That dislike of government interference persisted in pockets of the industry for many years.

At a dinner party I attended in Washington in 1991 as a young reporter for The New York Times, a senior General Motors executive launched into a loud soliloquy. Washington, he said, was a city that did not really matter because, unlike Detroit, it did not actually make anything. His audience, mostly diplomats with a smattering of American policymakers and journalists, sat in stunned silence.

By then, that attitude was already changing. In 1979, Mr. Iacocca persuaded President Jimmy Carter and Congress to provide a federal guarantee for $1.5 billion in loans to Chrysler. At congressional hearings he verbally sparred with lawmakers, and Chrysler took out newspaper advertisements pressing for the bailout with his signature at the bottom.

He won sympathy from Washington in a way that leaders of unsuccessful companies had not been able to do before.

“He was highly respected in Washington, I think because he was so vocal and he was such a powerful person,” Mr. Meyers said.

Mr. Iacocca’s headstrong ways did not always serve him well.

Until 1978, he was a rising executive at Ford, famous for overseeing development of the Mustang muscle car and landing his face on the cover of Time magazine.

Mr. Iacocca was also mentoring a young William C. Ford Jr., who went on to become the longtime executive chairman of Ford Motor. “I will always appreciate how encouraging he was to me at the beginning of my career — he was one of a kind,” Mr. Ford said in a statement on Tuesday.