Lutz Praises Chrylser

[nsap]

FAYENCE, France -- A senior General Motors executive has paid a rare tribute for "bold design" to his cross-town rivals at the Chrysler group.

GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said he was not a big fan of the Chrysler 300, the company's new and fast-selling flagship sedan.

As head of product development at GM, he also said he probably would not have approved the car's design, allowing it to go into final production.

But it's sometimes said that nothing succeeds like excess in the auto industry. And the 300, with its huge egg-crate grille, broad shoulders and low, sloping roof, has been an unmistakable hit for the Chrysler group.

Article Here




When you do a very far-out, very bold design that's very much different from what's been done in the past, it can go badly wrong or it go beautifully right," said Lutz, speaking at a product seminar in the south of France on Sunday.

"In this particular case it's gone very right," he said.

[Ultimate]

can u post the whole thing please u gotta subscribe to that thing to read it.

Thanks in advance.

[gmsickofan]

huge egg-crate grille, broad shoulders and low, sloping roof

Lutz would never approve something like that. Oh, wait, he did!

Cunningham C7:

Drivable luxury in coupe

Cunningham GT name returns to carmaking with pricey, gutsy V12

January 11, 2001

BY LAWRENCE ULRICH
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

An old-school automobile executive from Chrysler's past will help resurrect a sports car legend with its own historic link to the American automaker.

Bob Lutz, former Chrysler president and now CEO of auto battery supplier Exide Corp., helped introduce the Cunningham C7 GT concept Wednesday at the North American International Auto Show.

In a refreshing change from the razzle-dazzle launches of billion-dollar automakers, Lutz and his partners spoke of their personal stakes in fledgling Cunningham Motor Co. before pulling the nylon cover off their first completed car.

Lutz joked that the Cunningham's classic styling might not be in keeping with the current rage for boundary-blurring crossover vehicles.

"It doesn't look like a toaster. It doesn't look like a trash compactor. It doesn't look like a snowplow crossed with some car you've never seen before," Lutz said to laughter from the media horde.

"If that's out of style, well, then I apologize."

http://www.auto.com/2001show/cuning11_20010111.htm

[nsap]

Originally posted by Ultimate@Sep 20 2004, 03:03 PM
can u post the whole thing please u gotta subscribe to that thing to read it.

Thanks in advance.

No Prob., I added it to the original post.

[THUNDER-X]

Originally posted by laserwizard@Sep 20 2004, 09:20 PM
Turn out the lights. The party is over. The Fat lady is starting to sing.

Lol! lazerwizard, you are my hero. Lol! :lol:

[awalbert88]

Originally posted by laserwizard@Sep 20 2004, 04:20 PM
Bob "Klutz's" opinion is now irrelavent. He is a failure. His designs are too little, too late. The curtain is being drawn on GM instead of opening for the really big shooooow. Whatever emerges out of GM now will be ****-a-roaches on wheels filled with empty promises and no soul. The car buying public no longer considers GM or Ford as worthwhile alternatives for car purchases and GM's truck divisions are languishing for antique pickup trucks and gilded lilly drug dealer, gang banger Escalators. Even when ***** releases new designs they aren't really ready for prime time. The G6 enters the market without a full lineup and certainly without performance. The Cobalt offers a kit car 2 door look and a mothra four door. Buick offers us its latest interpretation of the 1980's Century with the body of a Daewoo after mating with a 1994 Taurus.

This is progress?

Turn out the lights. The party is over. The Fat lady is starting to sing.

You are so inconsistent. Some days, I agree with your posts. Other days, like today, you just look like a dumbass.

[Sparta]

Originally posted by laserwizard@Sep 20 2004, 04:20 PM
Bob "Klutz's" opinion is now irrelavent. He is a failure. His designs are too little, too late. The curtain is being drawn on GM instead of opening for the really big shooooow. Whatever emerges out of GM now will be ****-a-roaches on wheels filled with empty promises and no soul. The car buying public no longer considers GM or Ford as worthwhile alternatives for car purchases and GM's truck divisions are languishing for antique pickup trucks and gilded lilly drug dealer, gang banger Escalators. Even when ***** releases new designs they aren't really ready for prime time. The G6 enters the market without a full lineup and certainly without performance. The Cobalt offers a kit car 2 door look and a mothra four door. Buick offers us its latest interpretation of the 1980's Century with the body of a Daewoo after mating with a 1994 Taurus.

This is progress?

Turn out the lights. The party is over. The Fat lady is starting to sing.

right again.

[T-Type]

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but Desmo9 had basically already posted this.

[parakleets]

Originally posted by laserwizard@Sep 20 2004, 04:20 PM
Bob "Klutz's" opinion is now irrelavent. He is a failure. His designs are too little, too late. The curtain is being drawn on GM instead of opening for the really big shooooow. Whatever emerges out of GM now will be ****-a-roaches on wheels filled with empty promises and no soul. The car buying public no longer considers GM or Ford as worthwhile alternatives for car purchases and GM's truck divisions are languishing for antique pickup trucks and gilded lilly drug dealer, gang banger Escalators. Even when ***** releases new designs they aren't really ready for prime time. The G6 enters the market without a full lineup and certainly without performance. The Cobalt offers a kit car 2 door look and a mothra four door. Buick offers us its latest interpretation of the 1980's Century with the body of a Daewoo after mating with a 1994 Taurus.

This is progress?

Turn out the lights. The party is over. The Fat lady is starting to sing.

I am sure that you are expecting an avalanche of angry responses, from this posting. This, however, is not one of them. Beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, so my question to you is, what cars/trucks do you like???? Please list them. Sometimes you seem to be pro-Ford, yet in this posting you slam Ford. If you are not a fan of GM or Ford, do you like Chyrsler products, or are you staunchly in favor of imports?

As for you criticism of Bob Lutz's "designs", let me remind everyone that Mr. Lutz is not a designer. He IS the VP of Product Development for GM. As such, he can approve or nix a vehicle program, or the styling of a car. To date, there are no cars for sale developed from scratch, under Lutz's watch. Some recent additions to GM's line-up may have been sent back to the design group for tweaking, but these models were all too far along for Lutz to have a major influence on. Those people who have seen the nixed designs for the Buick LaCrosse have reported that the "Lutz-ified" production version is a vast improvement. Lutz has also expressed regret that he was not able to affect change on other models (ION, and Malibu), which were close to production, when he joined GM.

He has also recongnized gaping holes is some of the divisions' line-ups, and quickly provided models to fill these gaps. While the jury may still be out on the success of the Saab 9-2X, Pontiac GTO, and upcoming Saab 9-7X, and CSV minivans, these models will provide some sales/profit, which otherwise would not have existed without these stopgap models.

We are still a year away from seeing any models developed under Lutz, with the Pontiac Solstice being the first of the new cars to reach production. This is certainly an attractive roadster, and it has generated a lot of interest on the car show circuit (it was completely swamped at the Philadelphia and New York shows). The car magazines, when given the opportunity to test prototypes, had nothing but good things to say about this Miata-fighter. If the Solstice is any indication, along with the passionate cars developed under Lutz, at Chrysler (Viper, Prowler, PT Cruiser, Intrepid/Eagle Vision/, and Ram), GM will have some attractive and capable new models, and hopefully they will be more reliable than most of Lutz/Eaton/Gale-era Chrysler products.

[mbukukanyau]

Originally posted by parakleets@Sep 20 2004, 10:14 PM
We are still a year away from seeing any models developed under Lutz, with the Pontiac Solstice being the first of the new cars to reach production. This is certainly an attractive roadster, and it has generated a lot of interest on the car show circuit (it was completely swamped at the Philadelphia and New York shows). The car magazines, when given the opportunity to test prototypes, had nothing but good things to say about this Miata-fighter. If the Solstice is any indication, along with the passionate cars developed under Lutz, at Chrysler (Viper, Prowler, PT Cruiser, Intrepid/Eagle Vision/, and Ram), GM will have some attractive and capable new models, and hopefully they will be more reliable than most of Lutz/Eaton/Gale-era Chrysler products.

From what I read, Solstice could be a Covertte with a 4 Banger at over 3000 Lbs. without interior finishes and sound dampening heaters etc, its much bigger size and a smaller truck than the miata.
I like it, but I am convinced GM North America is incapable of building a small car.

It’s a problem from the early 50 luxo boats that cost Detroit the car market after the 70’s oil crisis

[TheBar2k]

I'm still kinda new here and was not able to start a new topic of discussion, but then realized this fits quite well with Lutz's commentary on Chrysler. I saw this on AOL earlier this afternoon

GM's Lutz -- pulling automaker back to the future?By Tom Brown

FAYENCE, France (Reuters) - Bob Lutz, the 72-year-old vice chairman of General Motors Corp., is on a mission that he likens to pulling the world's largest automaker out of a death spiral.

The goal, he says, is to turn around GM's struggling car business by ensuring that the vehicles it builds are "best in class" and capable of competing with the most desired products anywhere on the road today.

"If we don't change course and do North American vehicles that are equivalent to German vehicles or the best Japanese vehicles, we will be in the process of inevitable, continued decline," Lutz told reporters.

"To me, that's not an option, because doing what the company has been doing ain't going to work."

Lutz, who took over as product development chief at GM three years ago, spoke over the weekend on the sidelines of a global product seminar the company was holding in Southern France ahead of this week's Paris auto show.

GM controlled little more than 27 percent of the U.S. market through August, a sharp drop from the 52 percent share of its home market it enjoyed back in 1962. Much of that loss can be attributed to its steadily declining competitiveness in the car segment.

Lutz generally credits GM with doing "a superb job" building big pickups and sport utility vehicles, which are the mother lode of the company's automotive profits.

On the car side, however, Lutz acknowledges that the mass-market automaker has often been known for bland, look-alike  designs and interiors awash in a sea of gray plastic.

GM has already begun to change that, as witnessed in some of the aspirational new cars in its Cadillac lineup. Lutz says that transformation is set to continue across GM's Chevrolet, Buick and Pontiac brands, as the automaker pours more money into product development, quality and styling.

"I think we're starting to get that spirit in the company where you do what you have to do to make the vehicle as good as possible," Lutz said, adding that higher development spending was inevitably a part of the process.

"You respect your financial targets but the financial targets have to be responsible in the first place," he added.

"What good is it to have the lowest-cost car in the market if nobody wants to buy it?"

Lutz conceded his strategy posed something of a risk for GM, since today's hypercompetitive auto industry offers no guarantee that higher spending on improved products will lead to higher profits or market share.

But GM Chief Financial Officer John Devine says Lutz has built a real consensus at the Detroit-based automaker around the idea that it can aspire to greatness in modern car manufacturing.

"Bob, from Day 1, has been very clear about the need for -- not product that's very good or pretty good -- but product that's better than anybody else's," Devine told Reuters.   

BACK TO THE FUTURE?

"In a way what I'm doing is I'm reconnecting GM to its past. Because, in our past, we always were out to be the best," said Lutz.

"We always wanted to beat competition, we always wanted more horsepower, better handling, better design and so forth. We never were willing to settle for second-best," he said, referring to what he views as GM's glory days in the 1950s and '60s.

Lutz got his first of many jobs in the auto industry when he made his debut at GM in 1963, at the start of Detroit's old muscle-car days.

The former Marine and fighter pilot said there was an aviation analogy to what he was doing at the company today, in getting it to assume additional costs to make its cars something more than highly discounted commodities.

"If you're in a terminal dive because a wing has pulled off, you eject," he said.

"Ejections are often fatal, but only about 30 percent of the time ... If you stay with the airplane you know you're dead. So whenever you're faced with sure death, or maybe death, I've always learned to take maybe."

09/20/04 12:00 ET

Thought this would strike up discussion. Glad to see that the gray plastic interiors have worn thin on Lutz and that he would like to see what the rest of us would like to... some GM products that will have the ability to take on the best on the market.. a lineup of vehicles to be proud of as opposed to a rare one or two here or there like the CTS, C6 or better yet the CTSv.

Nice to see bob speaking publicly about spending money to make money. Yeah its a risk.. I'm glad that GM didn't rush to have a competitor to the 300, but DCX did take a risk... and look at the payoffs... I read somewhere that even their minivan sales were up because of increased showroom visitors who looked at the Magnum and 300..

The reality of the world situation is that it is highly unlikely that GM would recover the market share they've lost since the "glory days" but.. C'mon Lutz and CO, stop playing catch-up and give the competition a run for their money... THEN you'll be able to not only say but SHOW that GM doesn't want to settle for second best.. Right now.. with the current lineup (minus some exceptions) second best doesn't sound all bad!

Also notice no mention of Saab or Saturn in the article? My first car was a Saturn and despite the current line-up of sub-par vehicles, I believe Saturn has a chance if only Lutz and CO would give the division the time of day instead of the rubberstamped approval for so-so vehicles... What happened to a "different type of car?"

my 2cents...

[Sparta]

didnt lutz work w/ dcx?

[TheBar2k]

Ahhh... Another article about Lutz... kinda makes ya laugh when u think about the 70+ yr old guy talkin about lookin at women. Maybe he's not all that bad afterall?

GM executive wants his cars 'just like a woman'


FAYENCE, France (Reuters) - Beauty is only skin deep. But in cars, just as in women, it's exterior appearances that count, according to a top official at General Motors Corp. .

"What do you want in a female companion?" GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz asked reporters at a product development seminar Sunday in the south of France.

"What is the first thing that attracts you. Her ability to cook and keep house or is it the way she looks?"

His comments came when he was asked if finely appointed automotive interiors weren't just as important as glimmering sheet metal and bold designs when it comes to making a car desirable.

Lutz, 72, acknowledged the importance of interiors. But he said they take a backseat to the outside look in the minds of most car buyers.

"It's not politically correct, GM hates it when I draw that analogy. But it's absolutely correct," said Lutz.

"The initial pull comes from the exterior appearance."

09/20/04 08:42 ET
   

TALK TALK TALK TALK.... lets see some action buddy... I'm starting to believe he's capable of doing the work necessary, but perhaps GM isn't so quick to agree with his ideas and ideology? Clearly I understand why they don't like his analogy, but it does draw some attention to the company and he's right, "The initial pull comes from the exterior appearance" Why else do vehicles like the Aztek and Quest fail whereas the CTS, and G6 succeed? Let us not forget the sometimes awesome styling of some of GM Europes upcoming models...

Its the look that counts... Most of GMs current lineup is showing off a look of years past... C'mon we all look at our yearbooks and say WHAT WAS I THINKING when it comes to faces we made, how in or out of shape we were and clothes we wore... GM... LOOK IN THE YEAR BOOK! What were you thinking... lets forget the yearbook picture and move on.. start getting ready for Glamour shots or American Idol or whatever makes you feel good about yourself.. get in shape... build those powertrains.. build those transmissions and damnit... wrap them in a functional, attractive package... one that is will be attractive to customers in 2006,7,8 etc.. not 1998 and sell them to the masses.

[tgagneguam]

Originally posted by parakleets@Sep 20 2004, 10:14 PM
...As for you criticism of Bob Lutz's "designs", let me remind everyone that Mr. Lutz is not a designer. He IS the VP of Product Development for GM. As such, he can approve or nix a vehicle program, or the styling of a car. To date, there are no cars for sale developed from scratch, under Lutz's watch. Some recent additions to GM's line-up may have been sent back to the design group for tweaking, but these models were all too far along for Lutz to have a major influence on. Those people who have seen the nixed designs for the Buick LaCrosse have reported that the "Lutz-ified" production version is a vast improvement. Lutz has also expressed regret that he was not able to affect change on other models (ION, and Malibu), which were close to production, when he joined GM.

He has also recongnized gaping holes is some of the divisions' line-ups, and quickly provided models to fill these gaps. While the jury may still be out on the success of the Saab 9-2X, Pontiac GTO, and upcoming Saab 9-7X, and CSV minivans, these models will provide some sales/profit, which otherwise would not have existed without these stopgap models.

We are still a year away from seeing any models developed under Lutz, with the Pontiac Solstice being the first of the new cars to reach production. This is certainly an attractive roadster, and it has generated a lot of interest on the car show circuit (it was completely swamped at the Philadelphia and New York shows). The car magazines, when given the opportunity to test prototypes, had nothing but good things to say about this Miata-fighter. If the Solstice is any indication, along with the passionate cars developed under Lutz, at Chrysler (Viper, Prowler, PT Cruiser, Intrepid/Eagle Vision/, and Ram), GM will have some attractive and capable new models, and hopefully they will be more reliable than most of Lutz/Eaton/Gale-era Chrysler products.

I continue to be underwhelmed by Lutz and the promise of better design. Like it or not, he's in a position of power, and one would hope that he would have exerted it in some meaningful way since he joined GM on September 1, 2001. To date, I've been unimpressed, as have many customers, shareholders, dealers, and GM fans. And I would hardly consider the LaCrosse a decent vehicle, poorer prior versions notwithstanding.

I wish I could languish at my job for three years before I actually produced something. Reality dictates that I needed to hit the ground running when I arrived on the first day. In Lutz's case, I think it's time to put up or shut up, no?

...Incidentally, there is a simple, one-word explanation for the manner in which some members post: trolls:

Electronic mail messages, Usenet postings or other (electronic) communications which are intentionally incorrect, but not overtly controversial..., or the
act of sending such a message. Trolling aims to elicit an emotional reaction from those with a hair-trigger on the reply key... The well-constructed troll... subtly [conveys] to the more savvy and experienced that it's in fact a deliberate
troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.

While some people are permissive of trolling (for whatever reason: "Oh that so-so, he's a funny one"), in my mind the the humor of the posts has long since passed. It's really tired and irritating, actually.

[caling7]

Has anyone ever noticed how Laserwizard is usually one of the first to respond to a new post? It's like he's trolling around here 24/7 with a ready-made negative post, waiting for an article to apply it to. He likes nothing coming out from GM, but he's ALWAYS here, a site devoted to GM vehicles. Interesting.

As for Lutz, I think we need to wait for the vehicles from the Sostice and onwards to truly judge what effect he's had on the styling.