June 19, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Tim Leuliette began his career at Ford Motor Company under the legendary leadership of Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford II. A future auto industry executive and turnaround specialist, Tim got more than he bargained for during those early years, and he’s been thankful ever since. Here’s Tim with the story of how he got his start in the automotive world.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
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 year's Robbie with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Tim Luliet started his career at Ford Motor Company, where
he caught the eye of Leiacca, the man responsible for
the development of the Ford Mustang in Ford Pinto, who
has been named the eighteenth greatest American CEO of old Time.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I came across Leiah Coca at a very young age.
He 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 they'd be walking. There may be thirty five of
(01:00):
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
a Monday and not come home till like Thursday. I
(01:22):
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
capital costs is why our marketing plan is Z. And
(01:45):
this is what our competitive reaction is going to be.
Can we anticipate and you recommend approval? And you'd have
to have your story down and your varible 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 the elevator speech, conveying to an executive a task
(02:12):
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 PEK one, the energy crisis,
all right, and I'm over there, and powertrain planning is
now a critical thing. What engines we're going to use?
How do we make emissions with those engines? What vehicles
(02:32):
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, who 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.
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 you're
(03:08):
only going to spend two hundred and fifty million dollars,
why can't it be on 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 spen two hundred
fifty million dollars, why can't you do a one piece
of paper kind of followed me through after the rest
(03:29):
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 you 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 on price, which you did. Back when I started,
gasline 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 trumpeterial things.
And our daughter, one of our daughters, Acy's, got our
own business and I always told her, I said, you know,
there're gonna be times like that, And I said, how
do you know whether you're a trumpetneur or not? You'll
know some Thursday night when you have payroll on Friday morning,
(05:15):
and at dinner time on Thursday night, you 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
that's life. That's that 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,
(05:38):
and knowing that they paid me it 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
(05:58):
and a half from the glass House. 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 the other car never didn't make it.
I mean, he had two young flag planners going Max
(06:19):
six down the road as fast as they could to
make sure they were the car that was there. But anyway,
I was carrying backup books to a meeting with a cocaine. Again,
I was at a level and 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
(06:41):
my job was to take him in there, get them distributed,
and get out of the room. And so the meeting
was in Styling, and I was leaving. A guy was
driving the car over and as we were heading from
our building, building three over the styling. Iya Coca's car
was fairly far ahead of ours, and I Coka had
a rule, and that was when he got in the room.
(07:04):
The door was shut, the meeting started. That was it.
There was no smoking except for him. He had a cigar.
But when 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 style and he he juts up
the stairs and he goes into the room and I
get out of the car and I'm carrying these two
(07:25):
satchels and these books, and I'm running as hard as
I can. These statuels are quite heavy, and I curse
to the door and I'm running down the hallway. He
can hear me because 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
(07:45):
hallway knowing that I have probably just lost my career
with these two satchels full of books and He opens
the door, looks out and says, scared you didn't I
so it was a little He was a Yeah, he
was an interesting guy. Aya Coca saved Chrysler. Aya Coca
put products in the made Ford. He was brash, he
(08:10):
was loud, He was a loud dresser, and he was
smoked those cigars wherever he went, even 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
(08:34):
got assets and liabilities, but no one hears the only
perfect person on this planet we crucified two thousand years ago.
Everybody else has got baggage.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
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 automo of companies. At his
last and round with Vistion, 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,
vis Dion 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 poorn? Yeah? They do 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, some worse than others. It's a comeuppance. Yeah,
but I don't live for and I wonder, you know,
what can I do? What kind of 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 and
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 year's Robbie with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Tim Luliet started his career at Ford Motor Company, where
he caught the eye of Leiacca, the man responsible for
the development of the Ford Mustang in Ford Pinto, who
has been named the eighteenth greatest American CEO of old Time.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
I came across Leiah Coca at a very young age.
He 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 they'd be walking. There may be thirty five of
(01:00):
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
a Monday and not come home till like Thursday. I
(01:22):
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
capital costs is why our marketing plan is Z. And
(01:45):
this is what our competitive reaction is going to be.
Can we anticipate and you recommend approval? And you'd have
to have your story down and your varible 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 the elevator speech, conveying to an executive a task
(02:12):
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 PEK one, the energy crisis,
all right, and I'm over there, and powertrain planning is
now a critical thing. What engines we're going to use?
How do we make emissions with those engines? What vehicles
(02:32):
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, who 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.
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 you're
(03:08):
only going to spend two hundred and fifty million dollars,
why can't it be on 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 spen two hundred
fifty million dollars, why can't you do a one piece
of paper kind of followed me through after the rest
(03:29):
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 you 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 on price, which you did. Back when I started,
gasline 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 trumpeterial things.
And our daughter, one of our daughters, Acy's, got our
own business and I always told her, I said, you know,
there're gonna be times like that, And I said, how
do you know whether you're a trumpetneur or not? You'll
know some Thursday night when you have payroll on Friday morning,
(05:15):
and at dinner time on Thursday night, you 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
that's life. That's that 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,
(05:38):
and knowing that they paid me it 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
(05:58):
and a half from the glass House. 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 the other car never didn't make it.
I mean, he had two young flag planners going Max
(06:19):
six down the road as fast as they could to
make sure they were the car that was there. But anyway,
I was carrying backup books to a meeting with a cocaine. Again,
I was at a level and 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
(06:41):
my job was to take him in there, get them distributed,
and get out of the room. And so the meeting
was in Styling, and I was leaving. A guy was
driving the car over and as we were heading from
our building, building three over the styling. Iya Coca's car
was fairly far ahead of ours, and I Coka had
a rule, and that was when he got in the room.
(07:04):
The door was shut, the meeting started. That was it.
There was no smoking except for him. He had a cigar.
But when 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 style and he he juts up
the stairs and he goes into the room and I
get out of the car and I'm carrying these two
(07:25):
satchels and these books, and I'm running as hard as
I can. These statuels are quite heavy, and I curse
to the door and I'm running down the hallway. He
can hear me because 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
(07:45):
hallway knowing that I have probably just lost my career
with these two satchels full of books and He opens
the door, looks out and says, scared you didn't I
so it was a little He was a Yeah, he
was an interesting guy. Aya Coca saved Chrysler. Aya Coca
put products in the made Ford. He was brash, he
(08:10):
was loud, He was a loud dresser, and he was
smoked those cigars wherever he went, even 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
(08:34):
got assets and liabilities, but no one hears the only
perfect person on this planet we crucified two thousand years ago.
Everybody else has got baggage.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
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 automo of companies. At his
last and round with Vistion, 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,
vis Dion 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 poorn? Yeah? They do 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, some worse than others. It's a comeuppance. Yeah,
but I don't live for and I wonder, you know,
what can I do? What kind of 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 and
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
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.