Bob Lutz, set to retire May 1, feels confident he’s left GM fixed and on the right track. In an interview at the Detroit News, Lutz states: “I think I’m leaving the company finally focused back on the right thing, General Motors spent 30 years chasing every kind of metric — hours per vehicle, base-engineered content, parts re-use, attainment of diversity targets — 50 different metrics, and excellent products was sort of one. The naïve belief was if you track every one of the metrics and you do well on every one, the end result is a great car company — not,” According to Maximum Bob, that’s all behind now: “Over 8 1/2 years, we have been able to destroy that whole culture.” And bankrupt the company. Oops; I know, Bob had nothing to do with that.
Lutz said that he knew it was time to retire after walking the floor of the Geneva auto show last month: “I looked at all of those wacko design proposals and really bad stuff from (European designers) and bad concepts, I thought ‘This is not much fun anymore,’ ” he said. Perhaps he’s forgetting the long history of wacky European concepts, like the Quasar Unipower in 1967. The past always looks better as we get older.
Is he worried that GM might backslide after he goes? “I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car,” he said, adding that “there would be armed revolution” if GM executives failed to put design first. The Solstice was cute, wasn’t it? Design first; practicality and ergonomics not.
I love how he defines Old GM as a huge camel committee in that quote.
Truth.
GM was a prime example of what happens to an engineering company when it’s run by MBAs.
Cheap, profitable junk…for awhile. Then just cheap junk.
GM – never again, chumps.
And….TOYOTA’s sales are up.
Take your cars and shove them up Obama’s Obama.
Lots of people say that “MBA” line without regard to the idea that MBA people can be engineers, or at least car people.
It also tends to ignore the notion that a car company run by a single-minded engineer can easily crank out lots of overpriced crap, too.
Its merging the two concepts that creates the best results. Mercedes is probably a good example of swinging too far from one end of the spectrum to the other, then settling in the middle.
Oops, that’s take GM’s cars to do the shoving.
Save the Toyotas for us to drive.
“Lutz said that he knew it was time to retire after walking the floor of the Geneva auto show last month: “I looked at all of those wacko design proposals and really bad stuff from (European designers) and bad concepts, I thought ‘This is not much fun anymore,’”
Thankfully Bob has admitted he’s an anachronism. 40 years after he became one, but hey, it’s Maximum Bob.
The real question is this? Does he really believe that it was metric chasing that killed GM? Really? The metric chasing is symptomology, not causality. How stupid does he think we… ahh, nevermind.
As for the rest of it, disinformation and rewriting of history are the order of the day. Especially in companies that were run into the ground by senior management.
“I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car”…I see Maximum Bob still has all his arrogance intact. GM was making that statement forty years ago when they started rolling out junk like the Vega and blaming everyone else for their problems. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
“I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car.”
Those who underestimate GM’s ability to screw up an automobile have learned nothing from the past 50 years. I suspect the Volt alone will make this laughable quote yet another Maximum Bob “anachronism.”
R.I.P. Bob.
“I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car.”
This will be reassuring to the neighbor who has had her new Malibu towed to the dealer three times since she bought it. Stylish, maybe, dependable, not so much.
While GM has ostensibly improved vastly over the last several decades, everyone is capable of building a bad car. GM’s reputation is built on absolute refusal to learn from past mistakes.
May 1st I will pause, smoke a cigar, clean my golf clubs for the upcomming summer, and think of Bob. Hopefully I can make a positive impact on my chosen profession of education before my retirement. (I’m only 32.) I think it will be a decade before we can (hindsight being 20/20) objectively judge Bob.
My fondest memory of Bob was sitting in the death seat while he drove the not-yet-introduced 1994 Dodge Ram at twice the speed limit on Baron Hilton’s ranch in Nevada. Yes, he can be a buffoon at times, but he is one of the great product guys.
“there would be armed revolution” That brings to mind a quote from Thomas Jefferson’s letter to James Madison concerning Shay’s rebellion.
A little rebellion at GM might go a long way. Would that it were so Bob.
“I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car.” Yikes. At first I thought this article was some kind of April Fool’s joke, but it’s dated 4/2. …
“I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car,” he said, …
I hope you’re correct, Mr. Lutz. We’ve got, oh, $60+ billion riding on GM. But after reading how the press fleet has been thinned by a couple of blown-up 2.8 liter turbo engines, I’m wondering if things are really any different ….
Link, Ron?
I am afraid you don’t. Mr. Obama does, but you don’t.
If you don’t agree, show me your stock or bond certificate.
ash78: “Lots of people say that “MBA” line without regard to the idea that MBA people can be engineers, or at least car people.”
It many circumstances, it doesn’t matter whether the MBA’s undergraduate degree is in engineering, law, science, or history.
The purpose of having MBAs on staff at a company like General Motors, even MBA engineers, is to generate data, statistics, and various kinds of analysis to support management decisions which have already been made, but which have not yet been communicated and sold to the various internal company stakeholders (and/or to the various internal competing factions, if it’s that kind of working atmosphere) which might be affected by those decisions.
In other words, in an organization like General Motors, engineer MBAs can be as effective and creative at sycophantic storytelling as any MBA whose prior background is in business administration, law, or history. The poor quality of what has come out of GM’s factories for the last 30 years speaks directly to the existence of this kind of situation as being one of several interacting factors which has made GM what it is today.
I think Lutz is right in a respect: Although GM is still in need of a better manageral staff, they have certainly gotten their crap together in terms of product, so Lutz has done his job. I mean, when Lutz joined the firm in 2002, few of their products were competitive, their styling was a mess and their build quality was some of the worst I have seen. (One good example would be this 1998 Camaro I had just spent a week repairing, the build quality on that thing is among the worst I have ever seen. I don’t think Toyota, Honda or even Chrysler would have let this thing even leave the factory). Under Lutz’s watch, GM’s products have made incremental improvements; first it was the likes of the G6 and LaCrosse, which while being much better than the flat-out terrible models they replaced, still lacked overall polish. Now it has new products such as the new Malibu and LaCrosse that are just as good – or even better than most of the competition.
When you think about it that way, you will be amazed by just how far GM has come, product-wise, in a measly 8 years. Previously, GM’s cars would be generically styled, have a few nice points or thoughtful features, but generally would be meant for the rental car lot. Now, their cars are bold and distinctive and you can make a good case for buying one. In fact, the only reason I can think of to not buy a LaCrosse or Malibu is just for the fact that you don’t want your money going into Rick Wagoner’s pension.
So, overall, Lutz did his job. And don’t accuse me of cheerleading GM, as I am a Chrysler fan, and have been one of GM’s harshest critics since midway through the Wagoner era. However, credit simply is where it is due. I think Lutz’s loose mouth allows him to be severely underrated on this site.
“And don’t accuse me of cheerleading GM, as I am a Chrysler fan, and have been one of GM’s harshest critics since midway through the Wagoner era.”
May I be the first to compliment you on your heroic service to “The Struggle”?
Assuming that Lutz is lying (again) and he is not planning on retiring… I would short the stock of any company that hires him after GM.. He has a wonderful track record of putting companies that he works at into receivership.
Thank you CamaroKid,
Lutz is not a one-time loser, and I’m glad that someone else knows his record of failure.
Lutz is the posterchild of what is known as “failing up”.
Oh yeah, Lutz has a track record alright.
I mean, he bankrupted BMW with that horrific flop he engineered, the 3-series.
He ravaged Ford of Europe with the Ford Scorpio and Ford Sierra, those two bombs.
And oh, god, Chrysler! The company was struggling to stay afloat when Lutz was at the helm. I mean, they were sure to go bust in 1998, when the Germans swooped in and saved the struggling company from the evil Lutz and his reign of terror.
Seriously? I must admit, the blind Lutz-bashing that this site seems to revel in is getting rather old. Sure, the guy shoots off his mouth more than he should. But that doesn’t mean that behind the scenes, the man doesn’t know what he is doing.
There is a lot of Lutz bashing at TTAC, but to a certain degree it is justified. Lutz may have above-average talent as an American car exec, but that doesn’t say a whole lot when you consider the context (two bankruptcies and one near miss among the No Longer Big Three).
Lutz has a decidedly mixed record. For example, at GM he may have improved the product, but he spent far too much time – and money – pushing niche vehicles like the Solstice rather than first improving GM’s bread-and-butter cars. In addition, his automotive taste was too “old school” for a fast-changing market. His marketing sensibility was also suspect, e.g., dumping established names rather than revitalizing them. Notice that the Buick Regal is back?
You can see this basic pattern in Lutz’s leadership at Chrysler, where he apparently was a big champion of the utterly futile quest to make Eagle the American BMW. I’m still amazed that he isn’t completely embarrassed by the crude and vulgar Viper.
Lutz wasn’t awful in a Bill Ford kind of way, but he certainly didn’t rise to the occasion.
runfromcheney,
If you scratch the surface of the mythology, you’ll learn that Lutz was in a sales position at BMW. So, while he did actually internally promote the 3-series, he had zero to do with it’s genesis or engineering.
He had more of a hand in ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’ slogan, than he had in the development of any car.
How about his time running the show at Exide? That culminated in $2.5B in unpaid debt due to reckless acquisitions, then the company declaring bankruptcy?
His time at Ford? He promoted the ill-executed Merkur fiasco.
I shorted Exide while I was with a hedge fund. When I heard rumors that Bob was going to become Chairman, I called him to warn him about Exide’s problems (repackaging defective product and shipping it out again; bribing a buyer at Sears to use Exide to manufacture Diehard batteries; stealing from customers; and worst of all, and here I will be circumspect to avoid being sued, “misrepresenting” certain tests when closing a lead smelter). Exide was going down the toilet way before its top managers were forced out and Bob brought in. As an aside, I could not get the SEC, the New York Stock Exchange, the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times interested in the company’s actions, even after I was invited to testify before Congress.
While the repackaging of defective product is a bit surprising, the rest of it is SOP. Why would any of that be a shock to Lutz? According to all reports of the time, he didn’t do much to move the company forward. He was replaced in 2 years, and ‘over his head’ and ‘rudderless’ are the terms I hear most frequently associated with his tenure.
Regardless, I am curious as to why you believed any regulatory agency be interested?
The SEC wasn’t interested in Enron. Anyone with any business sense at all knew Enron was a house of cards and there wasn’t enough profit in the industry to justify what Enron claimed for it’s slice. The crown jewel was when one of Enron’s guys was asked how the company made money, and he replied that it was too complicated for us to understand. I almost died laughing.
It took 10 minutes of looking at Bernie’s returns, consistency, building, and staff to know he was a pyramid. Every semi-reputable firm stayed miles away from Madoff for just that reason. SEC didn’t want to hear about him either. IIRC, there was an analyst who was so naive that he went to the SEC about Madoff, thinking something would be done. Apparently he went several times, spent a couple of days actually laying out on paper what any calibrated gut would tell at a glance. He was ignored.
It’s difficult to pick the performers – there’s lots of ways the best product or service won’t necessarily deliver ROI. But, picking the hustlers is generally rather simple and straightforward – if you are not blinded by greed.
A minor success here and there, but in the main, the Emperor has no clothes.
“I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car,” – Get off the grass!
Farewell Bob, you’ll be missed. My favorite quote of yours: “Often wrong, but never in doubt.”
“The naïve belief was if you track every one of the metrics and you do well on every one, the end result is a great car company — not.”
I’m happy that Borat landed on his feet as GM’s PR Coach.
I really could care less what Lutz said is some interview. The facts on the ground are the facts on the ground.
Lutz has always been mediocre at best, that’s what the results say.
Taking my usual contrarian position, I don’t think Lutz takes himself nearly so seriously as most of the B&B seem to assume. I found an interview a couple of years ago where he said that he has 10 ideas an hour and 8 of them are bad.
Also, I’m not sure the original post was completely fair to Lutz. I think it left out the central point of his remarks (about the primacy of superior product) in order to highlight the Lutzism about GM being incapable of building a bad car.
Here’s the relevant excerpt, with the remarks not included in the original post bolded:
“I think I’m leaving the company finally focused back on the right thing,” Lutz said. “General Motors spent 30 years chasing every kind of metric — hours per vehicle, base-engineered content, parts re-use, attainment of diversity targets — 50 different metrics, and excellent products was sort of one.”
“The naïve belief was if you track every one of the metrics and you do well on every one, the end result is a great car company — not,” Lutz said. “Over 8 1/2 years, we have been able to destroy that whole culture.”
Lutz said GM now is convinced that a “best in class,” quality vehicle is the way to win — even if it costs $600 or $700 more than the prior model.
“There’s none of this ‘provide shared value for the shareholder,’ and ‘be a good corporate citizen.’ … All of that will take care of itself if we do the world’s best cars and trucks.”
Lutz is convinced GM won’t revert to its old ways.
“I don’t think the company is capable of doing a bad car,” he said, adding that “there would be armed revolution” if GM executives failed to put design first.
The point of his remarks is that the company is now focused on product, which is one of the things the TTAC has preached over the years. The secondary point, which is debatable, obviously, is that GM’s corporate cultures has been changed, also something that’s seen it’s share of cheer leading from the B&B.
The Pontiac Solstice first went on sale 5 years ago. That’s two or three product cycles. Yeah, it had a poorly thought out, cheaply executed interior and was given to a damaged brand, so it had a few strikes against it. It was too slow/heavy, but showed promise with the turbo DI GXP version. The coupe was more practical, but I wonder if they even built 1,000 of them since it was introduced almost simultaneously with GM’s financial meltdown and Pontiac’s demise.
The Solstice didn’t have a great interior, but one thing that Lutz has stressed over the past few years has been better interior design as a way of leapfrogging other car companies (and it’s been preached by Mullaly at Ford as well – he was in charge of the first digital flight deck at Boeing). Just about all of GM’s recent designs have shown incremental improvements in interiors that have been well received by both consumers and journalists – the Saturn Aura, Malibu, CTS for example (though the reception of the Camaro’s interior is more mixed, I’ll agree).
Simon Cox, who led the interior design of the current CTS said that while exterior design is what first grabs your attention, the driving experience is all on the inside of the car. Over the long term, good interior design leads to customer satisfaction far more than great exterior lines.
One last thing, blaming Lutz for GM’s bankruptcy ignores all the deadly sins that the company committed over the past 50 or 60 years.
All I see from his supposedly-humble “10 ideas an hour” quote is Lutz giving himself credit for 16 good ideas in a typical 8-hour working day. And yet we still got the Solstice.
Time for Bobo to be put out to pasture.
Boo, he so crazy…
Mr. Lutz, you are an irrelevant, delusional gasbag. Good riddance to you.
Mr. Lutz, you are an irrelevant, delusional gasbag. Good riddance to you.
My thoughts exactly. I’m sure I’l see you atr Eyes on Design, big cigar in mouth, being driven across the show field.
Somewhere, all the one-hand typists at GM Inside News are lamenting your departure
“Save the Toyotas for us to drive.”
At your own risk, of course.
It’s weird that Lutz fans would claim that he is a “products” guy. Tell me, exactly which GM vehicle is considered class leading?
Malibu? No.
Cobalt? No.
Aveo? No.
Pickup? Not bad, but would you say a Silverado is “leading” an F150?
CTS-V? Close, but it’s an irrelevant (sales wise) product to begin with.