The Ford Mustang and the Ford Pinto

Lee Iacocca was born on October 15, 1924. He is the creator of the famous Ford Mustang and lesser known Ford Pinto. He was also CEO of Chrysler until he retired in 1992. Iacocca graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in industrial engineering (obviously). Although he began his Ford career as an engineer in 1946, but he jumped to sales shortly after with the company. Eventually, he worked up the ladder and became a prominent figure at Ford, making it to product development. Iacocca became Ford's vice president in 1960. As the leader of the Ford Mustang project, he insisted on a contest for the car's design, which resulted in the original Mustang production car. In 1967 the Mustang was very successful. Iacocca continued to oversee the redesigns, but complained about how the car's frame became too large compared to its same power, making it slower. Once sales declined in the early 1970s, Iacocca complained that the Mustang was no longer successful because customer preferred smaller compact cars. He explained, "The Mustang market never left us, we left it." Iacocca stayed with the Mustang, restyling it through its second generation, pushing for it to be more like the original smaller versions. Iacocca was let go from Ford, and went to Chrysler where he began another successful career.