As I’ve said before, one of the things you notice when you do a lot of research in a particular field is that certain pieces of information are repeated over and over again even though they’re wrong. I’ve made those mistakes myself — some times that I know about and probably others I have yet to discover — so I can’t claim any particular moral high ground here, but when I recognize one of these errors, I try to rectify it as best I can.
One common misconception I’ve noticed recently regards Ford in the late fifties and early sixties and the careers of Robert McNamara and Lee Iacocca. Let’s see if we can set it straight:
VICE PRESIDENTS AND FORD GENERAL MANAGERS
As many readers are probably aware, in November 1960, Robert S. McNamara was named president of the Ford Motor Company, a role he ultimately held for less than two weeks. At around the same time, Lee Iacocca was promoted to vice president and Ford general manager. That’s all true; however, because McNamara was a past general manager of Ford Division and those promotions occurred more or less concurrently, some authors (including me, to my chagrin) have implied or even stated outright that Iacocca replaced McNamara at Ford, which is incorrect.
McNamara became general manager of Ford Division in January 1955, succeeding the division’s first general manager, Lewis D. Crusoe. McNamara remained in that role for only about two years. In the spring of 1957, he was promoted to group vice president of the Car and Truck Group, a position he held until assuming the presidency in the fall of 1960. As group VP, McNamara oversaw Ford, Mercury, Edsel, and Lincoln, but did not directly manage any of those divisions; the division managers reported to him.
McNamara’s immediate successor as head of Ford Division was not Iacocca, who was then in Ford’s marketing department, but James O. Wright, another of the original Whiz Kids who joined Ford after serving together in the U.S. Army Air Force.
Wright came to Ford in early 1946, serving first as a special assistant to the office of the president and then manager of the Organization Department. Upon the creation of Ford Division in early 1949, Wright became an assistant to new general manager Lewis D. Crusoe. After serving for a time as assistant general manufacturing manager and assistant general purchasing agent for the division, Wright spent a year as director of purchasing for Ford Motor Company as a whole. In 1956, he returned to Ford Division, first as assistant general manager under McNamara and, after McNamara’s promotion to group vice president, as general manager, a role Wright held for around three and a half years.
The reasons for the confusion aren’t difficult to see: Both McNamara and Iacocca are obviously far better known than Wright and McNamara’s influence on Ford product decisions in this period is well-documented. Both of the two most significant and historically memorable new Ford models of Wright’s tenure, the 1958 Ford Thunderbird and the 1960 Ford Falcon, were very much McNamara’s projects and the Thunderbird was developed and approved while McNamara was still general manager. (Lead times being what they are, it’s not uncommon for an automotive general manager to spend most of his or her tenure producing and selling cars designed by his or her predecessor(s).)
After McNamara became president, Wright took his place as group VP and Iacocca succeeded Wright at Ford Division. Wright became a board member in 1961 and remained with Ford Motor Company until his resignation in May 1963. He then left the auto industry for a stint as a consultant for Litton Industries (which was founded by his fellow Whiz Kid, Charles Bates “Tex” Thornton) and then becoming president of Federal-Mogul Bower, an automotive and aerospace supplier.
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND (BELATED) ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In November 2013, Leslie Armbruster of the Ford Motor Company Archives was kind enough to forward me a copy of a 1963 Ford press release on Jim Wright’s resignation, the text of which includes a brief bio. I had meant to update this article to reflect that information, but to my great embarrassment, it slipped my mind until months later. I’ve now updated the text to reflect that bio.
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