Jalopnik: Iacocca

Iacocca Arrives At Chrysler As Bankruptcy Rumors Swirl; Time Travel Perfected

Andrew Stoy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Former chairman Lee Iacocca gave a closed pep rally to Chrysler employees yesterday in Auburn Hills, once again sharing the stage with a K-car, a minivan...and rumors of Chrysler's imminent bankruptcy. While current CEO Bob Nardelli was praising Iacocca as "Chrysler's most dynamic leader" and "a great American," Chrysler spokesman David Elshoff was telling reporters that rumblings about a forthcoming bankruptcy filing by the automaker were "without merit." Presumably addressing the present state of the industry, Iacocca said, "We'll live through it. Don't panic. Things are going to be OK." To fix the current management problems, Iacocca suggested outfitting Nardelli with wire wheel covers and a vinyl landau roof, then sending him back into the boardroom and hoping everyone would think he was a totally new CEO.

The bankruptcy rumors seem to have sprung from reports this week that Chrysler drew down on a line of credit from Daimler. However, under Cerberus' purchase terms, Chrysler had to exercise the credit line before Aug. 3, so there's a "use it or lose it" component to the whole financial story too. Chrysler spokespeople state that the borrowing of $1.5 billion from Daimler and $500 million from Cerberus is not an indication that the company is having cash flow problems, and that Chrysler has $9 billion in cash. Sure sounds good, but all the "categorical denials" and "without merits" pouring out of Auburn Hills don't do much to soothe the nerves.
[BusinessWeek]

Dad's Turbo Dodge Caravan

Mike Bumbeck — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 15:00:00 EDT

From the 800-dollar turbocharged minivan department comes this 1989 Dodge Caravan SE with genuine simulated woodgrain trim. Along with doing toasty burnouts, the minivan has run the quarter mile in 12.65 seconds at Route 66 Dragway thanks to a set of slicks and 24 pounds of boost pushing through the stock 140K plus miles mill. The initial 800-dollar purchase price has been long-forgotten after all the modifications required to get the Iacocca Special into the 12-second zone. This guy figures if a 14-second minivan can beat most cars on the road, then a 12-second minivan can beat them all! [Dad's Turbo Minivan Bonanza]

Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe

Jonny Lieberman — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Last week we asked you to name your favorite automotive legends. While the answers were (of course) stellar – Smokey Yunick rules – we're a little disappointed that no one mentioned the genesis of this week's Fantasy Garage candidate, the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe. Though, it is worth mentioning that almost everything Carol Shelby does eventually winds up as someone's favorite anecdote (let's just forget the Shelby GLHS). For instance, Carroll used to place a $100 bill on the Cobra's dashboard while demoing the car to potential customers. If a customer could reach forward and snatch the Franklin before the Cobra could hit 100 mph, he could keep it. No one ever got the cash. But we're not here to talk about the Cobra.

Actually, we're partially here to talk about the Cobra, as not only is the Daytona Coupe in some ways just a rebodied Cobra, but the only reason the Coupe exists is to make up for the shortcomings of the Cobra. Sacrilege, right? We know, we know. Believe you us when we tell you that we love Shelby Cobras as much as the next pistonhead. And, for the umpteenth time, the inclusion of the Daytona Coupe in our Garage of Jalopnik-style Fantasy does not preclude the roadster from getting in. But for this week your attention is turned to the car that did the impossible; the homely racecar that beat Enzo and his beautiful Ferraris at their own game.

In the early 60s, Carroll Shelby returned from a triumphant conquest of Europe. Driving for David Brown and Aston Martin, the chicken farmer from Texas won Le Mans. No American since Patton had been so dominant on the Continent's roads. It would take decades and another Texan named Lance Armstrong to pull off a similar feat. However, Shelby harbored a secret: he had a bad heart, and was forced to retire from the sport he both loved and excelled at in his prime. He mucked about for a while, hocking tires and opening a driving school, but his poor heart wasn't it. Shelby had to get back to racing.

Here comes the Cobra! Long story short, Shelby wanted a racecar and his time in Europe convinced him of the superior handling characteristics of small British roadsters. He contacted AC Cars in Thames Ditton to inquire about the feasibility of stuffing a V8 into their independently-suspended, ladder-framed AC Ace. As it so happened, AC had been using a pre-war design straight-6 that Bristol and Frazer had nicked from the bombed-out BMW factory (it was the engine found in the glorious 328). By 1961 even AC new the engine was a dinosaur and scrapped it in favor of the 2.6-liter straight-6 out of the Ford Zephyr. As both fate and luck would have it, the bulk of the chassis modifications needed to fit the Zephyr engine into the Ace's frame, allowed a V8 to fit in the same space. Now all Shelby needed was an engine.

Shelby-Ford AC Cobra Mk II

He turned first to Chevrolet and they said "no" because another powerful sports car would threaten the Corvette's supremacy. Shelby then contacted Ford's Lee Iacocca to procure an American heart for his British car. At first Iacocca was little more than amused by the lanky Texan, who always came to Lido's office with a big hat and a beautiful blond. But then Ford's President realized the Shelby was serious. Two important facts you should note here. The first is that Iacocca hadn't thought up the Mustang yet. The second is that Ford desperately wanted to beat Chevrolet in the sports car game (so much so that Henry Ford II was in talks with Enzo to buy Ferrari). FoMoCo had just developed a lightweight, thin-walled aluminum V8 for Canadian pickups. This engine, first built in the city with our favorite strip clubs, Windsor, Ontario, went on to be known as the Windsor V8. You may have heard of it. The version Shelby first got for teh Cobra Mk I was the 4.2-liter (260 cubic inch) HiPo V8. Perfect.

Or not. The first test drive snapped the rear axle off. A stouter Salisbury 4HU rear end (with inboard brakes) was lifted from the Jaguar E-Type The heat from the inboard brakes melted the car's oil seals. So they went outboard. Shelby also had a devil of a time figuring out how to cool the tightly packed engine, eventually resorting to Corvette radiators. And just like the Corvette, a veritable mountain of torque in such a lightweight package necessitated the use of traverse leaf-springs. These, along with wider wishbones forced AC to widen the body by radically flaring the fenders.

Shelby-Ford AC Cobra Mk III

The results were epic. Tuned to within an inch of its life, the HiPo 260 in the Shelby-Ford AC Cobra Mk I stonked up 325 hp and rocketed the car to a then unheard of 0-60 mph time of 4.2 seconds. The first production cars were detuned quite a bit and also featured shoddy steering (due to a worm gear setup and a VW Bug column) and more cooling problems. Shelby fixed all this by equipping the Mk II Cobra with a 289 cid engine, revised gearing, rack and pinion steering and a wider grill opening with side vents to let the heat out of the engine bay. Now it was time to go racing.

"So every time I would see a red car coming up, I'd think, 'Oh shit. Now they are going to go by us.' " — Bob Bondurant

The Cobra proved to be dominant on American racing circuits. In 1963 two Cobras finished first and second well ahead of their Corvette Sting Ray challengers at Riverside. In fact, the number of racing wins Shelby's Cobras racked up is nuts and too silly to fully list here. Rest assured, if there was a race in the lower 48 during 1963 and 1964, a Cobra was the winner, including the grinding 12 Hours of Sebring and USRRC (United States Road Racing) Championship. However, in Europe there was no such luck. In 1963 Shelby entered a couple of Cobras in the GT class Le Mans. These cars had bolted on hard tops to help them deal better with the longer roads and higher tops speeds of the European circuits. One car managed to finish in seventh place. Only thing was, Ferrari finished first through sixth. A natural competitor, this did not sit well with Shelby. Also, little known to most, Shelby had a personal beef with Ferrari. Seems that at some point during Shelby's European campaign, the Italian had snubbed the Texan. Most likely by not offering Shelby a job as a Ferrari driver.

Shelby knew what he had to do. To reiterate, on the shorter American circuits, the Cobras were unbeatable. They were faster than the competition (including the Ferrari GTOs) to the max speed allowed by the track and handled just as well if not better through the corners. The real killer for the Cobras at Le Mans was the notorious three-mile Mulsanne Straight. Even with the awkward looking hard tops in place, the Cobras could only hit around 150 mph. The Ferraris? 180 mph. Obviously, this was an insurmountable obstacle. Unless you had another car entirely. Perhaps a coupe? Here is out most favorite automotive legend.

Pete Brock And His Krazy Kammback

"We knew, plus or minus, what [the] capabilities of the Ferrari were, and we knew we would beat it. I knew that, if I could get the Daytona Coupe, Ferrari wouldn't be in business." — Carroll Shelby

Carroll Shelby tasked the then 23-year-old Peter Brock with designing the new racecar's slippery sheet metal. Brock had a driver Ken Miles sit in a seat holding a steering wheel and then built the car around him using at first duct tape and wood, before having Italy's Carrozzeria Gran Sport build the bodies from aluminum. The result was the ungainly looking (to some) Daytona Coupe. Young Brock had come across a theory by a German aerodynamicist named Kamm from the 1930s. It dictated that to achieve the most aerodynamic shape possible you needed to create a virtual tail. The body needed to begin to taper in (like a 30s teardrop bodied car, say a Talbot Lago) and then you just hacked it off. Presto, a Kammback!

Shelby wasn't so sure. He went as far as bringing in an aerodynamics specialist to examine Brock's shape. Nein, he said. The coupe would be better off aerodynamically speaking with a longer, tapered tail. In a decision that ranks up there with General Groves deciding to pursue both a gun-type and implosion bomb, Shelby decided to listen to his young pupil and went with the controversial (though these days quite classic) coupe. The results are the really good stuff that they don't teach you in history class.

While testing the Coupe out, Jack Sears and Peter Bolton hit 185 mph on the M1 in preparation for Le Mans. This caused Britain to establish national speed limits. In the 1964 12 Hours of Daytona, the Coupe outran all the competition until it was hobbled by a damaged differential. A differential cooler was eventually installed. Still, the Cobra Coupe so totally outclassed the rest of the competition that it not only recorded the race's fastest lap time, but Shelby decided to rename to call the car the Daytona. Le Mans was up next.

Once in France on the Mulsanne Straight the Daytonas achieved a v-max of 196 mph. This not only blew the doors off the competition, but allowed Shelby's cars to run and compete with the prototype class. The Daytona driven by Dan Gurney and Bob Bondurant finished first in the GT class and fourth overall. In fact, the Daytona Coupe wound up lapping a Ferrari GTO. Not bad for a car built in a Santa Monica warehouse by half a dozen guys with pencils and hammers. Take that Enzo, you purple inked former Fascist!

While the Daytona went on to dominate the 1964 and 1965 GT racing seasons, the writing was sadly already on the wall. In 1964, the year it won Le Mans, the fastest lap time was actually set by another American driving another Ford product, the all-conquering Ford GT40. Phil Hill averaged a lap at 131 mph until he and his car were sidelined with a busted gearbox. The next year, Henry Ford II scooped up most of Shelby's best people (Shelby was involved with the GT40 program from the start) and the Cobra racing effort got its corporate funding yanked so as not to steal the GT40's thunder. The six Daytona Coupes were (illegally) flown back to Los Angeles. Shelby couldn't even sell them as interest had totally dissipated. Shockingly, he finally unloaded the Daytonas for about $5,000 a pop.

World's Greatest Barn Find

There is some comeuppance, though. It is true that all six cars were flown from England back to the States, but until 2001 only five were thought to exist. The sixth car? No one knew. Then a woman named Donna O'Hara lit herself on fire. In her locked storage shed, was the missing sixth car, called CSX2287, that her father had purchased years earlier and left to her. Undoubtedly the greatest barn find in the history of car collecting, its worth is valued at over $4,000,000. Not bad for an initial investment of about five grand.

I'm not a flag waver by nature, but there are certain events and machines that get my blood pumping read, white and blue. The Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe and its amazing history represent such a machine. For those of you who are not American, we ask that you look upon this vehicle as the very best of what our country has to offer. We can put a man on the moon and beat Enzo Ferrari at his own game. Hell, on his own playing field. We would be doing a grave disservice to not only the beautiful car, but to the spirit of the men who designed and built the Daytona by not including an example in our Fantasy Garage. Happy voting.

[The Jalopnik Fantasy Garage appears every Tuesday. Readers vote the cars in or out. The idea is that we'll have 50 cars in our Fantasy Garage, the world's greatest mechanic and endless wads of cash. Would you like to nominate a car for the Fantasy Garage? Write tips@jalopnik.com with the subject line "Fantasy."]

'87 Plymouth Sundance: 47 Standard Features To Convince Ya!

Murilee Martin — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:11:01 EDT

The pride is back! Just ask Lee Iacocca! Featuring Lite-Brite-style graphics and Reagan-era patriotic fervor, this ad captures both the optimism of Chrysler's rebirth and the gloom of the still-fresh-in-memory Malaise Era that nearly doomed the company. The Sundance, sibling to the Dodge Shadow and based on the P-body variant of the jack-of-all-trades K platform, could be had with the base 96-horse 2.2 four, but the smart buyers plunked down the extra $815 for the 146 horses of the turbo 2.2. Actually, the really smart Mopar buyers in '87 went straight to Mr. Shelby for the Omni GLH-S!

Related: Shelby Dodges: More Turbo Emblems! [Internal]

Former Chrysler CEO Rips Into "Clueless Bozos" -- Err -- The Bush Administration

Ray Wert — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 01:20:21 EDT

Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler CEO and shepard of the once-independent automaker through its government loans of the late 70's and early 80's has long been a critic of Bush administration policies. But never like this.

"We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car...I hardly recognize this country anymore...George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites...he prides himself on being faith-based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will."

Wow, go get 'em Lee! Not only does the automaker go after Dubya's motley crew, the formerly cantankerous CEO had praise for almost every current leader of the auto industry from GM Chief Exec Rick Wagoner and current Chrysler Group head Tom LaSorda. Hell, the man even calls his ex-sparring partner, "Maximum" Bob Lutz, a "savvy veteran." But don't get the man started on the subject of Bob Eaton and Jurgen Schrempp, the two guys who said "let's do it, let's fall in love" — and creating the German-American hybrid we now know today as DaimlerDouche. Seriously, don't get him started, it makes him angry...and you wouldn't like him when he's angry. – Ray Wert

Iacocca blasts 'clueless bozos' in book [Freep]

Lido Gets Spiked: Iacocca to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at Autorox

Davey G. Johnson — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:22:30 EDT

You know, we're not really the type who goes in for things that're marketed toward guys. Sure, we like he-man musclecars and Judas Priest, but we also enjoy us some Gary Snyder and Woody Guthrie. But Spike? Despite our attempts to resist it, we've actually taken quite a liking to the channel. And the Viacom unit's honoring Lee Iacocca with a lifetime achievement award on their second-annual Autorox broadcast, to be presented by the real-life son of the dad from Ordinary People. We may or may not watch it. We might sit down with a cup of tea, some Robert Hass and a Smiths record instead. Then we'll get in the Dodge, crank the Sultans and spin donuts in the Vons parking lot 'til the cops show up.

Related:
Iacocca Beloved by Old Folks [Internal]

If You Can Find a Better Car, Share It: Case, Iaccoca Invest in Flexcar

Davey G. Johnson — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 08:54:41 EDT

Former AOL honcho Steve Case and Lee Iaccoca, lover of Snoop's Doggystyle, have teamed up to invest in Flexcar, a Seattle-based car-sharing company. While terms of the deal have been yet to be disclosed, company officials did hint that the investment outpaces the 10 mil that competitor Zipcar raised a month ago. In an interview, Case said "The idea that maybe you don't have to own a car if you only need one occasionally may catch on, just like time-sharing caught on in real estate." Iacocca was unavailable for comment, presumably with his mind on his money and his money on his mind. [Thanks to CTE for the tip.]

Case, Iacocca sign on with Flexcar [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Related:
XM Inks Deal with Zipcar [Internal]

If You Can Find a Better Commercial, Watch It: Iacocca and Dogg, et al

Mike Spinelli — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 09:57:05 EDT

Despite looking like the Brooklyn newsie who used to sell our uncle Angelo the Racing Form, Lee Iacocca recently shot a golf-themed commercial co-starring rapper and 300C aficionado, Snoop Dogg. D-O Dubbagee, looking resplendent in pastel argyles was paired with the former Chrysler CEO for the fourth and final of Chrysler's Iacocommercials.

Mr. Iacocca, Meet Mr. Dogg [Car Buyers' Notebook]

Iacocca Beloved by Old Folks

Davey G. Johnson — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:34:43 EDT

Ad Age recently took a survey regarding the return of Lee Iacocca to Chrysler ad spots. The verdict? Over 80% of customers who've seen the ads said Iacocca was "believable and relevant." The downside? Only a third of the coveted 18-24 demographic knew who the codger in the commercial with George Costanza was. Cripes, we're old. Oh, and in response to Lido's famous tagline from the '80s, "If you can find a better car, buy it," 80% of respondents thought they could indeed find a better car. Oh snap!

Lido's a hit; jury's still out on cars [Detroit News]