They really do rise to the level of their incompetence

[SuperBuickGuy]

A shocking factoid today on Jalopnik

Today in Automotive History:

On this day in 1960, Robert McNamara becomes the president of the Ford Motor Company. He would hold the job for less than a month, heading to Washington in December to join President John F. Kennedy's cabinet. McNamara served as the secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson until he resigned in 1968. That year, he became the president of the World Bank, a job he held until 1981.

So the guy who has the edsel and made the thunderbird into the performance icon it was meant to be on his resume, becomes president of Ford, who then becomes the guy who brought us Vietnam, who then became the guy who's set the policies in place that brought us the term "stagflation", NAFTA, and laid the groundwork for an amazing amount of unrest.... damn

OTH - the glass half full part of me says if they didn't promote him we wouldn't have muscle cars.

[Brian Lohnes]

McNamara's later years at Ford were not good BUT....

He was one of the "whiz kids" that came in and basically saved the company from imploding into a disorganized mess after WWII. The Edsel was not his creation and he hated it, killing it at the first chance, even though they were actually selling at a decent clip. McNamara's favorite car that Ford produced was the Falcon. In today's world he would be the leader of Toyota in America because smallish bland cars were what he thought the company needed to make. He had major issues with the Mustang (based off the Falcon platform) because it was a flashy sports car, the anthesis of his "vision". Simply put, McNamara was a numbers guy and Iacocca was the car/"feel" guy.

If he had stayed on the numbers side of the game and not the product side, we'd be talking about the guy like we talk about other decorated executives of the era when Detroit rules the roads. Instead, he is a great display of the Peter Principle.

Brian

[Barry Donovan]

peter principle.
it exists.

the bridge to asian and what we feel is normal...

the thought of a falcon is not a bad car right now is it?

the void was never filled.

me and my giant 5 foot 9 self is smacking my head to get into an awd boxer driven subaru.

where is the 79 malibu AWD flat sixed variant of that one?

even the flat six could have gotten its justice.

[38P]

McNamara's later years at Ford were not good BUT....

He was one of the "whiz kids" that came in and basically saved the company from imploding into a disorganized mess after WWII. The Edsel was not his creation and he hated it, killing it at the first chance, even though they were actually selling at a decent clip. McNamara's favorite car that Ford produced was the Falcon. In today's world he would be the leader of Toyota in America because smallish bland cars were what he thought the company needed to make. He had major issues with the Mustang (based off the Falcon platform) because it was a flashy sports car, the anthesis of his "vision". Simply put, McNamara was a numbers guy and Iacocca was the car/"feel" guy.

If he had stayed on the numbers side of the game and not the product side, we'd be talking about the guy like we talk about other decorated executives of the era when Detroit rules the roads. Instead, he is a great display of the Peter Principle.

Brian

98% agree. But I'd argue that Mac's real favorite car was the smaller and more austere FWD V4 "Cardinal" which Iacocca limited to Europe. And I'd also argue that the Edsel missed all sale predictions (which may have been helped by Mac's opposition to the divisional plan he inherited). Mac had long been in the Kennedy Administration when the Fairlane Group and others began planning the Mustang. But had he still been at Ford, he probably would have killed it.

BTW, Mac reportedly conceived of the Falcon as a set of statistics scribbled down on a church bulletin.

Iacocca "jumped the shark" when he overreacted to Bunkie Knudsen's reign, purging all Knudsen loyalists, giving Ford fans crap like the Pinto, the Mustang II, the first Fox-body Thunderbird, and being the hatchet man for the idiotic abandonment of most factory racing and performance parts programs (Thank "the Manufacturer" for the independence and good sense of Walter Hayes over in Europe, who saved a small kernel of Ford racing for the post-Iacocca execs to build on after the dark-ages of the '70s)

[SpiderGearsMan]

bunky was the best thing that ever happened to ford - clevelands - lima - boss =shotguns - louvers

[38P]

Iacocca also did a lousy job of translating "Total Performance" to the streets in the wake of Pontiac's GTO. . . In 1966, Ford had less than ten percent of the over half-million supercar market, notwithstanding the millions Ford was spending on professional racing. Ford didn't really become competitive in intermediate and pony supercars until Bob Tasca basically prototyped the 428CJ and hectored Ford into mass producing it. Virtually all of the great Ford supercars of the '60s were developed under Bunkie Knudsen's brief watch.

Bottom line: Iacocca sux!

[SpiderGearsMan]

robert STRANGE mcnamara

[38P]

bunky was the best thing that ever happened to ford - clevelands - lima - boss =shotguns - louvers

The world is coming to an end . . . Spidey and I almost agree on something.

But Bunkie did kinda screw up by not knocking when he went into HFII's office, alienating Carroll Shelby, and approving the oversized 1971 Mustang. And what was with the homely "Bunkie Beaks" on the Montego and Thunderbird? Bunkie wasn't perfect, but Ford lovers would have a lot less to love had GM given him his just rewards for pumping up Pontiac and Chevrolet.

[Barry Donovan]

uh oh.

add another average-height-bigger-than-asian market to the world.. what is going to happen now?

if there is incompetence.. it is lack of challenge..or challenge in the wrong direction.

as bizarre as asking men in the military to worship clinton.

give this ten years.

[Thumpin455]

In the video game Call of Duty:Black Ops you can play as McNamara whilst killing zombies in the Pentagon. The other characters are Nixon, JFK, and Castro. Its a hoot.

I like Bunkie, he was a guy who got it. Without him (and a few others like Duntov and Delorean) I dont think we would have had muscle cars.

[SpiderGearsMan]

nixon tried to clean up the lbj vietnam mess

bunkie and delorean were yunick's corporate patrons