Fort Lauderdale. 200 SW 1st Avenue. AutoNation’s headquarters.
The car is at the curb. He is at the wheel. Mike Manley, 62. Born in Kent, engineering degree from London, twenty one years inside Chrysler. He ran Jeep. He ran Fiat Chrysler. Now he runs a car dealer.
I get in and pull the belt across. The driver’s seat in this car has been moved a lot.
In March 2019 the board gave it to Carl Liebert, a retail man from USAA and Home Depot. He lasted four months. Then it went to the chief financial officer, Cheryl Miller. She took medical leave nine months later and resigned in July 2020. Mike Jackson, who had retired after twenty years, came back and drove it himself. Three months before any of this began, the director who manages Bill Gates’s money had left the board.
Manley is the third person handed these keys in thirty months. He starts the engine.
Where did you learn to drive?
“On the other side of the showroom. I joined DaimlerChrysler in Britain in 2000 to manage the dealer network. In June 2009 they gave me Jeep.”
That was the month Chrysler came out of bankruptcy. Jeep sold 338,000 cars that year in the whole world. In 2016 it sold 1.41 million.
And the target?
“1.9 million by 2018.”
He said that number in public in 2017. Jeep finished 2018 around 1.56 million.
We pull out. He drives the way he talks, smooth and a little fast.
Then they gave you the whole company.
“21 July 2018.”
That was four days before Sergio Marchionne died. Fiat Chrysler’s operating margin was 6.4% in Marchionne’s last full year. Under Manley it went 6.3%, 6.2%, and 4.3% in the Covid year. He merged the company with Peugeot, and the top job in the new company went to the other side.
We pass a dealership with flags out front. In September 2019 the SEC fined Fiat Chrysler 40 million dollars for paying dealers to report sales that never happened, from 2012 to 2016. He ran Jeep in those years. Nobody ever accused him personally. He runs 250 dealerships now.
Why did the board give you these keys?
The chairman answered in the press release.
“Mike Manley brings considerable and comprehensive automotive experience to AutoNation, including strategy, business development, and a focus on operations.”
The release never says what he would do with the cash.
The light ahead turns red. I ask what they pay him, and then I ask him to say the number again.
