Lee Iacocca, the automobile industry executive who helped launch the Mustang at Ford and save Chrysler from bankruptcy, and whose cunning, ingenuity and swagger made him one of the most successful salesmen of his generation, died July 2 at his home in the Bel-Air area of Los Angeles. He was 94.
For a vast swath of the American public, Iacocca was the face, the voice and the symbol of the car business in Detroit at its most resourceful and industrious. The hard-charging Iacocca, an immigrant's son who rose to a vice presidency at Ford at 36, first gained broad renown in 1964, when he helped take the company to a new level of stylishness and panache with the Mustang sports car.