Gerald C. Myers, former CEO of American Motors Corporation, who contributed to the nation’s fascination with sport utility vehicles and oversaw the development of some of the most bizarre cars of the 1970s. He died at his home in West Bloomfield, Michigan on May 19. he was 94 years old.
His death was announced by his daughter Susan Myers.
After stints at Ford and Chrysler, Mr. Myers joined American Motors in 1962 and rose through the ranks as AMC battled to survive in a market dominated by his former employer and the Big Three, General Motors. At the time, they co-produced nine of his ten cars sold in the United States.
In 1970, as a senior manufacturing executive, Mr. Myers was tasked with evaluating a potential acquisition of Kaiser Jeep. He pointed out the brand’s serious production inefficiencies and recommended that AMC’s board vote against it. But the board went ahead anyway, putting Mr. Myers in charge.
To appeal to a wider audience, he upgraded the existing Jeep with better engines, suspension and interiors, and spearheaded the development of a new wagon, the Jeep Cherokee. Sales quickly skyrocketed, stabilizing AMC’s volatile finances and boosting consumer interest in wide off-road vehicles.
Myers was quickly promoted to head of development at AMC. He spearheaded the design of a compact car that didn’t feel cramped for its occupants, resulting in his Pacer, a short, wide four-seater with a strangely curved rear window.
The Pacer’s glass bead-like appearance has been jokingly compared to the flying spaceships of the animated TV show The Jetsons, but Motor Trend magazine called it “the freshest, most infamous American born in 2015.” Creative, the most human-oriented car.” for years. Other oddities followed, including the AMC Eagle, the first all-wheel-drive passenger car made in the United States to combine Jeep components and bodywork.
Myers, 48, was appointed chief executive in 1977 when AMC was struggling to control just 2% of the U.S. market. At 6-foot-2, with the physique of a former college football player and the looks of a Hollywood icon, he had a commanding figure. He was known as an analytical but demanding manager, in contrast to his brash, harsh-spoken rival Lee Iacocca, who was desperate to save Chrysler.
“My approach is different,” Myers told the Detroit Free Press that year. “We’re not going to do things the same way we were before. We’re going to try in other directions and break new ground.”
AMC reported record profits in its second year in office, but when the U.S. economy faltered in 1979, banks refused new loans to AMC. Myers looked for a partner and found French automaker Renault. Renault bought a stake in AMC for $150 million (currently around $670 million). AMC started selling Renault vehicles, and the two companies jointly started development of a new compact sedan. alliance.
But AMC’s woes continued. In 1982, Renault installed a new management team and Mr. Myers retired at the age of 53. Chrysler bought AMC in 1987 and dissolved most of the business, but kept the Jeep brand.
Myers then began teaching at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He is the author of two of his books on corporate crisis management, one of which he co-authored with his daughter Susan. From 1991 until 2017 he taught at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He piloted the catamaran and relaxed. “When the wind blew and he got on one side of the hull, he was happy,” Susan Myers said.
Myers’ impact on the industry can still be seen today. All-wheel drive vehicles occupy a profitable niche for brands such as Subaru and Audi. Pacer achieved cult fame, powder blue vehicle A character played by Mike Myers in the two Wayne’s World films. And Americans’ love of Jeep-like vehicles is undiminished.Half of all vehicles sold in the US are now classified as his SUV
Gerald Karl Myers was born in Buffalo on December 5, 1928. His father, Meyer Smzek, was an immigrant from Poland who worked in New York City’s clothing district, but he moved to Buffalo, where he changed his last name to Myers and opened a tailoring shop. Gerald’s mother, Berenice Meyers (whose birth name was the same as her married name), was an opera singer.
Young Myers skipped two grades of elementary school, graduated from high school at age 15, and despite not knowing how to drive, negotiated a job parking cars in garages. “I hit some people,” he laughs on home video. He spent a year at Canisius College in Buffalo before he transferred to Carnegie Mellon College (then called Carnegie Institute of Technology) where he captained his football team. After he graduated in 1950, Susan Myers said he was invited to tryouts with the Baltimore Colts, but decided he had survived enough for his broken nose and bones.
Myers worked for Ford in management training, but when the Korean War began, he attended the Air Force officer training program and served as a lieutenant in Greenland. Upon returning home, he earned a master’s degree at Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1954, and then got a job at Chrysler, where he often wore suits and coats made by his father.
At 26, he put down his life goals on paper. He wanted to be married by 30, have two children by 33, and a third by 35. He wants to make $30,000 a year by age 45 (equivalent to about $340,000 today) and $50,000 a year by age 55, and he listed all the positions he wanted. He thought he needed to work his way up to an executive officer.
While working at Chrysler, Myers asked his roommate if he knew any women he had dated. Her roommate pulled from a trash can a crumpled piece of paper bearing the number of her department store buyer, Barbara Jacob. They married her in 1958, had three children, and eventually moved to her township of Bloomfield, a wealthy suburb of Detroit.
His wife died in 2009 and his son Andrew died in 2019. In addition to his daughter Susan, he has another daughter, Nancy Meyers, and a grandson.
Susan Myers recalled how her father’s steadfast demeanor never seemed to waver. He didn’t say anything when she crashed the pacer he once leased to her, she recalled, but a new one arrived about two weeks later. “I think he thought wrecking the car was a punishment in itself,” she said.
Ultimately, though, he became somewhat annoyed by the SUV boom he helped spark. In a column he wrote for the New York Times in 2000, he lamented the enormity of the gasoline-hungry SUVs Detroit was producing at the time.
“I feel like Dr. Frankenstein these days facing the horrors of evolution after bringing a corpse to life,” he wrote. He added that if the industry had no intention of going back to making smaller models, “maybe it would have been better to leave the Jeep dead.”
