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Ever since the Edsel, in fact, all Detroit is more conscious than ever of market research. The industry now spends about $10 million a year on the task, four times what it spent ten years ago, and interviews about 200,000 people a year. Some researchers now dress themselves as laborers and mix with workers in taverns near a competitor's plant. One-way mirrors and electronic bugs in showrooms and at auto shows have become standard tools. At last week's International Auto Show in Manhattan, Chevrolet conducted a sneak test of the styling that will mark its 1965 Corvair; it displayed a Chevy II Nova Special that it presented as a "dream car," but whose lower half is almost identical in design to the proposed Corvair.
But auto executives still rely principally on their own intuition, using market research only to back it up—as Iacocca finally did in the case of the Mustang. "There are a lot of markets out there," says Iacocca, sweeping his hand at the panorama of flat Michigan countryside that he can see through the glass wall of his fifth-floor office. "My most important role here is to tell my top management how I view these markets, and how we want to respond to them. When I am finally convinced that there is a market for a new kind of car, I go over to the twelfth floor and say: 'The market's there.' "
One Boss. The twelfth floor is where Henry Ford, Ford President Arjay Miller and Executive Vice President Charles Patterson have their offices in a modernistic glass headquarters about a mile from Iacocca's building. Generally, Henry Ford watches over long-range planning and personnel development, Miller is in charge of finances, marketing and central staff, and Patterson of manufacturing. Unlike many of the sons of the pioneers of the auto industry, Ford maintains a constant interest in the business, letting his appointees run the company on a day-to-day basis but interceding whenever he deems it necessary. "Make no mistake," says Arjay Miller, a onetime Whiz Kid, "there's one boss, and that's Henry Ford."
"Henry Ford wants you to be blunt," says Iacocca, "and I happen to be blunt. We don't try to Alphonse and Gaston each, other, and we don't try to beat around the bush." Iacocca marshals his arguments so well and pushes his ideas so hard that Ford once stopped him just as he was winding up to make a speech and said: "All right, Lee, now let's get the facts, or you'll sell us without our knowing them."
When it came to selecting a name for the sports car, Iacocca discarded Cougar and Turino, before settling on Mustang. A holdout until the end was Henry Ford, who wanted to call it the Thunderbird II, to borrow from the Thunderbird's prestige. Ford is not always so tractable, of course, sometimes settles arguments in his favor by simply saying: "Don't forget, my name is on the building." One such case was his insistence, after sitting in a mockup of the Mustang, that the rear-seat leg room be increased an inch. Iacocca and his men complained loudly that another inch in length might destroy the car's proportions, but Ford got his way.