an extraordinarily skilled businessman. But he was also an extraordinary smooth-talker as well, talking out of both sides of his mouth...a classic example was his condemnation of Japanese imports at a time when his vehicles actually used a number of Japanese-sourced components, and, in some cases, even rebadged Japanese vehicles (Plymouth/Dodge/Mitsubishi Colt, Chrysler Conquest/Mitsubishi Starion, etc...). He relentlessly pushed the idea, in TV ads, that a "New" Chrysler Corporation was turning out far better domestically-designed vehicles than in the dark past of the 1970s...which was pure bull-**** (ask me how I know it was B.S. LOL) . But his lawyer-like smooth-talking, and the loyalty of a certain group of traditional American car buyers who refused to defect even with poor quality, kept the company afloat during one of the worst times in its history. So, perhaps more than any other auto executive, I give him mixed-ratings.

oldcajun

My vote goes to Alan Mulally who came from Boeing to save Ford. Alan was the driving force that kept Ford from the bankruptcy that GM and Chrysler went through. He sold Volvo, Land Rover, and Jaguar while they were still worth something. Unfortunately for Ford, Alan came over when he was near the end of his career. Who knows how well Ford would be doing if he had been able to run the show another 10 years.

mmarshall

No arguments with Mulally....I have a high opinion of him myself. His only failing, from what I can remember, was giving us an American-market Focus that was a joke compared to Euro-versions. Nevertheless, though, as you note, his economic prowess did keep Ford out of the GM/Chrysler buyouts. From what I understand, he was high on Trump's list of candidates for Secretary of State before going with Rex Tillerson.

oldcajun

Alan was a Lexus fan prior to his Ford job. When I knew him at Boeing, we often compared his LS to my SC400, There is a story that he drove his LS430 to work his first day to give Lincoln a target.

MattyG

A Lexus website and no mention of the Toyoda dynasty? Lots of Toyota fans here too. I agree that American Detroit execs tend to be more bombastic and are often raised to media pedestals as "stars", but that's often a function of corporate politics which are frequently played up as sports contests.

Who brought us all the Lexus LS 400 and its two door twin the SC 400, or the GS 400? The then chairman of the Toyota board of directors, Eiji Toyoda. He pitched a fight with the Germans back in 1983 and the board agreed with him. IMO that's what is important. Not just the media stars but the senior execs and directors.

Fast forward to the now younger edgy descendant of that dynasty, Akio Toyoda, who has his own racing cred and a younger newer vision. He's the man responsible for the new styling and sporty direction. I'm not convinced he's taking a smart gamble. It's one really big roll of the dice here. IMHO Japan should certainly be included in this thread. Look at Nissan and what they ended up doing as well.

mmarshall

Speaking of Toyota, I think Julie Hamp, under better circumstances, would have possibly (?) made into the top...at least of Toyota's American arm, if not the actual CEO in Japan. But, her arrest in Japan, under what IMO were ridiculous circumstances (she had a legitimate American prescription for the medication she was carrying) pretty much did her in when it came to public opinion....there were even jokes in the press about Julie "Hemp". She fared better, though, than John DeLorean, who was also arrested, in a drug-sting, under questionable circumstances. I purposely avoided DeLorean in my comments above, because his arrest and conviction (later overturned) were highly questionable, and his company, Delorean Motor Company, was small, considered a niche at the time, and produced an unsuccessful, poorly-built, poorly-engineered sports car. Earlier, at GM, of course, he had made some huge contributions (including the 1960s Pontiac GTO), but not as a corporate CEO...he was a manager at both Chevrolet and Pontiac.

Toys4RJill

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

mmarshall

Her big problem, right now, is that she's still cleaning up the mess her predecessors left.
Can't say I disagree. I lost a lost of the former respect I had for Carroll Shelby, back in the 1980s, when he allowed his name to be used on poorly-built, unreliable Horizon/Omni crap-mobiles. They did have some spunk for vehicles in that class, but, more often then not, started falling apart virtually overnight. Again.....ask me how I know.......

One could (?) maybe argue that he did the same thing, twenty years before, back in the early 1960s, with the AC Cobra and the notorious unreliability of British sports cars. The AC Cobra, though, at least to compensate for its unreliability, would run like stink....and it had big, cast-iron Ford V8s up front instead of unreliable British fours. The 427 Cobra, in its heyday, was arguably the fastest-accelerating production car in the world....many a big-block Corvette jock ended up looking at the Cobra's rear bumper.

Hoovey689

iTrader: (16)

Alan Mullay gets my vote.

Mary Bara seems to be doing a good job. Same goes for Johan de Nysschen at Cadillac.

mmarshall

Ghosn, in fact, did save Nissan and Infiniti from bankruptcy. But, IMO, for a number of years, their customers paid for it with some shoddily-built vehicles, Ultra-cheap plastic interiors (along with some Chryslers of the period, some of the worst that I've run across in modern vehicles), and unreliable transmissions. Fortunately, things have lately improved somewhat in those departments.

MattyG

As mentioned, everybody knows the familiar big names who are splashed on the covers of business magazine articles. But the quiet guys who did the work behind the scenes and had an affect on some of the cars we drive are the true innovators.

Kenichi Yamamoto whose sister was killed in the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast and whose family home was destroyed rose to eventually become the head of Mazda. He was a mechanical engineer by trade and helped refine the Wankel rotary to make it viable for cars like the pioneering Cosmo and then the RX-7. He also oversaw the development of what would become the Mazda MX-5 Miata.

He just recently passed away at the age of 95. Here's some of the NYT article on him.


Source

Fizzboy7

Would definitely put Lutz as one of the worst. He is personally behind many GM flops and a widely unstable company that wasted tons of money. The problem with Lutz, as with many GM/Ford/Chrysler fans, they are stuck in the past and simply want to play with "toys" that serve their own personal hobby or childhood/teen memories. That type of immature, selfish, and narrow-minded thinking kills a company, as we saw in the troubled 80's and 90's. Forward-thinking exec's that look into the future and create the next big thing are the successful ones.

For one of the better, I have to point to Ferdinand Piech. As much of a dictator jerk he was, he came up with some of the cleanest, most iconic VW and Audi bodies of the 90's and 2000's. He is also a senior version of Sting.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

have to give a shout out to elon musk... he's moved the ball.

Sulu

Fixed it for you!