Page 148 - Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company

Dare to Dare 129

not really all that far-fetched—particularly if the car in question happens to be
a Dodge or Plymouth minivan purchased in the 1980s. Iacocca hatched the
idea for the minivan while he was president of the Ford Motor Company. In
fact, as early as 1974, Iacocca drove a minivan prototype put together by one
of Ford’s product engineers, Harold Sperlich, and two Ford designers.
Iacocca loved the car’s roominess, but to work properly, it needed a front-
wheel-drive power train, the components for which would have to be designed
from scratch, an expensive undertaking. Henry Ford II, Ford’s ultraconserva-
tive chairman and CEO, balked at taking on the risk and the expense. Henry
was still haunted by the memory of Ford’s Edsel fiasco some 20 years earlier.
When Iacocca left Ford in 1978, he got permission from William Clay
Ford, Henry’s younger brother, to take with him the consumer research he
had gathered on the minivan. “I didn’t know I was going to Chrysler then,”
Iacocca told Fortune magazine in a 1994 interview, “but I had a hankering to
do this car because the research was so overpowering.” 43
Harold Sperlich had departed for Chrysler a few years before, so when
Iacocca also ended up there, the stage was set for the birth of one of the
most profitable consumer products ever built. But first, Iacocca had to find
the money to proceed with the minivan project, a daunting prospect at a
company that in most quarters had been written off as dead in the water by
the time Iacocca took over. The new CEO diverted the money from another
project and the rest, as they say, is history.
Like Disney before him, Lee Iacocca dared to follow his instincts while
staring potential disaster in the face. Later, with minivan sales surging and
a debate raging over whether to commit several hundred million dollars to
expand production capacity, Iacocca stood his ground against the opposition
of all of his top executives who feared that the minivan might prove to be just
a fad. He was sure he had tapped into a huge unanswered market. “Everyone
fought me,” Iacocca told Fortune, “but that’s what makes horse races.”
Well, not quite. Iacocca had the backing of the solid market research he
had done early on, not to mention the strength of his convictions. He wasn’t
gambling on the unknown; he was taking a calculated risk based on sound
numbers and sound instincts.
Both Ford and General Motors had built prototypes of a minivan too,
but neither company had the courage to risk investing enough money to bring
the vehicle to market. Because of this hesitancy, they lost out to Chrysler.
Successful cities, like successful companies, are often the result of dar-
ing yet trustworthy leaders. Once known as “India-no-place,” Indianapolis has