Fortune Magazine Interview With Lee Iacoca - The Future Of Detroit's Auto Industry
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"They're throwing us to the curb"
By Alex Taylor III
Fortune senior editor
April 15 2007
(Fortune Magazine) -- Your third book, due out this month, is about the state of American leadership. How is Detroit doing on that score?
(IACOCA)-- I give [GM CEO] Rick Wagoner a lot of credit. He had a lot of pressure on him, but he kept his cool and he stayed with his plan. Their styling is getting better, and they're doing better. Ford has more difficult problems than GM. It has so much invested in the truck business; it has got to get some good cars.
I think this new guy from Boeing [CEO Alan Mulally] knows the business pretty well. Not the auto business, but he knows what it takes to run a big organization and deal with the labor unions. As for Chrysler, [president] Tom LaSorda is doing a great job in manufacturing, but I don't know what's going to happen. I'm reading about it every day. I would hate to see Chrysler go under. It would be tough to live with.
