After Iacocca

Speculating on a successor

It was a typically high-powered week for the top executives of Ford Motor Co. All but one of them, that is. As managers met twice daily in corporate planning sessions with Chairman Henry Ford II at the company's "glass house" headquarters in Dearborn, Mich., President Lee Iacocca sat alone and unattended in his office, which adjoins the chairman's. He was undergoing the bitter wind-down to his firing by Henry Ford a week earlier, and his colleagues were continuing to speculate on what additional changes could be expected.

Iacocca professed no future plans other than to take a vacation later this month, and to have his desk at Ford cleaned out in time for his formal departure on Oct. 15. Auto executives traded rumors all week that Iacocca had been tapped for a top job at Chrysler Corp., a story Chrysler directors denied. Other reports had him negotiating with major corporations outside the auto industry.

To Ford executives, the more immediate question was who, if anyone, will be named to succeed Iacocca. By present reading, the front runner is Executive Vice President William Bourke, 51, who heads the company's North American automotive division. A self-confident and well-traveled manager who converses with authority about world politics and many other subjects. Bourke has hardly been coy about his ambition to move into Iacocca's office. He was not happy to be left out of the 1977 reorganization that set up the office of the chief executive.

Even if he is named to the presidency, real power is likely to remain with the four-member executive office itself. Its head is Henry Ford II, but since last April, day-to-day control has belonged to Vice Chairman Philip Caldwell, 57, a cultivated executive whose calm manner is in marked contrast to the fire-breathing dynamism of Iacocca. In short, at this stage in the history of Ford Motor Co., Caldwell is clearly Henry Ford's No. 2 man, and the new president will be No. 3.

Whoever does succeed Iacocca will have a tough act to follow. In 1964, Iacocca catapulted himself to prominence by doing much to design the Mustang and directing the marketing drive that made it the bestselling new car ever. He had been scheduled to offer some remarks last week at the press preview of the 1979 version, the Mustang III, but was dropped from the program. Ford is placing much hope on the car's radical restyling, with a Mercedes-like rear end and a long list of luxury options, to revive Mustang sales, which have sagged in the past couple of years. Iacocca will have nothing to do with selling it to the public, of course, but his mark will be on the new car: He helped to restyle the Mustang. sb

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