Steve Rattner, Car Czar Candidate, Is No Lee Iacocca: Auto Analysts

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Steven Rattner, who may become the U.S. car czar, would bring with him the financial savvy amassed during almost 25 years of deal-making.

What he wouldn't bring is experience running an industrial company or building automobiles, and that bothers some analysts of Detroit's woes.

"What the industry needs is a combination of two kinds of people: Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch," said Gerald Meyers, a business professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and former chief executive of American Motors Corp. "This guy doesn't seem to be either, so I'm worried."

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[freshnotbitter]

Put Mitt Romeny in charge. He'll straighten them out. He is just the right person for this job. Obama will look real good by the time it is over.

[SARGE1]

Lee Would Be Perfect ! He Brought In The Class Leading K car And The Mini Van Which Even Volkswagen Uses To This Day As A Re badged Town and Country
The Chrysler Loan Was Paid Back In Half The Time And The US Government Made A Profit On It. !Mind You The K Car Were Fuel Economy Fuel Leaders Please Read:

http://www.mpgomatic.com/2007/10/08/super-cheap-high-mpg-cars-1978-1981/

http://www.mpgomatic.com/2007/10/19/super-cheap-high-mpg-cars-1984/

-Sarge

[senorlou]

Pretty incredible numbers there. I remember some of those cars. According to that chart, their mileage was like today's Japanese hybrids.

[schatsie]

why not Ben and Jerry? they actuallly produced something...I am sick of the Wall Street Mentality, me, me, me, me, me and let me offshore some more jobs...

I will be praying for Steve Jobs health, I would rather he took over as the auto czar than a corporate WS insider.....

[senorlou]

US car companies, especially, need a car czar right now. If they can take billions from tax payers, they can be bossed around and told what to do. It's like anybody who has any kind of boss. You get paid, you get told what to do. The car companies have to go in a totally new direction. This isn't working for anyone.

[redhot200822]

Another piece of crap from Obama. Change we can believe in.

[hollybork]

Do not appoint Steve Rattner. That would be an extremely bad move. Not only does he not have the credentials to do this job, but he has numerous connections which would put this appointment into a negative light. His wife is a big fundraiser for the democrats. He is a financier, not a professional manufacturing manager. He got where he got because he is the most ambitious man on Wall Street. He is the money manager for Bloomberg. It does not look good. It would not turn out well.

[HowietheScreamer]

The LAST thing the auto industry needs is a Jack Welch. He's the epitome of a "no R&D, minimal investment vampire". Even GE is moving away from the train wreck that Welch left.

[WIpatriot]

Jack's R&D was China and India.

[redhot200822]

What did you expect from a DemoGod Clinton and DemoGod congress.

[RoveRoveRoveYourBoat]

...why would a former ceo of the failed AMC corporation be teaching others?????
...why is this failure's opinion credible to this article?????

[dagnome27]

It isn't Iacocca's AMC cred that counts - it's what he did with FORD and Chrysler, both of which were successful on his watch, IIRC... remember the Mustang? the Mini Van? Sheesh.. such short, selective memories some have...

[KillTheMessenger]

"Sheesh.. such short, selective memories some have..."

You are talking about Lee Iacocca now, right? He keeps forgetting all the good stuff he was fighting tooth and nail against, like better safety and higher efficiency...

:-)

[RoveRoveRoveYourBoat]

...jack welsh is a sociopath. Invented outsourcing your job to india.

[ObjectiveRealist]

I'm not really interested in your opinion, Bill Ford and other automobile fat cats. If you could lead the development of modern technologies like electric drive systems and the batteries to power them, the citizens would not need to hire a car czar. His lack of experience in the automobile industry no more disqualifies Steven Rattner from supervising the US auto manufacturers than Bill Ford's lack of assembly line experience disqualifies him from supervising at Ford. What is of concern is Rattner's shady past associations, including corporatist telecoms Comcast and AT&T.

quote:
The very idea of a car czar is flawed, said Louis Lataif, dean of Boston University"s School of Management.

It is "hopelessly naïve that one person, however brilliant, is going to sit in Washington and make the car companies something they are not," said Lataif, a former Ford executive. "To be determining strategic priorities of the companies is really a stretch."
/quote

I agree. But if the citizens are to be financiers of auto companies through *taxation*, we have a right to *representation* of our interests. Mine is reducing carbon dioxide pollution. In addition to a say in how bailout companies are run, we should each be receiving stock that we can sell high, if we can afford to wait out the recession.

[HowietheScreamer]

I disagree with your assessment of Ford. He's very much the guy who has been behind the changes going on at Ford for a while now. That is the express reason he brought in Alan Mullaly. Ford has been trying for a long time to break the "not invented here" and entrenched "Fordist" attitude of the senior execs at FMC. He's done a pretty reasonable job, so much so that Ford is ahead of the game and doesn't need a bail out at this time.

All the changes that are being mandated on GM and Chrysler have been in the works at FMC for over a year.

[KillTheMessenger]

The Lee Iaccoca who was against car safety because it was too costly and would bankrupt the car industry? The Lee Iaccoca who was against fuel efficiency because it was too costly and would bankrupt the car industry? Is that really the kind of guy we need right now? Really?

Wow. Talk about a nation that just can't learn.

[Arthur954]

Give Lee Iaccoca some credit forwhat he did at Ford and Chrysler. Id like to see any of us smart commentators as president of one of these companies

[KillTheMessenger]

Why should I give a man who extensively rewrote reality in his autobiography give any credit? He is one of those who were responsible for the US having to import foreign oil for $500 billion last year, which was a major contributor to our current economic situation.

You need heroes? Lee ain't it.

[quantumspin]

We need the mix suggested: Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch, and overall, someone who knows how to BUILD actual things versus investing, deal making, or whatever.

As long as 'lite people' are in charge, America will not return to any sort of innovation, other than talking about it at seminars or the short term deal making that the investment community is so famous for.

We need a national Business Plan, not a quarter by quarter 'deal making plan.'

[ObjectiveRealist]

[
We need a national Business Plan, not a quarter by quarter 'deal making plan.'
]
I agree. I want to see Rattner's own proposal for the car company, not the opinions of a lot of over-privileged pundits and biased stakeholders in the automobile industry. His past performance is certainly a factor, but not one word of that Bloomberg article was about how his previous experience *does* bear on the current car situation. It was all worthless speculation about why his experience isn't *directly* car-related. The article amounts to 10 minutes I'll never have back. I should know by now, I don't care for Bloomberg's analysis.

[HowietheScreamer]

It's specifically Jack Welch's "next quarter is long term"ism that is THE number 1 problem in near about EVERY industry in the USA today. It's pure insanity for industries where the product life cycle is measured in decades like the car or aircraft industries. It takes a minimum of 3 years to develop a new car line. Welch's "RONA in a year" or no investment rules have devistated US manufacturing.

[mitsie]

Corker was a card carrying union member until he ran for Senator from Tenn. He also has a large foreign auto maker in his state. As far as I am concerned, he has a conflict of interest in keeping the American car industry from going broke. The press should be carrying more about these Senators with lobbests friends, and who have foreign car makers in their states, for I think it's almost anti-american to support a foreign car maker vs an American car maker. I didn't think I would ever hear myself make such a statement, as I use to get angry when the right wing, said that they were the only real Americans. I just can't understand why these Senators, can be so biased against our own companies.

That said, I do not believe that GM or Chrysler should have any say about the car Czar. I think Ford is doing a pretty good job in their attempts to straighten out their own budget. But the CEO's of the other two companies, should be fired and replaced with people who know how to balance a budget.

[bholl]

Have we not learned anything in the past year? Do we need another bean counter MBA in the auto industry? There are enough of those guys already. Wagoner, Nardelli? In today's language Financial Savvy = Mergers and Acquisitions expert, yeah, perfect choice. Haven't we had enough of guys who only know how to fire the production workers, dummy up the books and flip a company, or merge two losers like Delta and Northwest Airlines?
Either put someone in who knows how to make money building something or forget the whole deal and let the big "two" go under. This is silly.

[Tom95134]

Here! Here! There are too damn many "bean counters" running companies into the ground using their strip mining approach to management. What is really needed are CEOs that have some expertise in actually engineering and building cars not just counting the profits.

[rcampbell]

The auto industry wants a toady of the ilk Bush would have given them. It's no longer their call. It's OUR money and they should have a real SOB watching over them for OUR sake.