When life was at its craziest, after he was embarrassingly fired from one job, then desperately trying to save a new company from going under, Lee Iacocca was also watching his wife die.
After more than 20 years battling Type 1 diabetes, she was frail. The disease, which disables the body's ability to manage sugar levels, was wearing her down. She suffered from heart attacks and strokes, spending much of her time in and out of hospitals. On May 15, 1983, Mary Iacocca died.
But not before her husband made a big promise: Before he dies, he told her, he will cure diabetes.
Now 80 years old, Iacocca is still working on fulfilling that promise. And it's paired him with an unlikely partner: rapper Snoop Dogg.
Chrysler is about to unveil another commercial with Iacocca, its former CEO, to promote its employee discount pricing plan. In this one, called "Golf Buddies," Iacocca spends a day on the links listening to Snoop talk up the benefits of Chrysler's products. It ends with Snoop saying, "If the ride is more fly, then you should buy," a play on Iacocca's famous line telling consumers, "If you can find a better car, buy it."
Critics have argued that Iacocca is too out of touch to be useful in Chrysler ads. "I wouldn't have brought him back," says Peter DeLorenzo, editor of AutoExtremist.com and a consultant. "I think it's part of the past, and it resonates with a lot of people in Detroit, but it doesn't do anything about going after the import-oriented consumer."
Iacocca does not promote the fight against diabetes in his commercials but donates his earnings from the ad campaign to The Iacocca Foundation. During his career at Chrysler, he did 61 commercials. Since June, he's taped four more, and says he's open to the idea of doing additional ads if it will help spread the word about his efforts to find a cure for diabetes.
"I thought I was retired from commercials," Iacocca says. "But I think Chrysler will be a great help to me. That's why I did it — it creates great awareness."
His ambitions are not completely pie-in-the-sky. In the past 20 years, he's donated more than $20 million to diabetes research. Two years ago, one of the researchers he funded cured diabetes in mice. Denise Faustman, director of immunobiology at Massachusetts General and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical, found that a generic drug used to immunize against tuberculosis also stopped white blood cells from attacking the pancreas in white mice. She was amazed to find that the pancreas then began regenerating the cells needed to help the body regulate sugar levels.
The drug, called BCG, is cheap, about $15 a vial. Faustman says she doesn't think the medical industry is interested in her research because it promises little in the way of profits. But Iacocca is pushing her to get through clinical trials quickly.
"Certainly, he's a novel thinker, and he expects research to move as fast as industry," Faustman says. "He sets very high standards, and that's OK. I think the thing that characterized his career is that he took risks. He runs his research the same way."
The Iacocca Foundation has about half the money it needs to fund the clinical trials. Iacocca said he intended to ask a bunch of his millionaire friends for money, but quickly found out they were committed to their own charities. He's using the Internet to solicit funds, hoping a million diabetics will donate $10 each. Plans are not yet finalized, but Chrysler and its dealer network are going to help the foundation raise money through its Web site,
www.joinleenow.org.
During the course of the 10-hour taping at a country club in Woodland Hills, Calif., Iacocca told Snoop Dogg he had no idea who the rapper was. But Snoop told him he has a brother with diabetes, and said he admired what Iacocca is doing.
"He's just a good kid," Iacocca says. "I didn't understand half the things he was telling me, but it was fun."
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/...ads-usat_x.htm
Iacocca does ads to aid battle against diabetes. 
Linear Mode
