If everybody is right is anyone wrong?
Earliest US example of “crony capitalism”.... the whiskey tax of 1791. While ostensibly to pay for the Revolutionary War debt, it was impossed in such a manner as to greatly benefit the large distillers on the coast at the expense of the small distillers on the frontier.
PS...guess who was the largest distiller of spirits in the US at the time.
“In truth, it was the American taxpayer who “saved” Chrysler, not Iacooca. And thanks to Iacocca, the taxpayer did so against his will since Iacocca was an expert at leveraging the coercive power of government to make others pay for his corporate schemes.”
Iococca’s big initiative at Chrysler was the K-car. Mechanically not much better than the junk that Chrysler was selling before he got there. Iococca managed to get direct loans, but more than that, just about every US government car in the fleet was a K-car. If it weren’t for the fleet sales, the K-car would only have been a modest success.
OTOH, the K-car platform was used to develop the Chrysler & Plymouth mini-vans. Those were wildly successful.
But even for all that Chrysler was no longer a complete car builder. Aside for the aenemic 4-cylinder engines, all the V6 engines at that time came from Mitsubishi. And bringing the Jeep brand under Chrysler also helped keep the wolf away from the door.
The only Mopars I ever liked were built and driven by Sox & Martin.
Nah, seekandfind is just crying like a bitch because he misses “free trade” with China.
He does this every now and then but is even TOO MUCH of a bitch to respond to posts made.
“Have you read Lee Iacocca’s book?”
“Are you kidding? I own it! I haven’t, read it, but...”
Never impressed with Lee’s stable of cars in the 80’s, but that’s just me. I thought some of the foreign cars were much better, like the BMW’s of the time were well ahead domestic cars.
Lee Iococca was not himself a “capitalist”, he was a very competent manager and promoter for other capitalists. Known both as the “father of the Mustang” and as the savior of the rapidly collapsing Chrysler Corporation, he wrangled a government bailout for that company and paid off the government loan ahead of time and in full. Chrysler had been mismanaged badly for years, and Iococca walked into a tottering shell. He rapidly reorganized the various divisions, putting out first a near-clone of the Volkswagen Rabbit (Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon), soon followed by the K-Car lineup, all the while downsizing the remainder of the line, rebooting the Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volare as the “big cars” of the lineup, and renamed a tricked out version of these two clone vehicles as the “Chrysler New Yorker”. His big coup was the introduction of the K-Car-based minivan, which made the vehicle of useful size for families, and carved out a whole new segment in the US market.
bump
At least Chrysler caught the eye of a certain dentist in Manhattan.