Iacocca

DETROIT -- As the smoke clears from President Bush's recent trade scuffle with the Japanese, it appears now that the battle is just beginning."We started a meaningful process in Japan, and we plan to follow up on it," General Motors Chairman Robert Stempel said yesterday before giving the keynote speech at the Automotive News World Congress, which began last night in Detroit."

This Neanderthal on Eastern Avenue points his finger at my car and urges me to drive it off a cliff. My car was made in Japan. The Neanderthal says I should be ashamed of myself for not buying American. I say the American carmakers should be ashamed for not building better cars.We are now witnessing that most ancient of all defense #i mechanisms for those who are in trouble: Find someone to blame.In Detroit, the U.S. auto industry last week called 1991 its worst sales year in nearly a decade and blamed it on Japan's closed-door trade policies.

With all the subtlety Commodore Matthew Perry displayed in 1853 as he sailed into Tokyo Bay with a quarter of the U.S. Navy and a letter of friendship from Millard Fillmore, President Bush has arrived in Japan proclaiming: "I come as a friend."Like President Fillmore, Mr. Bush wants to pry open the Japanese market. He is not relying on gunboats but on 21 American corporation chiefs, including the bosses of the Detroit Big Three whose companies have been clobbered by Japanese competitors turning out cars Americans love to buy."

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- Lee A. Iacocca says that the Big Three automakers should consider promoting federal legislation zTC to limit the Japanese car industry to a fixed percentage of the American market.Speaking at the dedication of Chrysler Corp.'s $1 billion technology center outside Detroit, Iacocca, Chrysler's chairman, said yesterday: "We've never favored a complete restriction, but we'll have to decide our collective position. We have to deal with our own self-interests. At some point, you have to decide what you stand for."

IN THE FIRST MONTHS of 1981, the American automobile industry, as Motor Trend magazine put it, was in the "throes of a grand pirouette." Still reeling from the 1974 oil embargo and subsequent "energy crisis," Detroit was rapidly phasing out its gas-guzzlers and replacing them with more fuel-efficient automobiles.January marked the 10th anniversary of the debut of the car that became synonymous with America's firm commitment to economy: the Chrysler K-car. Although the first Ks rolled off the assembly lines in late 1980, it was in January of 1981 that the car had its formal coming-out, making the January front covers of both Consumer Reports and Motor Trend.