Air bags – Lee Iacocca (continued)

"But if elected I might serve Iacocca is popular but carries heavy baggage"

Visual: campaign button "Draft Lee Iacocca for President"

"If the measure of a live candidacy is the appearance of opposition, the campaign has already begun. At the draft committee's press conference, auto-safety activists [led by CARS founder Shahan] handed out Watergate-era transcripts of an Oval Office meeting at which Iacocca, then the president of Ford, successfully pressed President Nixon to abandon a pending rule requiring air bags in passenger cars. They made available, too, accounts of the troubled history of the Ford Pinto, an Iacocca-regime car liable to gas-tank explosions during rear-end collisions."

– Newsweek, July 28, 1986

 

Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca responds to CARS Foundation inquiry

In 1983, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca introduced Chrysler's new minivans with a press event in San Diego. Iacocca was famous for being the auto industry's most outspoken opponent of air bag technology. CARS founder Shahan invited Los Angeles area- pediatrician Robert Vinetz, a leading proponent of child safety, to join her and see if they could raise questions about Iacocca's opposition. At the news conference, Iacocca called on Shahan and Vinetz. His responses to their questions generated national news about the air bag issue.

From the August 31, 1983 transcript:

Shahan: "Mr. Iacocca, how much do you figure rescission of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 for passive restraints has saved the Chrysler Corporation?"

Iacocca: "I can't give you a number. A ton of money.I've been against them.We should have a mandatory seat belt usage. 'Cause we got good harnesses now and good lap belts. And if you use them, up to 30 miles an hour, it's simple. You or your kids are not gonna get killed in a car. I mean, we have plenty of data on that. You say, "But that's Big Brotherism. You can't make a guy put on a seat belt.' I say, "All right. To hell with you then.We don't have anything going on anymore at Chrysler on airbags 'cause it's so expensive. We were spending millions on engineering alone, let alone on starting to do designs or get into tooling on any air bag system.I mean, two decades have passed. What's another ten years among friends?'" (Emphasis added).