Sublime

I didn’t see it from a seller’s perspective, though. I didn’t expect returns to go up. I wasn’t thinking that by making it easier, more buyers would use it—and that buyers from all over the world would be able to use it. With all those buyers competing over the cars, it was a natural result that the returns would go up. That was the kicker for me.

came back and told Curtis that if we were going to compete, we needed to specialize in a car the other dismantlers in town didn’t want to carry. At the time Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth were not cars dismantlers wanted to have because they weren’t hot-selling items. So we made a decision to specialize in Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth. All the othe

It was not until I pointed out that we might set new standards in building them that I secured Henry Ford’s consent to make 4,000 Pratt & Whitney engines.

The old master had failed to master change. Don’t ask me why. There is a legend cultivated by sentimentalists that Mr. Ford left behind a great car expressive of the pure concept of cheap, basic transportation. The fact is that he left behind a car that no longer offered the best buy, even as raw, basic transportation.

The product policy we proposed is the one for which General Motors has now long been known. We said first that the corporation should produce a line of cars in each price area, from the lowest price up to one for a strictly high-grade quantity-production car, but we would not get into the fancy-price field with small production; second, that the pr

IAA would show up wearing suits and riding in limos. I showed up wearing cowboy boots and driving a rental car. Some owners were wooed by the flash of IAA. Some were put off by it. For other owners, it came down to the bottom line—who would pay more? I had the advantage there. IAA bought companies the Wall Street way—based on pretax or after-tax ea

the McLeans understood that the easiest way to control costs was to get employees involved. Holding down insurance and repair bills, for example, meant having safety-conscious drivers. Novices were trained by being paired with senior drivers on the run from Winston-Salem to Atlanta. The senior driver got a bonus of one month’s pay if a man he had t