"If You Can Find a Better Car, Buy It" - Ronald DeLuca, 1980s Chrysler Adman, Dies

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

His commercials were a sign of the times — desperate, struggling times that suddenly turned prosperous.

In the 1980s, Ronald DeLuca was the hidden face behind an instantly familiar one — Chrysler Corporation chairman Lee Iacocca, who walked into his company’s own commercials to personally pitch front-wheel-drive K-car platform products to a recession-weary America.

DeLuca, the advertising whiz hired by Iacocca to help turn around Chrysler’s late-1970s death plunge, died last week at 91, according to The New York Times. During his tenure DeLuca and Iacocca cranked out a slew of unusually frank, bold commercials that paid off in a big way.

The two men, both Pennsylvanian-born to Italian immigrants, met in the late 1960s when Iacocca was firmly in place at Ford Motor Company. DeLuca rose up the ranks of ad agency Kenyon & Eckhard, and when Iacocca jumped in to save Chrysler in 1978, he tapped DeLuca’s talents. Together, they helped persuade the U.S. government to hand the failing company a loan guarantee.

After that, the only thing left was the not-so-simple task of convincing jaded Americans that Chrysler wasn’t an archaic relic teetering on the edge of the corporate toilet bowl. They needed to sell product. Once they had it, DeLuca would craft the ad, and Iacocca would make the pitch.

“There was a certain amount of risk involved,” DeLuca told The New York Times in 1992. “The risk was that our company would go down the drain.”

In the early years, the ads featured a folksy Iacocca coaxing people back to the brand with humility (“No cars are perfect, but we think these come pretty close”) and an appeal to basic economics. Say it’s 1981, you have $6,500 to spend and have a broken-down gas guzzler in the driveway. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that buying a warrantied Dodge Aries or Plymouth Reliant might be a good idea.

The ads were more about dispelling myths and boosting the corporation’s public image then they were about selling cars, Iacocca later wrote.

As the company rocketed back to prosperity with the success of the K-car and its many offspring — including the minivan — the ads became boastful, yet remained wary of the public’s fears. Bold claims were tempered by promises that the company wouldn’t become lax.

DeLuca retired in 1991, but remained a part-time consultant to his former agency. He was on the set of Iacocca’s last commercial — his 61st in total — which aired in 1992. It was Iacocca’s farewell address, which also featured a computer-generated look at the new line of “cab-forward” LH platform vehicles that would carry the company into the 1990s. Product had grown stale, and DeLuca & Co. wanted buyers to know there was a new design revolution underway.

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Healthy skeptic Healthy skeptic on Aug 25, 2016

    Yay, Iacocca! Where's the ad where he zooms off in a Lamborghini? I remember that from the early 90's. One thing I noticed about these ads is that they weren't afraid to talk smack about the competition. Nowadays, for the most part car commercials play like they're the only ones in the world making cars. The only exception I know of is GM bad-mouthing Ford's Al truck beds by dumping big rocks in them.

    • Corey Lewis Corey Lewis on Aug 25, 2016

      I heard a radio ad the other day for a local dealer: "And for those of you who still want a steel bed on their pickup, we have Silverados..." I was like awww sheeet.

  • Bumpy ii Bumpy ii on Aug 26, 2016

    "And for those of you who still want a solid dependable wood bed instead of a dented rusty steel bed, here's a time machine set to 1967."

  • Joe This is called a man in the middle attack and has been around for years. You can fall for this in a Starbucks as easily as when you’re charging your car. Nothing new here…
  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
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