November 19, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Tim Leuliette began his career at Ford Motor Company under the leadership of Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford II. He got more than he bargained for... and was thankful for it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Can we continue with our American stories. Tim Luliet has
been on our show before. He here's Robbie with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Tim Luliet started his career at Ford Motor Company, where
he caught the eye of Leiacoca, the man responsible for
the development of the Ford Mustang in Ford Pinto, who
has been named the eighteenth greatest American CEO of all time.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I came across Leia Coca at a very young age,
saw what I was doing, moved me from engineering to
serve with the product planning activity. Product planning was one
of the greatest educations around my life. Every Friday, they
have a part one and a Part two. He would
have five minutes to present your proposal to management and
(00:58):
they'd be walking. There may be thirty five forty of
these lined up in styling, could be as much as
a change in the color of the grill to a
whole car or anything in between, and you had five
minutes to sort of make your stand, make your position known,
and things would then work their way up through the process.
But you were dealing with senior management. I would sit
there and go in and sometimes go to work on
(01:20):
a Monday and not come home till like Thursday. I
mean you sleep at Trindaska. It was an intense place.
About fifty percent of all the vice presidents and executives
at Ford had come through product planning, and there was
only eighty of us in product planning. He set up
and you know, and executive walk in and you say,
my proposals as follows. The variable costs as exit, the
(01:42):
capital costs is why our marketing plan is Z. And
this is what our competitive reaction is going to be.
We anticipate and you recommend approval, and you'd have to
have your story down and your variable costs better be
right and your capital better be right. So you'd be
working through that, and then next Friday it'd be another
set of things that you'd be working on. So that
was driven by business analysis and your ability to present
(02:06):
the elevator speech, conveying to an executive a task an
objective in a short enough manner that all the critical
factors were translated. I remember once this is the middle
seventy three, seventy four, oh PEC one, the energy crisis,
all right, and I'm over there, and powertrain planning is
(02:28):
now a critical thing. What engines we're going to use?
How do we make emissions with those engines, what vehicles
are going to be in And so I'm writing a
paper and presenting it and he ended up going Nia Cocaine.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Ford Henry Ford the second. It was the CEO of
Ford Motor Company and the son of the Henry Ford.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And I'm twenty three years old. And the paper had
to do with an overdrive transmission. Bringing back overdrive today.
That's all that means is a gear that's less than
one to one so that your engine can run very
low rpm when you're on the highway. And it was
two hundred and fifty million dollars and I put this
thing on three pieces of paper and a couple exhibits
and all this and that, and Henry Ford said, if
(03:08):
you're only going to spend two hundred and fifty million dollars,
why can't it be a one piece of paper? I mean,
that was the whole That's what Ford focused is that
the discipline of getting the fluff out and getting to
the facts so you can make a decision quickly. And
you know, if you're only going to spend two undred
fifty million dollars, can why can't you do a one
piece of paper kind of followed me through as the
(03:29):
rest of my life, and so for it's kind of
a business school in many respects. You know, you get
the philosophy in the in the concepts when when you're
in college, this is the real world. We're out there
trying to understand if gas was not available, how are
we going to sell cars? If gas was going to
(03:49):
triple in price, which you did. Back when I started,
gastline was thirty cents a gallon. When it went to
a dollar dollar and a half a gallon back then,
that's the same today as like eight to nine dollars
a gallon. I mean, in real terms, the world changed,
and here we were, with all that capital investment in
big things, heavy cars, big engines, all of us, the
(04:11):
seventy people and the other executive management of the company,
we were putting our pants on one leg at a
time and doing the best we could, say Ford Motor
Company back then, because Ford Motor Company, General Motors all
were fearing bankruptcy back then, which had been a much
brutal thing to do back in the seventies, because the
world stopped and it wasn't it wasn't somebody else that's
(04:35):
going to take care of this problem. You were now
in a position to be part of that group that
had to come up with a solution. It wasn't a
college test. This was the real thing, and your job
was at risk, and you learned. I've morphed out of
corporations to a larger gree now and do things on
(04:55):
my own, and I've had a lot of trumpanneurial things.
And our daughter, one of our daughters, Stacy's, got our
own business and I always told her, I said, you know,
there are gonna be times like that, And I said,
how do you know whether you're a trumpreneur or not.
You'll know some Thursday night when you have payroll on
Friday morning, and at dinner time on Thursday night, you
(05:17):
still don't know yet how you're going to cover it,
but you will figure out a way by Friday morning.
That's that's all. That's life. That's that's that you either
can do it or you can't. You can you can
get into that game and play it, or you can't.
And so that's why Ford was such a great graduates
program for me. And knowing that they paid me it
(05:39):
was great. I didn't have to go pay them. And
then the other thing at Ford is we would have
to if we made these present these big presentations, you
would duplicate them and you would number them one A,
one B. And the building we presented him in was
like a mile and a half from the glass House.
(06:02):
But you would put these two packages in separate cars,
and they would head separate routes. So in case one
car got an accident, the other car, who would still
make it? Now and my whole time afford another car
never didn't make it. I mean, you had two young
flag planners going box six down the road as fast
they could to make sure they were the car that
was there. But anyway, I was carrying backup books to
(06:26):
a meeting with a cocaine Again. I was at a
level then that had been moved into planning. He knew
who I was, but I wasn't yet of a sufficient
grade to be able to attend that meeting. But I
had the books for the meeting, and I had assembled
the books for the meeting, and my job was to
take him in there, get them distributed, and get out
of the room. And so the meeting was in Styling,
(06:49):
and I was leaving. A guy was driving the car
over and as we're heading from our building Building three
over the styling. Iyad Coca's car was fairly far ahead
of ours, and I cook had a rule, and that
was when he got in the room. The door was shut,
the meeting started. That was it. There was no smoking
except for him, and he had a cigar. But when
(07:11):
the door shut, the door shut. And he's ahead of us,
and I've got the books for the meeting, and We're
trying to work our way through traffic. And he pulls
up the styling and he juts up the stairs and
he goes into the room and I get out of
the car and I'm carrying these two satchels and these books,
and I'm running as hard as I can. These statuels
are quite heavy, and I curst to the door and
I'm running down the hallway. He can hear me because
(07:33):
he's about fifty feet in front of me, and he
kind of slows down, and I'm kind of he knows
what I've got, and he gets about five feet from
the door and he runs in and slams the door.
And I'm sitting there in the hallway knowing that I
have probably just lost my career with these two satchels
full of books, and he opens the door, looks out
(07:55):
and says, scared you didn't I so it was a
little he was, Yeah, it was an interesting guy. Aya
Coca saved Chrysler. Ayacca put products in the made Ford.
He was brash, he was loud, He was a loud dresser,
and he was smoked those cigars wherever he went, even
(08:16):
where you were not supposed to. But he saved companies,
created jobs, and made products in America. Loved Steve Jobs.
Is not a guy that you probably would have wanted
as a neighbor. But don't we all appreciate what he created.
So everyone's got assets and liabilities, but no one hears
(08:40):
the only perfect person on this planet we crucified two
thousand years ago. Everybody else has got.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Baggage, including Tim. You would have an impressive career overseeing
the Jeep Cherokee team at twenty nine years old and
leading and turning around several different automotive companies. At his
last and round with Vistian, he saved the company from bankruptcy,
rescued tens of thousands of jobs, and quadrupled their stock price.
(09:10):
But to avoid paying him the exit package she was due,
Vistion looked into his life to see if he had
any flaws that would let them out of it, and
they found things that had happened before he had come
to faith.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Was I involved the porn? Yeah? They do with that stuff. No.
But this may sound curt or crazy. It doesn't bother
me in the least. I don't think about it. They
had motivations for which they'll have to answer to later,
but it doesn't take away from the fact that there's
things I did that I'm repented for and I'm sorry
(09:42):
for it. But it's interesting that our life hasn't changed.
I still probably get one job off for a week
and I'm seven years old, and our faith is unchallenged.
We've all sinned somewhorse than others. It's a comeuppance. Yeah,
but I don't live for es and I wonder, you know,
what can I do? What can I help? It's sad
(10:05):
in some respects, I guess. But the point is for
the people that matter to me in my life. Of
the people that know me, how many friends did I
lose to this process. None. I'm very blessed because they
know me, I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
And great job on the piece of Thanks to Alex
and Robbie for their great work and thanks to Tim
Louliette for sharing his stories about working for a legend.
Tim Louliette's story, the story of working for Leia Coca
and so much more and his faith walk to here
on our American story
Can we continue with our American stories. Tim Luliet has
been on our show before. He here's Robbie with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Tim Luliet started his career at Ford Motor Company, where
he caught the eye of Leiacoca, the man responsible for
the development of the Ford Mustang in Ford Pinto, who
has been named the eighteenth greatest American CEO of all time.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I came across Leia Coca at a very young age,
saw what I was doing, moved me from engineering to
serve with the product planning activity. Product planning was one
of the greatest educations around my life. Every Friday, they
have a part one and a Part two. He would
have five minutes to present your proposal to management and
(00:58):
they'd be walking. There may be thirty five forty of
these lined up in styling, could be as much as
a change in the color of the grill to a
whole car or anything in between, and you had five
minutes to sort of make your stand, make your position known,
and things would then work their way up through the process.
But you were dealing with senior management. I would sit
there and go in and sometimes go to work on
(01:20):
a Monday and not come home till like Thursday. I
mean you sleep at Trindaska. It was an intense place.
About fifty percent of all the vice presidents and executives
at Ford had come through product planning, and there was
only eighty of us in product planning. He set up
and you know, and executive walk in and you say,
my proposals as follows. The variable costs as exit, the
(01:42):
capital costs is why our marketing plan is Z. And
this is what our competitive reaction is going to be.
We anticipate and you recommend approval, and you'd have to
have your story down and your variable costs better be
right and your capital better be right. So you'd be
working through that, and then next Friday it'd be another
set of things that you'd be working on. So that
was driven by business analysis and your ability to present
(02:06):
the elevator speech, conveying to an executive a task an
objective in a short enough manner that all the critical
factors were translated. I remember once this is the middle
seventy three, seventy four, oh PEC one, the energy crisis,
all right, and I'm over there, and powertrain planning is
(02:28):
now a critical thing. What engines we're going to use?
How do we make emissions with those engines, what vehicles
are going to be in And so I'm writing a
paper and presenting it and he ended up going Nia Cocaine.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Ford Henry Ford the second. It was the CEO of
Ford Motor Company and the son of the Henry Ford.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And I'm twenty three years old. And the paper had
to do with an overdrive transmission. Bringing back overdrive today.
That's all that means is a gear that's less than
one to one so that your engine can run very
low rpm when you're on the highway. And it was
two hundred and fifty million dollars and I put this
thing on three pieces of paper and a couple exhibits
and all this and that, and Henry Ford said, if
(03:08):
you're only going to spend two hundred and fifty million dollars,
why can't it be a one piece of paper? I mean,
that was the whole That's what Ford focused is that
the discipline of getting the fluff out and getting to
the facts so you can make a decision quickly. And
you know, if you're only going to spend two undred
fifty million dollars, can why can't you do a one
piece of paper kind of followed me through as the
(03:29):
rest of my life, and so for it's kind of
a business school in many respects. You know, you get
the philosophy in the in the concepts when when you're
in college, this is the real world. We're out there
trying to understand if gas was not available, how are
we going to sell cars? If gas was going to
(03:49):
triple in price, which you did. Back when I started,
gastline was thirty cents a gallon. When it went to
a dollar dollar and a half a gallon back then,
that's the same today as like eight to nine dollars
a gallon. I mean, in real terms, the world changed,
and here we were, with all that capital investment in
big things, heavy cars, big engines, all of us, the
(04:11):
seventy people and the other executive management of the company,
we were putting our pants on one leg at a
time and doing the best we could, say Ford Motor
Company back then, because Ford Motor Company, General Motors all
were fearing bankruptcy back then, which had been a much
brutal thing to do back in the seventies, because the
world stopped and it wasn't it wasn't somebody else that's
(04:35):
going to take care of this problem. You were now
in a position to be part of that group that
had to come up with a solution. It wasn't a
college test. This was the real thing, and your job
was at risk, and you learned. I've morphed out of
corporations to a larger gree now and do things on
(04:55):
my own, and I've had a lot of trumpanneurial things.
And our daughter, one of our daughters, Stacy's, got our
own business and I always told her, I said, you know,
there are gonna be times like that, And I said,
how do you know whether you're a trumpreneur or not.
You'll know some Thursday night when you have payroll on
Friday morning, and at dinner time on Thursday night, you
(05:17):
still don't know yet how you're going to cover it,
but you will figure out a way by Friday morning.
That's that's all. That's life. That's that's that you either
can do it or you can't. You can you can
get into that game and play it, or you can't.
And so that's why Ford was such a great graduates
program for me. And knowing that they paid me it
(05:39):
was great. I didn't have to go pay them. And
then the other thing at Ford is we would have
to if we made these present these big presentations, you
would duplicate them and you would number them one A,
one B. And the building we presented him in was
like a mile and a half from the glass House.
(06:02):
But you would put these two packages in separate cars,
and they would head separate routes. So in case one
car got an accident, the other car, who would still
make it? Now and my whole time afford another car
never didn't make it. I mean, you had two young
flag planners going box six down the road as fast
they could to make sure they were the car that
was there. But anyway, I was carrying backup books to
(06:26):
a meeting with a cocaine Again. I was at a
level then that had been moved into planning. He knew
who I was, but I wasn't yet of a sufficient
grade to be able to attend that meeting. But I
had the books for the meeting, and I had assembled
the books for the meeting, and my job was to
take him in there, get them distributed, and get out
of the room. And so the meeting was in Styling,
(06:49):
and I was leaving. A guy was driving the car
over and as we're heading from our building Building three
over the styling. Iyad Coca's car was fairly far ahead
of ours, and I cook had a rule, and that
was when he got in the room. The door was shut,
the meeting started. That was it. There was no smoking
except for him, and he had a cigar. But when
(07:11):
the door shut, the door shut. And he's ahead of us,
and I've got the books for the meeting, and We're
trying to work our way through traffic. And he pulls
up the styling and he juts up the stairs and
he goes into the room and I get out of
the car and I'm carrying these two satchels and these books,
and I'm running as hard as I can. These statuels
are quite heavy, and I curst to the door and
I'm running down the hallway. He can hear me because
(07:33):
he's about fifty feet in front of me, and he
kind of slows down, and I'm kind of he knows
what I've got, and he gets about five feet from
the door and he runs in and slams the door.
And I'm sitting there in the hallway knowing that I
have probably just lost my career with these two satchels
full of books, and he opens the door, looks out
(07:55):
and says, scared you didn't I so it was a
little he was, Yeah, it was an interesting guy. Aya
Coca saved Chrysler. Ayacca put products in the made Ford.
He was brash, he was loud, He was a loud dresser,
and he was smoked those cigars wherever he went, even
(08:16):
where you were not supposed to. But he saved companies,
created jobs, and made products in America. Loved Steve Jobs.
Is not a guy that you probably would have wanted
as a neighbor. But don't we all appreciate what he created.
So everyone's got assets and liabilities, but no one hears
(08:40):
the only perfect person on this planet we crucified two
thousand years ago. Everybody else has got.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Baggage, including Tim. You would have an impressive career overseeing
the Jeep Cherokee team at twenty nine years old and
leading and turning around several different automotive companies. At his
last and round with Vistian, he saved the company from bankruptcy,
rescued tens of thousands of jobs, and quadrupled their stock price.
(09:10):
But to avoid paying him the exit package she was due,
Vistion looked into his life to see if he had
any flaws that would let them out of it, and
they found things that had happened before he had come
to faith.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Was I involved the porn? Yeah? They do with that stuff. No.
But this may sound curt or crazy. It doesn't bother
me in the least. I don't think about it. They
had motivations for which they'll have to answer to later,
but it doesn't take away from the fact that there's
things I did that I'm repented for and I'm sorry
(09:42):
for it. But it's interesting that our life hasn't changed.
I still probably get one job off for a week
and I'm seven years old, and our faith is unchallenged.
We've all sinned somewhorse than others. It's a comeuppance. Yeah,
but I don't live for es and I wonder, you know,
what can I do? What can I help? It's sad
(10:05):
in some respects, I guess. But the point is for
the people that matter to me in my life. Of
the people that know me, how many friends did I
lose to this process. None. I'm very blessed because they
know me, I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
And great job on the piece of Thanks to Alex
and Robbie for their great work and thanks to Tim
Louliette for sharing his stories about working for a legend.
Tim Louliette's story, the story of working for Leia Coca
and so much more and his faith walk to here
on our American story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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