Assignment Time Frame: 1/1978-1/1980
Robert James Eaton
Eaton was born in Buena Vista, Colorado and grew up in Arkansas City, Kansas. He graduated with a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Kansas in 1963. He was in the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
Career[edit]
Upon graduation he joined General Motors and in 1973 he was made chief engineer of GM's new front wheel drive X-body cars. In 1982 he was promoted to vice-president of advanced engineering before being named president of GM Europe in 1988. It was here that Chrysler Corporation CEO Lee Iacocca found Eaton and hired him to be his successor as CEO. This was controversial at the time, because Bob Lutz was the expected successor to the CEO position, and Iacocca later indicated that he indeed felt that Lutz would have been the better choice as his successor.[2]
Eaton was the Chairman and CEO of Chrysler from 1993 until 1998. In that position, he was responsible for the sale of Chrysler Corporation to Daimler-Benz, which formed DaimlerChrysler.[3]
Eaton was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 1989 for leading design and development of modern front-wheel-drive, body-frame-integral automobiles and for introducing advanced automotive manufacturing techniques. He was also a chairman of the NAE.
He was elected a director of Chevron in September 2000.[4]
He has been on the board of International Paper. He is a trustee of the University of Kansas Endowment Association. As of 2003, he lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Connie.[*^citation ^needed*]
Awards[edit]
·
1994 Distinguished Service Citation from the University of Kansas Alumni Association.
·
1994 Man of the Year from the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.
·
1995 Distinguished Engineering Service Award from the University of Kansas School of Engineering.
·
1995 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[5]
·
2005 Inducted into the University of Kansas Business Hall of Fame[6]
References[edit]
1. "Robert J. Eaton". www.nndb.com.
2. Taken For A Ride - How Daimler Benz Drove Off With Chrysler - Bill Vlasic & Bradley A. Stertz - HarperCollins Publishers 2000
3. "Robert J. Eaton".Forbes. Retrieved 2008-05-03.[*^dead link*]
4. Chevron Archived 2008-04-26 at the Wayback Machine Biography
5. "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org.American Academy of Achievement.
6. Kansas Business Hall of Fame Archived 2006-09-16 at the Wayback Machine Profile
External links[edit]
· "Engineering building christened Eaton Hall"
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Eaton, Robert J.
(1940-)
Overview
When Robert Eaton became head of the Chrysler Corporation in 1992, it marked the start of a singular new era for the automaker. Beset by problems for years, including poorly-built cars and financial mismanagement, Chrysler had been put back on the right course by the colorful, but often tyrannical Lee Iacocca. Eaton, a longtime General Motors executive with a far more reserved demeanor, would later steer Chrysler into the history books himself by engineering a first-of-its-kind merger with German automaker Daimler-Benz.
Personal Life
Eaton was born on February 13, 1940, in Buena Vista, Colorado, but moved to the Kansas town of Arkansas City when he was young. His father was a railroad brakeman, and his mother a hairdresser. At the age of nine, he had a paper route that netted him 35 cents a day, and with that savings managed to buy his first car at the age of 11 for $10. He then spent another $15 to put the Chevy on the road. He had his driver's license at the age of 14, as was common in some states in the 1950s, and through high school and college Eaton worked a number of jobs in order to indulge his love of hot rods and classic roadsters; he also raced motorcycles. These jobs included working as a janitor in a Montgomery Ward department store, and supervising the night shift in a pea cannery.
Not surprisingly, Eaton chose to study mechanical engineering at the University of Kansas. He earned a bachelor of science in 1963 and only interviewed with one company, since he wanted no other job but one at General Motors' Chevrolet division. He was hired as an engineer, and drove to Detroit from Kansas in a 1955 Chevrolet. Cornelia Drake became his wife in 1964, and the couple would have two sons. As Chrysler chair, Eaton drives one of the high-performance Dodge Viper sportscars