Lido

Lee Iacocca.

The May 2012 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine has a so-called “interview” of Lee Iacocca (“eye-uh-COKE-uh”), the guy who shepherded the new 1964 Mustang into production, and eventually headed Chrysler Corporation, saving it from the brink.
I plowed through it, but it wasn’t that good.
Lido Anthony Iacocca is perhaps the most important car-guy of our time.
He managed to get Ford Motor Company to develop the Mustang, and this was just after Ford crashed mightily in flames with the Edsel fiasco.
The Deuce, Henry Ford II, head-honcho of Ford at that time, grandson of company-founder Old Henry, was justifiably skeptical.
The Edsel had been a disaster. Focus-group research made it look promising.
But no one was buying. Edsel’s styling was laughable. A lollipop-sucking Mercury!
But Lido was a car-guy, and he knew the demand was there for a sporty-car that wasn’t the weird Corvair Monza.
He convinced The Deuce to gamble, and then Ford made buckets of money. The Mustang was the sporty-car Americans wanted.
Conventional underneath — a modified Ford Falcon — the sporty flair of a Corvair Monza without the weirdness.
Lido is from Allentown, PA, and is an engineering graduate of Lehigh University.
He always wanted to work for Ford; his family liked Fords.
After graduating college, he hung around a local Ford dealership, and found what he really liked was to sell cars.
A marriage made in Heaven, a seller of cars as well as a developer of cars.
But more than anything Lido was a car-guy, as opposed to a corporate bean-counter.
What he developed reflected his car-guyness, particularly the Mustang.
He wasn’t the developer of the Mustang as much as the guy who convinced The Deuce to do it.
But Lido had a later falling-out with The Deuce, and was let go.
Strange products were in his resumé beside the Mustang: the Maverick, the Pinto, and particularly the Lincoln Mark III, a car he was most proud of, reflecting his penchant for gaudiness.
Out of Ford, Lido was snapped up by ailing Chrysler Corporation.
He set upon two missions: -a) to make a success of Chrysler’s humble K-car, and -b) add Jeep to Chrysler’s product-line. —He correctly surmised the new Jeep Grand Cherokee was desirable.
Perhaps Lido’s greatest achievement at Chrysler was development of the K-car into a minivan.
No one yet had a minivan; even Ford had bypassed the concept.
And it was Ford that initiated the concept.
It was the Mustang all over again; develop an existing platform into something the public wants.
Soon everyone was marketing minivans, even Ford with its Windstar.
Just like the Mustang it generated imitators —And Camaro had the fabulous SmallBlock V8.
Lido is now 86, and still involved in the car-biz.
His puss decorates National Parts Depot, a parts source for ‘60s and ‘70s American cars — “American history,” he says.
I guess he’s National Parts Depot’s head-honcho.
Chrysler moved on after he left, but Lido’s lasting legacy is the ’64 Mustang, the car America wanted.
What Lido regrets most is he let Chrysler merge with Daimler-Benz, manufacturer of Mercedes Benz.
The merger didn’t go well, and Chrysler is now back on its own.
Lido is obviously a car-guy. He counts numerous Ferraris, a Lambo, and a Dodge Viper in his stable.
This “interview” didn’t do him justice.

• The Chevrolet “SmallBlock” V8 was introduced at 265 cubic-inches displacement in the 1955 model-year. It continued production for years, first to 283 cubic inches, then 327, then 350. Other displacements were also manufactured. The Chevrolet “Big-Block” V8 was introduced in the 1965 model-year at 396 cubic-inches, and was unrelated to the SmallBlock. It was made in various larger displacements: 402, 427 and 454 cubic inches. It’s still made as a truck-motor, but not installed in cars any more; although you can get it as a crate-motor, for self-installation. The “Big-Block” could be immensely powerful, and the “SmallBlock” was revolutionary in its time. (The SmallBlock is still made, although much improved.)
• A “Lambo” is a Lamborghini (“lam-bore-GEE-nee;” as in “get”), made in Italy, perhaps even more a supercar than a Ferrari.