Legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite told his millions of viewers on the CBS Evening News that “it all sounds like something from one of those enormous novels about the automobile business.”

The drama in Dearborn on July 14, 1978, made headlines in news outlets across the country: Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II had fired Ford Motor’s celebrated 53-year-old President Lee Iacocca after eight years at the helm and 32 years working at the company, where he became famous as “the father of the Mustang.”