Lee Iacocca of Ford then later Chrysler Dead at 94

[PHLBOS]

RIP to the man who fathered the Mustang (which is still around), the rebooted Continental Mark Series (after a several-year hiatus), the K-car and the minivan (the Grand Caravan is still lingering but not for much longer).

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chrysler-ceo-lee-iacocca-died-age-94-64100439

He also presided over the 1986 renovation of the Statue of Liberty.

[SP Cook]

The guy was as important to the history of the auto industry as anyone whose name does not appear on a car.  Among the things he did at Ford was the Mustang, which was duplicated by the other companies, which put fun back in an era when, as today, the "car as an appliance" view too common; revive Lincoln, which at the time was far behind Cadillac and most just sold to Ford loyalists; and invent the "badge engineered" system where a Mercury was just a cosmetic re-badge of a mechanically identical Ford.  He, however, was among those responsible for the cynical decisions relative to the Pinto, which both FoMoCo and the UAW knew as dangeroust, but they made it anyway. 

At Chrysler, he parlayed the K-Car into a dozen variants, such that it was really every car the company made, including the mini-van, which saved the company.  While the minivan has declined as a car genre, they are still around.  He also merged AMC into Chrysler, and transformed the SUV from something really rough and mostly sold to rural types, into what the SUV is today.

[PHLBOS]

revive Lincoln, which at the time was far behind Cadillac and most just sold to Ford loyalists

Such was more/initially credited to Elwood Engel who created the 1961 Lincoln Continental; the first of the suicide-door era Lincolns.  Coincidentally, he would later migrate to Chrysler a few years later.

invent the "badge engineered" system where a Mercury was just a cosmetic re-badge of a mechanically identical Ford.

That was a carry-over from the McNamara era (he was clearly more of a bean-counter), when Mercury was moved down for the 1961 model year following the termination of the short-lived ('58-'60) Edsel brand.