Clifford Schmillen, who fought as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II and played a key role in driving the growth of Japanese automaker Honda in the United States, died Sunday in Palos Verdes. He was 86.
He died of complications related to double pneumonia, his family said.
In 1976, the year Schmillen was named national auto sales manager at American Honda Motor Co., the company sold 150,929 cars in the United States. When he retired in 1990 as executive vice president, Honda's annual sales in the U.S. were approaching 855,000.
"He was there when Honda's product lineup was the Civic and the Accord," said George Peterson, a consultant at AutoPacific Inc. in Tustin. "The products were spookily good. I was at Ford at the time, and we used to say, 'How do they do this stuff?' "
In addition to helping orchestrate Honda's growth in the U.S., Schmillen was instrumental in two important initiatives: the opening of Honda's Marysville, Ohio, auto assembly plant in 1982 and the launch of the Acura luxury car line in 1986. Both were firsts for a Japanese automaker and positioned Honda as a serious challenger to the Big Three in Detroit as well as to homeland competitors Toyota and Nissan, which eventually rolled out the Lexus and Infiniti luxury brands and also opened U.S. assembly plants.
"He had a great knack for understanding the retail side of the business and picking good people who made great Honda dealers," said Honda public relations chief Kurt Antonius, whom Schmillen hired away from General Motors in 1983.
Born in Minnesota in 1921, Schmillen flew bombing missions against the Japanese as a Marine pilot in the Philippines during World War II. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and retired as a major in the Marine Corps Reserve, according to his family.
After working for now-defunct American Motors and briefly running a Rambler dealership, Schmillen joined Honda as a sales representative in 1964, when the company sold only motorcycles in the U.S. (The company sold its first car in the U.S., the diminutive N600, in 1970.)
When he assumed responsibility for U.S. auto sales in the mid-1970s, Americans were so desperate for Honda's fuel-efficient offerings that dealers ran out of cars, disappointing customers offering to pay as much as $1,000 above sticker price for an Accord sedan.
In 1982, Schmillen was promoted to senior vice president for automotive sales with responsibility for advertising, distribution and product planning.
