Yahoo Autos David E. Davis Jr.: Bob Lutz Checks Out, but I'll Bet He's Not Gone
Bob Lutz was a Marine aviator (pictured below, left), and he wears his business suits like his Marine uniform—not particularly fashionable, but absolutely correct and appropriate. His grin is fierce, and heads turn his way when he walks into a crowded room. He owns a couple of fixed-wing aircraft and a couple of helicopters, which he uses the way we use sports cars or motorcycles (which he also owns and rides). His enthusiasm for cars was inherited from his father and his uncles. His father drove a 3.5-liter Jaguar SS sedan prewar, an Aston Martin DB2 (pictured below, second image) postwar (which Bob now owns), and, later, an Aston Martin DB2 MkIII. One uncle used to visit the family home in Switzerland driving a Talbot 150 SS with the dorsal fin. Another drove an Alfa Zagato and a Chapron-bodied 1949 Delahaye purchased from Monegasque racing driver and entrepreneur Louis Chiron. A third drove a Talbot-Lago “Pourtout” coupe. Imagine the Lutz driveway when they all showed up for the holidays.
In 1974, I was working for the Campbell-Ewald ad agency as creative director, and Mr. Pete Estes, then GM’s executive vice-president of operations, who had been my consulting client once when I was between magazines, called and wanted me to go to Europe and learn all I could about the importance of transverse-engine front-wheel-drive technology as pioneered by the Austin/Morris Mini, then mass-produced in the Fiat 128, and soon to be introduced in the new VW Golf. As I was preparing to leave, and showing my list of interview appointments to Mr. Estes, he said, “While you’re over there, talk to Bob Lutz. He’s leaving BMW and going to Ford. I want to know why he’s not coming back to General Motors.” I dutifully added Bob Lutz to my list.
On the appointed night in Munich, we met in the lounge of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten.
There was a downpour outside, and Mr. Lutz came in drenched, in full motorcycle leathers with his helmet over his arm. Our martinis came, and he began. “ ‘Bunkie’ Knudsen [Semon E. Knudsen, GM lifer who jumped ship and became, briefly, president of Ford Motor Company] poisoned the well for front-wheel drive for an entire generation of managers at GM. He convinced them that it was too sophisticated for most car buyers and that luxury-market sales volumes would never recover the extra costs of that technology. That’s why they’ve limited it to the Olds Toronado and the Cadillac Eldorado.”
Then I asked Pete Estes’s question, and Lutz replied, “That’s a funny thing. Pete and I talked, and he wanted to know what it would take to get me back. I described my pay and benefits package at BMW, then told him what Ford had offered me. He said he’d get back to me, but I never heard from him again.”
I flew back to Detroit and made my report to Pete Estes: “Transverse-engine front-wheel drive is going to be very, very important. The Chevrolet Chevette—front engine, rear drive—will be instantly obsolete.” Then I played back Bob Lutz’s puzzlement about their discussion. Pete Estes was a man whose face and manner could never keep a secret. He said, “Goddammit, David, that’s exactly what happened! We would have had to pay him as much as we’re paying our Pontiac general manager, and I sure as hell couldn’t walk in to the board with that!”
Ships that pass in the night.
Bob Lutz served GM, then BMW, then Ford, then Chrysler, with a side trip to Exide, and most recently full circle back to General Motors. At each of those stops, he proved to be totally product-oriented, indefatigable, a bulwark of car enthusiasm against all of the forces dedicated to the twin mantras of cost cutting no matter what and approaching cars as appliances. No matter whether the product in question was a high-performance sports car or a pickup, he cared passionately about how it looked and how it felt.
Bob Lutz lives two or three miles away from me in Ann Arbor. He bought property here when Ford brought him from England to the U.S. We occasionally have dinner at a neighborhood Japanese restaurant. He is outspoken, sometimes wildly indiscreet, considering the buttoned-up paranoia of the North American manufacturers he’s worked for. He hosts gatherings of car guys at his house from time to time and is locally famous for banzai motorcycle junkets with small groups of like-minded riders through the rolling farmland west of Ann Arbor.
When Mr. Philip Caldwell was chairman at Ford, and Bob’s boss, he called me one afternoon and announced, “I don’t want you talking to our Mr. Lutz any more. He says too many things that he shouldn’t say.” I answered, “Mr. Caldwell, Bob and I are fellow car enthusiasts, and we talk cars all the time. I am not trying to trick him into revealing any Ford Motor Company secrets. If you want to pay me a million bucks a year, I’ll drop him like a hot rock.” He grunted and said, “The car enthusiasm is the problem. It’s his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.” Welcome to Detroit.
Bob Lutz, at 78, is a few months younger than I am, and he’s hung it up at GM. I think I can comfortably predict that he isn’t yet finished with the automobile business.
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