Robert S. McNamara, the Ford Motor Co. Whiz Kid who became U.S. Defense Secretary 
vilified during the Vietnam War, died Monday at the age of 93 subsequent an ailing.
McNamara, who joined Ford in 1946, was one of 10 former World War II officers who became known as the Whiz Kids who saved the failing company by implementing modern management systems. McNamara started for the reason that manager of planning and financial analysis and rose quickly through the ranks to the top announce. He was the first non-Ford family member to serve as president to that point.
Current Ford Chairman Bill Ford said in a statement issued Monday that McNamara's dedicated business to Ford will long be remembered. "Bob's contributions as a member of the history-making Whiz Kids and his zealot efforts on behalf of automotive safety and environmentalism are as relevant today as they were then," he said.
In the 1950s, McNamara opposed Ford's Edsel program, now synonymous with major blunders, and eventually stopped the program. He was the force in the rear of the popular 1960 Ford Falcoln sedan, which he saw being of the kind which a small, unaffected and inexpensive-to-produce vehicle as a victory alternative to the big, expensive-to-make cars of the era. He also focused the automaker on safety. He tried to terminate the Lincoln brand after its large cars of the late 1950s proved unpopular but oversaw the re-make of the brand, which introduced a smaller and eventually popular Continental in 1961.
McNamara was recruited from Ford by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to steal away the defense part. He stayed through the Johnson administration to be converted into considered as possibly the most influential defense secretary of the 20th century largely since the architect of the controversial and failed Vietnam War, which became known as "McNamara's War."
McNamara spent the rest of his life wrestling by the war's outcome, lessons learned from it and its of ethics consequences, confessing in his memoir that his own convoy during Vietnam was "wrong, terribly wrong." He exhausted his later years seemingly to make up for Vietnam by devoting his life largely to mild work.
Photo from Ford Motor Co. Archives
Robert McNamara (left) chats with Henry Ford II.
Source: www.autoobserver.com
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