Iacocca's Tightrope Act

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days, he shows little sign of it in public. He delights in twitting skeptics who doubt Chrysler's recovery. And in giving Government officials, including President Reagan, advice about how to manage the economy. Reagan appears to like it; hoping to get some ideas for his speech, he invited lacocca to a small dinner at the White House nine days before the State of the Union message. Not long after that, lacocca spent a few hours hobnobbing with the President at Chrysler's St. Louis assembly plant.

For several years, lacocca has been lobbying for a 25¢-per-gal. increase in the federal gasoline tax. Most proponents of the idea see it as a way to discourage consumption, but lacocca knows it would help Chrysler sell its new cars, which have been designed to go farther on less gas than their U.S. competitors. Chrysler's fleet averages 27.5 m.p.g., vs. 24.3 for Ford and 24.1 for GM. If falling oil prices spur a demand for old-fashioned big cars, Chrysler will hurt the worst. Says lacocca: "What's happening with gasoline is wacko. It's crazy. We needed to slap at least a quarter on the pump so that people didn't get into dirty habits and start buying those rear-wheel-drive New Yorkers like they were going out of style."

For all the outspoken rhetoric, lacocca is basically a shy, even awkward man. Says J. Paul Bergmoser, a friend from Ford days who served as Chrysler's president for 20 months: "Believe it or not, he doesn't like to walk into a room alone. At parties, he is not for giving all the women a kiss, the way some people do." While lacocca is often seen in public with the likes of Sinatra, Singer Vic Damone and Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner, he seems most comfortable in the company of his own family.

His wife Mary, whom he married in 1956, is the daughter of an Irish Catholic plumber. She was a receptionist at a Ford sales office in Chester, Pa., when the couple met at a Ford conference in Philadelphia in 1948. They have two daughters, Lia, 18, a student at a Michigan college, and Kathi, 23, a recent Middlebury (Vt.) College graduate who is a Washington public relations account executive. lacocca and his daughters are close; he usually stays in Kathi's guest bedroom during his frequent trips to the capital.

Lee and Mary have lived in the same Bloomfield Hills, Mich., house for 20 years. Unassuming by neighborhood standards, it nevertheless comes with swimming pool and tennis court. The couple tend to stick close to home, partly because Mary is a diabetic who has been hospitalized in the past few years for both heart problems and a stroke. They spend their time watching television or reading bestsellers (a recent favorite: Indecent Exposure).

Job pressures have killed off one family institution, a weekly low-stakes card game with a group of friends known as the Friday Night Poker Society that frequently met in a game room dubbed Lido's Lounge. lacocca does still find time to indulge a predilection for preparing his own Italian sauces. During a father-and-daughter European trip, he even induced an Italian hotel-owning friend in Modena to let him spend several hours observing the kitchen chef. Says he: "I cook on weekends mostly. Mary says it's O.K. as long as I have three guys follow along behind me to clean up."

For exercise, lacocca jogs 15 to 20 minutes on a