Steve Preston <steveophonic@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Maybe the ultimate "correction" will occur when the
> CEO is chairman only of himself? Well,him and the
> secretary. Forgot about her. People like Lee Iacocca
> don't answer their phone!
For sure. :-) I recently finished reading a book written
by a former Chrysler engineer, and in it he mentions that Lee was
basically treated like royalty. You did not speak to him (avert your
eyes!), and whenever he visited a plant, they would basically cordon
off the hallways where he would be walking; bizzare stuff. I don't
know if any of that was exaggerated, but that is what he wrote.
There were some other interesting things in the book too,
quite a few references to the Cherokee and Grand Cherokee since he was
a suspension engineer in the Jeep/Truck area. He was fairly heavily
involved in the design of the (Jeep) TJ, so there is some interesting
stuff about it in there too. Also some solid axle vs IFS stuff.
There is some Dak content scattered through it too. One interesting
tidbit being that a bean counter wanted the Dakota to have a solid
front axle (based on cost) but was overruled because it was thought
that just about everything would be going to IFS. C'est la vi!
Interestingly, according to the book, the vehicle dynamics engineers
were lobbying for IFS on the TJ (the author called them "wannabe race
car drivers"), and in the end, the reason the TJ ended up with a SFA
instead of IFS was based on cost, so I guess the bean counters gained
some clout in the intervening decade. :-)
Another item which may be of interest to the list is that Chrysler
was working on a midsized SUV based on the Dakota at the time that
they aquired AMC. AMC had been working on creating the Grand Cherokee
at that same time, and when AMC was brought into the fold, Chrysler
scrapped the Dakota SUV and went with the Grand Cherokee instead. So,
if it weren't for that, there might have been a Dakota based SUV
competing with the Cherokee. We got one in the Durango 10 years later
of course, but this would have been based on the GenI Dak.
I bought the book for the Chrysler info, but there is also some
good info about hybrid vehicles in it, mostly related to why they are
a false economy and will not actually save fuel until battery
technology catches up. The author makes the case for diesel being
much more economical than hybrids. There was some funny stuff in
there too about Chrysler pulling the wool over the eyes of automotive
journalists when allowing them to test drive certain hybrid prototypes
which were claimed to be fully functional but were anything but - in
one case, it was a completely electric car and the diesel engine
purring away in the back was not connected to anything, it was just a
fuel oil powered noise maker. :-)
In case anyone is interested, the book is "Common Sense Not
Required - Idiots Designing Cars & Hybrid Vehicles (My Career with
Chrysler)" by Evan Boberg. Its a small book less than 200 pages but I
enjoyed it.
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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