Commentator David Dennis asks…
I hope I’m not changing the subject too much, but there’s one thing that’s really bugged me about TTAC: your dislike of “Maximum Bob” Lutz. I may have read too many buff books, but I’ve always instinctively liked the guy.
I can’t help but notice that Chrysler had a pretty good car lineup when Bob jumped ship for GM. Once Bob was gone, their new car lineup disintegrated into the awfulness that has them in their current pathetic condition.
And likewise, once Bob started at GM, GM cars started getting a lot better, to the point where TTAC and other reviewers noticed.
Is Bob Lutz a great man or an out of touch domestic automaker drone? It seems to me that he’s pretty good at product development, or at least at convincing companies to approve better and more adventurous ideas already percolating.
I know he makes some outrageous comments but sometimes there’s a lot of truth to them, too.
Thoughts?
D
The deal with Bob Lutz is that he had a lot of decent ideas for GM, but he never thought them through enough to make them successful. Then once it flopped he would never take responsibility and abandon whatever he had been championing and move onto the “next big thing”.
Examples:
1. Make a great looking Solstice, but don’t benchmark its practicality at all against the Miata.
2. Bringing over the Astra (a good small car) with a bad engine/transmission combo, a 24-hour clock, and no cupholders.
3. Give the Holden Monaro to the performance Pontiac brand, but call it the GTO, thus giving the Monaro the impossible task of beating a ghost.
4. Make a very good line of SUVs, but think that demand for them won’t be affected by high gas prices.
5. Bring back affordable V8 powered cars for Pontiac, Buick, and Chevrolet… on front-wheel drive platforms.
Lutz was a disaster for GM. A blowhard who enabled the automaker’s product-related ADD. For Bob and his minions, the “next big thing” was always over the horizon. Only that “thing” has turned out to be Chapter 11. Surprised? They shouldn’t have been. But at least MB’s pension is bankruptcy-proof.
Bob was GM’s only hope on moving from being a truck maker into more of a car maker. At least his Malibu has been doing a lot better than the previous Malibu. His GTO from down under, bad timing, not to mention dealers were grossly asking too much in the start. Way to kill a comeback.
Frankly the products are alright, people just hate dealers because they feel slimmed by them all the time. From the repairs I don’t need to options being doubled priced and dealer fees to whatever else being added to the price. The entire focus on monthly payments is such a swindle it ought to illegal to have dealer financing. They basically bundle the car and tie you into their financing which is an antitrust violation. The car salesman should have a fiduciary obligation to work the best price for you, not the dealer. Hence there shouldn’t be this crappy negotiation with dealers. Of course you can get your own financing, but people should have that option and not have a salesman pretend to negotiate monthly payments for you.
Lutz actually had some good ideas, but he believed his own press that he could do no wrong. The whole industry is filled with that attitude. My fav of all time, someone like lutz looked at the door cutline and declared it not looking fast enough… of course he determined that just before starting to cut production tools. This delayed the program several months and added way too many pounds to an already overweight car.
He is a great guy personally. But as Robert says he has been a total disaster for GM. How many of his products were a success? What were the sales forecasts and the actual numbers? How many are still produced? And what about his involvement in Hummer and Saab?
-Jeff
DrivingEnthusiast.net
@Robert Farago:
See, I find your “Bob Lutz is a Blowhard” statement completely ironic- you’re accusing Bob Lutz of creating a bunch of sensation around nothing which is exactly the kind of ‘criticism’ I’ve seen hurled at Bob Lutz (He’s a blowhard) with little to back it up.
Product speaking, calling Bob Lutz a “blowhard” is like calling TTAC “wannabe C/D.” . GM had too many issues to fix on product alone, and I think GM’s beancounters, corporate cultures, slimy dealer network, and other issues didn’t help. I also think Bob Lutz’s style conflicted with But let’s think for a second:
Last-gen Malibu -> Current Gen Malibu.
Aztek -> Solstice (Not equal cars, but just think about it…)
Trans Am -> GTO
ION -> Astra
Bonneville -> G8
Catera -> CTS
Let it also be noted, Lutz was probably the only refreshingly honest “car guy” in the business. Seriously, has anyone else noticed Honda and Toyota no longer cares about building good cars, but rather, who can get down on their knees for the Union of Concerned Scientists?
For those who still doubt: someday, when you get your license, you’ll understand.
Of course, Lutz is hated here. But in reality he instituted many novel ideas. GM’s line up is more varied and carries some great products right now. Could that be said at the the beginning of Bob’s tenure at GM? I don’t think so.
mikeolan
See, I find your “Bob Lutz is a Blowhard” statement completely ironic- you’re accusing Bob Lutz of creating a bunch of sensation around nothing which is exactly the kind of ‘criticism’ I’ve seen hurled at Bob Lutz (He’s a blowhard) with little to back it up.
Are you kidding? We’ve chronicled every gaffe, misstatement and misdirection the man has made since he joined GM. Enter Lutz in our recently empowered search bar.
The most important element to our criticism: Bob Lutz didn’t even have a grip on the basic facts.
I remember the moment when I realized that the head of GM’s global product development was talking out his ass: he couldn’t name more than three VW brands. Made one up in fact. That. Was. Stunning. And not in a good way.
As for TTAC wanting to be Car and Driver, guilty as charged. But only if you think of us as C and D in its heyday, when they called a lemon a lemon. Not C and D as it is now. Please God no.
Lutz did not leave Chrysler for GM, he left Chrysler in 1998 and ran Exide, then ended up at GM in 2002.
the overall quality & execution of products improved mightily during his time with GM. their business position & brand execution (should have been execution of brands) did not. the board did not require any real change of GM mgmt, so they kept on doing what they’d done for decades, just with better products which they still tried to sell thru too many dealers and with overlapping products. it’s one thing to cynically rebadge a Cobalt into a G5, it’s another to drop $200M on 4 different variants of the same platform when two would have done (Enclave/Traverse). both are bad business, one is insulting intellectually, the other financially as well.
You guys are just too soft skinned to understand Maximum Bob. He is the MAN! Have you driven a Solstice GXP with the performance pack? Drifted a Monaro VXR? Blown away everything in a G8 GXP? Without Bob for the last several years there would be no GM performance products. Yes, his mouth gets ahead of his brain at times, but that’s because he’s a fighter pilot? How ’bout you?
Personally I think anyone who cares about the Domestic auto industry has a bit of jealousy towards Lutz. And no, I don’t mean they pine for that crazy slicked hair. Rather, he was the only one who was playing God with vehicles for the public. He wasn’t the CEO, but he was The Product guy. His arrogance was also epic, so there was no denying that Lutz knew what type of influence he was exerting on a multibillion dollar industry. And of course there’s nothing we love more than to vilify people in power.
For people who like cars, there was a time in their lives when they drew wacky cars on paper or dreamed of what they wanted in their ideal car. When they get older they realized that the auto industry consists mostly of cars that some old white dudes have determined viable to offer to customers. These soulless jackals took the idea of a great car and turned it into an appliance.
Most of the self-declared pundits and computer-chair critics still view the auto business as if it were a Lego set. These observers believe they know how to do the job better because they have a different notion of what products should be the best to offer to customers. And, they also believe that putting the pieces together is an easy task. GM has the biggest Lego set on the block and yet they can’t make something good out of it? That’s just a sign of poor product planning.
After all, idiots like Lutz had been doing it for years with minimal success. So reason and logic tell us that there exists a smarter individual who could do the job better. But alas, Bob has the job to poke in vehicle product development and the more intelligent people do not.
If you spoke with someone who worked with Bob (or if you worked for Bob in product development) the stories of Lutz were consistent. While other product VPs would be accused of having absolutely no clue and being dolts, Lutz was actually a different type of dolt. While a lesser VP would task people to investigate ad nauseum about what was the “right” thing to do – Lutz would just make a decision and go about his business.
Was Lutz always right? no. Were his methods always right? no. Were his decisions always the best? no.
But he was the one who was making the decisions. He was the one putting the billion dollar Legos together. And in the end he’s the guy you blame when there are some missing bricks. He’s also definitely the one who had the job that we all wanted.
One man can only do so much.
He’s been the victim of time pressure, market forces beyond his control, and a weak supporting cast.
When he came aboard GM had only one decent US-market car product, the ‘Vette. The best of its nameplates – Chevrolet and Cadillac – were stumbling and saddled with a lot of junk product. The rest of the company’s brands were basically trash. And he felt the need, rightly or wrongly, to act fast.
Let’s talk about the GTO. At the time it hit the market here it was by a very substantial margin the best car GM had ever sold in the US. Was a Pontiac showroom the right place for it? Maybe not. Would it, and the rest of the Holdens, have been better off in a Saturn showroom, or Chevy? Probably.
On the plus side, the company’s got more good product, and far more really good product (the CTS and CTS-V, the G8, the big crossovers, even the Malibu) than it had when he came in. He stopped Cadillac from building more cars that looked like the first-generation CTS, and made them build the pushrod-motor CTS-V. Cadillac’s on the right track and that’s critical to GM’s future.
On the minus side, that’s not enough really good product to carry all their nameplates, and too much effort and too much of the product was wasted on trying to prop up moribund Pontiac (while the folks who stuffed the G3, G5, and G6 into the showroom seemed intent on turning it into a laughingstock.)
So I give him a B.
If you walk into a WalMart, you will find an entire aisle of coffee makers. They all make fine coffee, but some have added features you’ll rarely use & cool ergonomic design. Sales are mostly determined by where on the shelf they happen to be seated … too high or too low and they don’t sell; end-aisle placement is key … having a sales guy who’ll tell you which one to buy more-or-less cements the deal … if you can get free coffee at work and are short on cash, then there is no sale to be had.
Bob Lutz began a turn-around in GM products, but the turn-around was dwarfed by macro-economics and issues with the rest of the sales / mktg / distribution. His products were as good as anyone else out there.
//dan.
My problem with Lutz is that he personified the corporate arrogance and ignorance that infected not only GM but the other two as well.
Demetri – how is Lutz’s arrogance any different than the attitudes of the people who rationalize that they could do Lutz’s job better? Or those who feel fit to judge his performance?
I mean those people who second guess every move and every decision believing they could do a better job. Those people that do the post-mortem flogging of the dead horse believing they have all the answers. It seems there’s arrogance everywhere.
First, thanks to Robert for thinking this was a good enough question to put on the site’s front page! It feels most flattering.
I think we have to limit our evaluation of Bob Lutz to the tasks he was asked to perform.
He was not asked to make decisions to retain or dispose of brands.
He was not asked to help with financial controls, or labor negotiations, or health care costs, or any of the purely financial considerations that killed GM.
He was asked to work with the existing design staff on the design of new, better cars.
Insofar as I can determine, even TTAC admits that the cars designed under the Lutz regime are substantially superior to those that came before.
Certainly the Chevy Malibu’s defeat of the Ford Fusion and the even more forgettable Chrysler competitor in TTAC’s recent group test seems significant. In fact, your own article says “this Malibu fully deserves serious consideration by cost conscious consumers.”
“This Malibu” is a definite result of Bob Lutz’s product improvement programme. It is notably better than previous GM products in its class.
It seems interesting to me as well that Chrysler’s products during the Lutz era were pretty interesting. Not the best built, surely, but the most interesting. I drove one of those big swoopy “Cab Forward” large Chryslers as a rental and thought it was a great car to drive. Too bad that at 5555 miles it already had a few bothersome defects like a noisy power window that sounded on the verge of failure … but certainly compared to other domestic cars I thought it was a wonderful design.
It seems to me, then, that Lutz deserves some credit. His Chryslers were interesting cars and his Malibu appears to have genuinely good ratings. He didn’t manage to single-handedly save GM, but he did save GM’s product lineup from its previous awfulness.
That may not be ideal but it’s better than anyone else has done in the same position … right?
D
We need to have an article titled “The Truth About The GTO”. This was a car we all wanted to like, but when closely examined wasn’t very good:
– Built on a chassis two generations out of date.
– Hacked together for export markets with the gas tank eating up half the former trunk space.
– Recalled for rubbing its skinny tires on its front suspension.
– Bizarre high speed handling form the out-dated suspension.
– Lost every comparison test the magazines put it in.
– Looks like an over-inflated Cavalier.
– And was a total sales flop that the dealers got stuck with.
How did this help Pontiac? Maybe some publicity that held up as along as you didn’t look closely.
-Jeff
DrivingEnthusiast.net
@ Robert Farago
TTAC seems to chronicle anything that isn’t done “its way” as a gaffe, and then often times overstates it as a “failure to understand basic facts.” Really? Bob Lutz couldn’t name three VW Brands?* Ok, but on a more direct level with his job, I’m pretty sure he understood a good /deal/ of facts. I also think he had a fairly clear (and successful) vision for each brand, but GM bureaucracy hampered every Solstice with a G5. I’d argue GM is in CH11 because of resistance to Lutz’s vision, mitigating the effectiveness of Lutz’s projects.
I mean, really? TTAC’s case against Lutz has been “he’s arrogant, speaks his mind, thinks everything he does is great, and the lack of PR-correctness means gaffes which are unacceptable.” Yeah, well, he’s also brought over world class products- something GM hadn’t had in a long time, and something it was moving away from before he came on (they’d just killed Olds.) You can whine that he’s arrogant, but for the past 20 years, GM’s corporate culture was indifference. It still tends to be, but at least he got a few people to see things his way. Do you seriously mean to tell me GM would be sailing along fine if they were still indifferent? Really?
They might not have been commercial successes, but mind you the number one selling car in the U.S. is a Toyota Camry. People don’t always buy good cars for a number of reasons (past experience, dealer experience, word of mouth, heuristics, etc.), all of which are working highly AGAINST GM. But blaming the one person who actually began fixing things is why TTAC is known more for their car reviews than editorials (some of which I do enjoy.)
*Can you think of three VW brands that matter? Skoda and SEAT are as relevant as Mercury, and Lambo / Bentley are also-rans.
If he had any failings it was being wrong for thinking hybrids were just for show. He swallowed a load of BS thinking they can’t make any money. I saw in the financials honda and toyota make almost $3000 per hybrid.
He was saying people who buy the 2-mode will do it for show because if they can afford a 60K SUV, they don’t care about mileage. He also said if you drive the volt you’ll pick up chicks, yeah, the kind with hairy legs, he said jokingly, so just for the environmentalists is this car.
It did take retirement for Bob to finally say the Volt is to jump past hybrids from Japan and take the lead in technology. Yet toyota is spending last I heard 10 billions in R&D and GM is now spending just a billion… the future for GM, licensing Toyota tech to stay afloat, er…. from hitting the sea floor…
What happened to the 2 mode hybrid Saturn Vue?
At least Bob Lutz is a real car guy, a guy who likes going fast and making good exciting cars. Don’t the domestics need more guys like him?
I mean isn’t GM plagued with too many accountants and financiers, numbers guys, guys who think just because they sold detergent they can sell cars?
Sure he maybe made a few mistakes but at least he did some good stuff, like the Solstice and Sky. Maybe they aren’t quite as good as the Miata but they have an exciting look to them. I mean can you name someone better, off the tip of your tongue?
Just ask yourself this question:
How craptastic would GM’s product lineup be if Lutz HADN’T been on board?
Exactly.
I think of Lutz like this:
Awesome car guy.
Terrible executive.
He was involved in awesome cars like the Ford Sierra/Merkur XR4Ti, Viper, Explorer, CTS, G8, GTO, and, to a limited extent, even the original 3-series.
He seems to be a car guy who knows, more or less, what car guys want, because that’s what he wants in a car.
And that’s also what made him such a bad executive — Mr. Carguy McDriver is a very small fraction of the automobile market. He’s an executive who just caters to too small of a customer base.
None of us knows everyone’s history here among the regulars at TTAC, but I’ll venture to say that most of Lutz’ critics have never worked as an executive manager in a Fortune 500 company. Lutz’ title and responsibilities as scoped by the automotive and business press almost certainly overstated his autonomy and reach within General Motors. The company is / was gargantuan with byzantine politics, with the organization apex occupied by a CEO who was all manager and no leader. Lutz was an outsider with pirhahnas swarming his ankles, and green-eye-shade product second-guessers hemming him in. Plus, his product development oversight was hamstrung by the corporate imperative to perform to unobjective quarterly objectives.
Forget public misperception of his blunt talk, occasional gaffes and ornery disagreements with “conventional wisdom.” These do not diminish the man; they merely illustrate small areas of responsibility where Lutz wasn’t ideally matched to the task.
We should appreciate Lutz more. That vehicles as radically daring in the context of GM’s previous 30 years culture as CTS, XLR, STS, new Malibu, C6 Corvette, ZR-1, HHR-SS, HHR, Cobalt SS, G8, Solstice GXP/Sky Red Line, Tahoe/Escalade Hybrid, and of course Volt would get built, and so far to a high quality standard, is remarkable when contrasted with GM circa 2000. That some of these vehicles under-performed in the revenue realm is more related to pathetic marketing, distribution and channel behavior than egregious errors in Lutz’ beloved stable. Those marketing errors include failure to manage Lutz’ public exposure. Good marketers have to look at themselves as baseball team managers, in the PR realm. Cultivate pitchers, hitters and fielders, and do a good job of matching pitchers to hitters and vice-versa. It’s been a very long time since GM had marketing chops for addressing even the basics.
Further, if you haven’t worked on a senior executive team in a sizable corporation, you likely have *no idea* how much a dysfunctional CEO can undermine your work, even if only passively.
The issue with Lutz at GM was not Lutz himself but the context employing him. He was constrained by smaller minds lacking any intuition or experiential reference for what sells cars. For the buff public, too much rode on Lutz’ shoulders. The public and the business press failed to grasp the incrementalism that dulled Lutz’ capability as change agent, and left GM gasping for air.
Perfect? Gosh, no. But don’t be so hard on Bob. Under the circumstances he nailed it, with more energy, vigor and results than most guys half his age could have mustered.
Phil
jwfisher:
Regarding the GTO – define ‘two generations out of date’ – it was a combination of a mid ’90s Opel rear suspension (see Cadillac Catera) and a homegrown Australian front design, in terms of technical details somewhere between an E34 and an E39 BMW 5-series in sophistication and still a more advanced layout than the present S197 Mustang. Can you please provide references to your claims of ‘bizarre high-speed handling’?
The gas-tank issue was not ‘hacked together for export markets’, it was hacked together for the US. Holdens were already sold with the tank under the trunk in Europe and the Mideast. It was the GM lawyers’ response to what Ford was going through with the Crown Vic at the time.
Whatever shortcuts may have been taken in adapting the Monaro for the US market, it was still one of only two decent US-nameplate passenger cars GM had in the US at the time.
also adding to the GTO debate, the styling was only an issue in America. in it’s home market, the Monaro styling was spot on and much admired for it’s simple muscularity and powerful stance without being over the top. just a case of one markets design tastes not suiting an others, which is why so many ‘world cars’ have not suceeded.
Some of the press was beginning to suggest the Emperor had no clothes way back in early 2005.
And here’s a real gem of an example: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Columns/articleId=104875# where Lutz claims the then-new Grand Prix “was Pontiac’s BMW 3 Series fighter”. That’s stupidly arrogant, as was making “chastising phone calls to some writers”.
Better look out, Robert ;-)
Bob Lutz forced some great “car guy” cars out of GM. Problem was, they cost too much to produce and sold too few to make a difference. He needed great mass market cars to make it work.
I am glad that this finally came up. I always thought TTAC was unfair to Lutz, I never thought he was the idiotic blowhard that Robert makes him out to be.
The reason I say that is because of what he did at Chrysler. When you think about it, Lutz is who saved Chrysler when it was caught flat footed in the early 90s recession. He lead an experiment with the cab-forward designs that eventually lead to the Intrepid. A car that while it did not sell in numbers like the Camry, won critical praise and did a lot to revamp Chrysler’s image from that of the “K-car company” to the “cab-forward company”. And AFAIK it was profitable. Lutz streamlined Chrysler’s product development, making it more efficient and cheaper, and put the cars’ development at the hands of the product development staff, not the head managers. That is why Chrysler produced such great cars that were developed in such a short time with so little cost. I even remember an account from an older news story in which an engineer ran up to Lutz, and asked him what the RPM limit should be for (some Chrysler car, I forgot which one). Lutz simply responded, “What do YOU think it should be?” That says everything that needs to be said about his tenure at Chrysler.
Chrysler had a strong presence in the market and a strong brand image. It had become known as a design leader and everybody knew them as the place to find modern, innovative cars. In fact, part of the reason why the Oldsmobile Intrigue floundered was because when GM advertised it, they avoided the fact that it was an Oldsmobile due to brand stigma. They also didn’t have the Oldsmobile name listed on the car. So it bombed because prospective buyers went to Dodge showrooms trying to find it. That is also why Ford designed the third-gen Taurus the way they did: Jack Telnack wanted Ford to again be a design leader, so thats why the 96 Taurus was as radical as it was. He would order resketches of it many times. He would walk into the design studio, look at a sketch, then say, “You’re not scaring me enough”.
Of course, like said in an editorial, Chrysler’s success under Lutz found itself on shaky foundation thanks to Bob Eaton and his beancounting. When he took over from Lee Iacocca, he went into the already developed Intrepid and sniffed around for ways to cut corners. So he beancounted the mechanicals. Hey, what do you expect? Eaton came from GM after all. (HINT: if an executive’s resume says that he once worked at GM, RUN!) Then he hocked Chrysler off to Daimler. Lutz jumped ship, and the rest is history.
Maximum Bob was with GM/Europe from the early 60s to the early 70s.
Then he went to BMW for 3 years.
Then he goes to Ford, largely in their European ops. He’s responsible for the Sierra, initially offered w/o a sedan body. Sales are decent, but not great.
He takes over Ford Truck Ops in ’85 and develops the explorer. This is wonerfully successful except for the Firestone tires and Ford’s decission to tell customers to keep the tire pressure too low. The bad publicity has probably offset the sales success.
He also brings us the Merkur, a complete failure in the market. (Note, we don’t speak German here, and we don’t want to)
Then he goes to Chrysler. He develops the Viper and Prowler, two silly halo cars which did nothing for Chrysler in terms of serious revenue, serious profit, or being taken seriously by purchasers of “real” cars. But credit where credit is due – he also has his hand in the development of the LH cab forward cars.
He then goes to Excide to preside over it until it files for C11. To be fair, he was not part of the conspiracy to sell defective batteries to the public/Sears.
Finally he ends up at GM, giving us GTO/G8, Malibu, CTS, Enclave, Equinox, Sky/Solstice, Camaro, and SRX. Some of these are great cars from and enthusiast POV, but not such great sellers. He seems to have spent much of his time making useless halo cars. When he did make something for us plebians, it was -meh. The only solid success, at mass market level, seems to be the new ‘Bu. (Which is a really really good car).
I don’t know, I’d have to say he got a few impressive hits and some spectacular strikeouts. Mostly he seems to have been preoccupied the last several years with the home run derby – which really isn’t going to win your team the pennant.
Can we really “blame” or “credit” Lutz for anything at GM? He seems more a spokesperson than anything.
It seems in his tenures at both Chrysler and GM no one worked on improving quality in a reliability sense.
Is there someone at Ford we can praise for actually following the “Quality is Job 1” slogan?
It seems like Lutz did a whole lot less damage to GM than Eaton did over at Chrysler.
It’s interesting that it wasn’t that long ago that Eaton went from GM to Chrysler, and Lutz went from Chrysler to GM, and now both Chrysler and GM are as close as they can get to being out of business without actually closing all of the dealerships.
Maybe if Iacocca hadn’t hated Lutz so much (the search for Iacocca’s replacement at Chrysler was supposedly titled ‘ABL – Anybody But Lutz’) and they’d have let Lutz replace him instead of hiring Eaton, things would have turned out differently.
Lutz was a giant among midgets.
“It seems like Lutz did a whole lot less damage to GM than Eaton did over at Chrysler.”
Oh boy, that’s the way to run a corporation: do less damage than some other clown!
What apparently counts in corporate America is having a big personality, subjugating your staff to doing it “your way”, creating outrageous showy stuff that doesn’t sell (not that selling matters, apparently), and directing your marketing department to cover up the flameout of your last disaster (aka SSR) with the next one (aka GTO). And then taking credit only for the successes.
Add in an openly hostile and self-centered union and truly great products from your competitors and here we are at the verge of chapter 11.
-Jeff
As usual, Phil Ressler nailed it.
We recently bought a Chevy HHR SS. Amazing car for GM – very practical, fun to drive (love the ride-handling balance), good on gas (and we do like the SS looks).
However, we purchased the HHR SS for a 36.4% discount from MSRP. GM can’t make any money doing that, and that is their downfall. And I don’t think that that part of the equation is Bob Lutz’s fault – he energized a small group of car nuts in GM to get the HHR SS (and Cobalt SS) developed. A good little car made off of a modest platform, but GM couldn’t build and market it at a profit.
In the long run Lutz’s influence at GM was minimal. Just about all the cars he was responsible for will be long gone by mid next decade. His idea to turn Saturn into an Opel subsidiary was a complete flop and is responsible for ruining the division. His pet project Pontaic is toast.
What was the point.
Seriously, has anyone else noticed Honda and Toyota no longer cares about building good cars, but rather, who can get down on their knees for the Union of Concerned Scientists?
Honda is, and remains, all about building good cars. They have always, however, viewed good cars as efficient cars, with very good value for the money.
Part of the value comes from being inexpensive rather than cheap (compare a Yaris with a Fit. The Yaris is cheap, the Fit is inexpensive), part comes from having a long term reputation for reliability, and part comes from being class leading on fuel economy.
Its one of the reasons why Honda did NOT have a loss for the whole fiscal year, while Toyota did.
Honda has never lost its focus on cars.
The 80% manager for 80% cars.
Some may want to continue their vehement defenses of GM management, but I would like to remind them that Lutz, Wagoner and their associates presided over one of the largest corporate implosions in the history of American industry. This is Failure with a capital “F”, the type of stuff that will be taught in history classes and business schools long after we are all dead. It’s that bad, and to simply give these guys a pass would be lunacy.
While he made some decent tactical moves, all and all, Lutz and everyone else in GM senior management failed the business, and by extension, their employees and investors. There was no real strategy or vision for improvement, and now you’re seeing, in real time, what happens to wounded companies who have no strategy for improvement.
Lutz is a mixed bag. He invested a lot of effort in halo cars that weren’t positioned to do what halo cars are supposed to do, which is to bring glory to the rest of the brand. Perhaps GM would have been better off if he had invested his energy and limited time on more productive pursuits.
He did bring some fundamentally better vehicles to the company, such as Enclave, Malibu and G8. But those were spread around across brands, diluting their benefit, and he failed to purge or improve losers attached to those same brands that dragged them down. That’s a failure at the brand level, so it isn’t trivial.
Take the matter of the here today, gone in an hour G8. The problem with the G8 wasn’t the G8, per se, which is a pretty decent car, but that it had the G3, G5, and G6 parked next to it, sharing a brand and its message. A G8 in a vacuum just wasn’t going to be enough; having the G6 makes it that much harder to sell a G8. That’s why these little spasms of improvement just weren’t enough to turn things around.
My guess is that Lutz is probably a good example of the Peter Principle in action, having been promoted to his level of incompetence. A lower level position in product planning, without strategic responsibility beyond a single brand, might have better suited his skills. Crafting an entire portfolio of vehicles and a collection of brands, not so much.
I don’t instinctively like Bob Lutz. When I met him, I was a bit surprised because everything I’d ever read about him had been complimentary. But, I took an instant dislike to him.
Lutz was hired because he was going to provide GM with product that would sell. But, he didn’t. The brands were no better with him than without. Australian GTOs and a Solstice that sold in tiny volumes. The core of selling Cadillacs and Chevy’s was no better with Lutz than without.
Lutz, really, may be the single biggest mistake Wagoner made. A different person might have done the job differently, have scored with products that did sell and might, in that fashion, have given the company enough time to succeed with Wagoner’s strategy of moving so much of its operations out of the U.S. that the North American division would no longer have the potential for pulling the company under.
Lutz was a huge mistake.
Bob killed plastic cladding.Bob had a touch for styling so lacking at GM.I believe that had Bob not come onboard when he did GM would be in worse shape than it is.{If that is possible}
The best thing about Lutz at GM was that he was not a GM lifer. Lutz may not have been ideal, but he was at least different. He had been with many companies that had designed and sold successful vehicles.
As stated in an earlier comment, look at the GM of 2000. The only vehicle anyone remembers from that era is the Aztec. GM had been losing market share since the 80s, and was filled with top level execs who had not a clue why. “Why isn’t anyone buying our cars? We are GM! We’re the biggest industrial corporation in the world! We are the only place where any good ideas come from, so it must be stupid customers!”
Lutz was one guy. By most accounts, a stong personality who was somewhere between supremely self-confident and arrogant. Anyone with a lower wattage personality would have been subsumed into the GM blob. Who remembers a GM product guy in the 15 years before Lutz? Anyone? Lutz at least improved GM’s products. But he was still just one guy brought into the world’s most dysfunctional management structure. I think he did what he could. If he had come in with 10 other people to fill the top spots in the company, THEN maybe . . . .
Bob Lutz deserves a little credit for bringing the Opel Vectra to US factories to become the Saturn Aura. Not in love with Chevy styling, but the Vectra based Malibu is a good attempt at high volume family car that has a reasonable chance at retail success. He also deserves some credit for making the Holden Commodore available in left hand drive for the US market, but also some blame for making it a Pontiac.
My problem with Bob Lutz is he spent too much time and money on low volume vehicles at a time when GM needed high volume passenger car success to survive. For example, GM ended up with an unprofitable and underpowered Astra, a crappy Cobalt, and a crappy HHR instead of building a small car model with Astra refinement, but with a larger displacement engine and manufacturing it in the US or Mexico at a profit. I like the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky, but how many did GM expect to sell? The many Bob Lutz pet projects were an expensive distraction.
Nicholas Weaver :
Honda is, and remains, all about building good cars. They have always, however, viewed good cars as efficient cars, with very good value for the money.
Part of the value comes from being inexpensive rather than cheap (compare a Yaris with a Fit. The Yaris is cheap, the Fit is inexpensive), part comes from having a long term reputation for reliability, and part comes from being class leading on fuel economy.
Its one of the reasons why Honda did NOT have a loss for the whole fiscal year, while Toyota did.
Honda has never lost its focus on cars.
Honda is no longer class leading on fuel economy in fact Chevrolet matches or beats them in almost every class.
There’s an old saying about winning a war requiring living to fight another battle. In my years at GM I have seen so many managers and engineers leave or be pushed out because they didn’t tow the company line. The GM corporate ethos/culture had a definite taste and smell to it, and contending against it was in my experience an almost suicidal battle.
Now, PCH might say (and I don’t disagree), management had a responsibility to customers, employees and investors to fix this. But at the time, GM made some record profits, and sold more vehicles than any other manufacturer. Many people with vested interests were happy with GM’s situation. Millions of people (some of them probably even among you folks out there) bought GM vehicles. How do you fight against that?
You do it with your feet, and with your wallet, if you have a sense of honor.
Bob Lutz, Wagoner and the others happened to be standing on deck when the house of cards fell. They experienced what happens when hubris and bad luck meet. But for most of us, honor will only take us so far, and we end up having to make a stand whereever we happen to be, against less than favorable odds.
I’m not making excuses for these guys, but I think a true evaluation of the causes for this great failure will say a lot about American corporate culture, investors and the consuming public that many will not want to hear.
Lutz, really, may be the single biggest mistake Wagoner made. A different person might have done the job differently, have scored with products that did sell and might, in that fashion, have given the company enough time to succeed with Wagoner’s strategy of moving so much of its operations out of the U.S. that the North American division would no longer have the potential for pulling the company under.
In the distant past (30-40 years ago) GM’s problems could be summarized as primarily product problems. But over the last 20 years, the problems have become so compounded (issues with manufacturing, marketing, distribution; strategic issues having to do with managing brands, technology deployment, the used car fleet, new markets, public-relations) that it became impossible for anyone to coherently address without full support of the Chief Executive and the Board. Ultimately, those are the people most responsible. But those were the people who refused substantial change. We all saw what happened, even with people as powerful as Ross Perot and Kirk Kirkorian. How do you deal with a situation like that? (Before it implodes on its own I mean)
In my years at GM I have seen so many managers and engineers leave or be pushed out because they didn’t tow the company line. The GM corporate ethos/culture had a definite taste and smell to it, and contending against it was in my experience an almost suicidal battle.
I have no doubt that you are correct. But here’s the difference – Lutz and Wagoner have been in positions in which they could define that culture. They didn’t just work there, they ran the company.
Your lower echelon workers are sort of stuck with either towing the line or getting out. If the organization makes a diligent effort to push the creative thinkers out the door, then groupthink is inevitable, of course. Having a process in which the outliers are shoved out ensures that only the sycophants and those who have surrendered remain.
It would appear that Wagoner just perpetuated the existing culture. Lutz may have fought it when it came to horsepower, but he didn’t bring a fundamental change in approach, either. If it was anyone who could have attacked it, it was them, and they didn’t.
This is one reason that a new GM needs new management from an existing auto industry player. There will have to be a massive culling at the top and in the upper tiers of middle management in order for this to work. The most aggressive supporters of the old GM way will need to leave.
@ PCH101
But here’s the difference – Lutz and Wagoner have been in positions in which they could define that culture.
I’m not convinced Lutz had that much power. I believe he was given broad scope only in certain narrow areas pertaining to product design, development and sourcing (still a big load in a company the size of GM!). I think if he would have pushed too hard in the other necessary areas, he would have been shown the door just as Ross Perot was. Ross Perot also didn’t just work there. Do you really think Lutz had more power than Ross Perot?
This is one reason that a new GM needs new management from an existing auto industry player. There will have to be a massive culling at the top and in the upper tiers of middle management in order for this to work. The most aggressive supporters of the old GM way will need to leave.
I agree. The massive culling should also include the Board. Who will make these decisions? The PTFOA? The court? What credibility will they have in this area? What industry player will want to be a part of this, and for what?
Do you really think Lutz had more power than Ross Perot?
As a top manager, it’s his job to have the courage to build the political capital that he needs to lead. If he couldn’t or didn’t wish to do that, then he should have been in a lower-level position. I expect the generals to act like generals, not to behave like lieutenants.
The massive culling should also include the Board. Who will make these decisions? The PTFOA? The court?
The new operator, whoever that may be. If the rumors are founded, that may be Renault-Nissan. If a new operator can’t be found, then the PTFOA will have to do it, but the short-term priority should be on installing this new operator.
I suspect that the PTFOA is aggressively shopping GM. The list of prospects will be short, so it’s a matter of time before we find out.
As a top manager, it’s his job to have the courage to build the political capital that he needs to lead. If he couldn’t or didn’t wish to do that, then he should have been in a lower-level position. I expect the generals to act like generals, not to behave like lieutenants.
Of course. Unfortunately the corrosive go-along-to-get-along culture at GM went so high, that even someone at Lutz’s level wasn’t powerful enough to change it.
There’s sort of a similar situation going on here in California, with our Terminator governor. Maybe we need someone to shop the Sacramento government around (off topic I know).
One can always find any number of excuses for personal and professional failures and sometimes if one is lucky Mr. Ressler can find them for you.
Lutz, from the available public record, was a man full of bravado, self-confidence, arrogance. Yet all this was visible only when talking to the journalists and sycophants around him, little was brought to bear on the GM culture to achieve results. As so little results were achieved; yes, there is a handful of cars that are the best GM produced maybe in it’s hundred years of existence. Unfortunately they didn’t come close to making GM even an average performing industrial company in the US.
Perhaps if the man was a bit more modest, his achievements, though rather slim, could be judged more generously.
As it is, I am afraid, he is just one of the bastards that destroyed once great company and needed to be booted out. In a less generous society he and Wagoner would be put on trial and shot for treason (of the great American dream they destroyed for its shareholders and workers).
The fatal weakness at GM is that there was no one with the power to support change. As the B&B have pointed out, the long laundry list of players that have been eased out because they wouldn’t toe the line is a good indication of how much power and influence Lutz had, i.e. none.
GM needed a Bill Ford type that was willing to step aside but also back his man for radical changes. They have never had that since Durant. This shipwreck is as inevitable as getting crushed by a glacier during the iceage and about as fast. Lutz *couldn’t* save this thing if his life depended on it.
and directing your marketing department to cover up the flameout of your last disaster (aka SSR)
The SSR program may have made money even if it never met sales projections. The Lansing Craft Center could only make about 13,000 units a year, about 3 per Chevy dealer at the time the car was introduced. It was intended strictly as a halo vehicle, a showroom queen and a rendering of Chevy’s upcoming styling language – which continues into the Malibu, Cruze and Volt. ASC, the SSR’s main vendor, had market research that showed that the sport trucklet helped GM sell an additional 70,000 or so BOF trucks a year, so in that sense the SSR made GM a lot of money since BOF trucks were profitable.
Of course, making and selling 24,000 SSRs in 3 years when capacity was almost twice that, and having almost a year’s supply in the pipeline hardly makes the SSR look like a success.
One area where Lutz has had a positive impact has been in the increased attention to interior design and features. Look at the progression from the G6 to the Aura to the Malibu as well as the CTS, where they went back to hand stitching and fitting.
Almost your entire experience as an owner and driver takes place behind the wheel, so interior design is one way an automaker can leapfrog the competition with thoughtful design and materials selection.
Of course Lutz is not without flaw, but the many ways Max Bob injected life into the moribund GM product line in such a short time is truly remarkable.
I’m a fan.
You’re a good man, Bob!
In all of this, I have to ask: If not Lutz, then whom? Ron Zarella? Lutz did the best he could and the best that could be expected. Asking him to save the biggest auto company in the world from a subordinate position is asking too much. Particularly when at a reputational, brand, and cost disadvantage.