5 year turn! GM's Lutz speeds into last turn

GM's Lutz speeds into last turn

Time is as great a factor for the 75-year-old exec as it is for GM




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Lutz sounds off
On new proposals to raise fuel economy standards:
"Mandating the car companies to improve Corporate Average Fuel Economy is like combating the nation's obesity epidemic by forcing the clothing manufacturers to produce only small sizes.
"If we get the 4 percent a year Corporate Average Fuel Economy increase, you haven't seen nothing yet. To get partly there, it will cost thousands of dollars per car."
When the all-electric Chevy Volt concept introduced at the Detroit auto show could be working:
"What we're targeting internally is three years.
"We don't want this vehicle to be a program done in deep dark secret, so in three years we either pop it on the public or say it didn't work."
The coming year for GM:
"2007 is very big year for very obvious reasons. It's the UAW contract year. We go into this negotiation with the hope and the belief that we'll find solutions that are acceptable to both parties, but will reflect the new reality of the automobile business and permit us to come out of it with lower costs.
Audio excerpts
Comments from a Detroit News interview with GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz:
Lutz discusses tasks and timelines on the development of the Chevy Volt hybrid
Lutz says corporate fuel economy standards are folly and will cost consumers thousands of dollars
Lutz talks about restoring the clout of designers at GM instead of letting engineers rule the design process
Lutz talks about the difficulty of changing public attitudes toward U.S. car makers
Lutz says there is hope for the future because Generation Y
Lutz says 2007 is a crucial year because union negotiations must produce cost-cutting consensus
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GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz discusses tasks and timelines on the development of the Chevy Volt hybrid
More audio excerpts from Bob Lutz



DETROIT -- If only it were as easy as building good cars.

Even as General Motors Corp. begins to fill its showrooms with top-notch cars and trucks, its retail sales dropped 8 percent in January.

And the GM executive most responsible for the new iron, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, said it may be years before the company's soiled reputation is repaired.

"An image transformation such as ours is really a five-year process," Lutz said during a wide-ranging interview last week. "We're two or 2 1/2 years into it."

This dose of realism comes from a man who turns 75 today. By the time GM finally outruns its reputation problems, his remarkable career may be over. Maybe that's why Lutz practically radiates with urgency these days, pushing his team at GM to the limit, firing away to the media at auto shows, dashing off rants on his blog. Lutz is on his last few laps and he wants to make them count.

In his office at the GM Tech Center in Warren on Thursday, Lutz exudes confidence in GM's comeback but remains realistic about the challenges. It took decades for GM to create its problems, and nothing can fix them overnight.

"A change in course cannot be done purely through advertising or something like that. There's not enough money in the world because a lot of these perceptions about brands or corporations are deeply embedded in people's belief system."

But Lutz says GM can change that belief system, and when he looks you straight in eye, you start to believe him, as impractical as that may sound.

The vehicles Lutz has shepherded from sketch pad to assembly line in the past six years are beginning to appear in GM showrooms. Two of his babies, the Saturn Aura and the new Chevrolet Silverado, are the North American Car and Truck of the Year. What's more, GM's once-far-flung product development operations are no longer needlessly duplicating efforts and wasting resources.

"His imprint on GM has been huge," said Jim Sanfilippo, executive vice president for AMCI, an automotive consultancy in Bloomfield Hills. "What Lutz has done is nothing short of a transformation. What he has loosed in GM's product development system is just the tip of the iceberg. I buy his credibility.

"I don't think any of the fire in his belly is gone. He is still pushing the organization to raise the bar."

But it is going to take time to win back customers who feel jilted or mistreated decades ago. It's going to take something special that makes people say, "Whoa, wait, that's a GM," Lutz said.

"It requires friends looking at a neighbor's new Saturn Aura and saying, 'Hey what's that?' Then driving it, and saying, 'Hey this is way better than my, insert name here, what did you pay for it?' Then you get one after another.

"That's the way Honda and Toyota grew here in the United States. But the problem is we don't have 20 years to do it."

No, GM does not have that much time and neither does Lutz.

The Aura, the coming Saturn Astra, the redesigned Cadillac CTS, the 2008 Chevy Malibu, the Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups are all well-crafted inside and out. Lutzmobiles are hitting showrooms, a welcome site for dealers and customers.

"There is hope at the end of the tunnel with people who are currently under 25, there's a much greater acceptance of GM and American cars in general. Why?

"Because Generation Y never experienced the bad days of the American automobile industry. They say, 'Hey, what's wrong with these cars? I like this stuff.' They don't carry the baggage.

"Their parents carry the baggage of the bad '70s and bad '80s."

GM vehicles are drawing high quality marks from auto industry experts such as J.D. Power and Associates. Yet many consumers remain unconvinced.

Lutz places some of the blame on GM for decades of taking customers for granted.

He also calls out the U.S. media, listing examples of biased coverage.

Even so, he sees progress.

"While everything we did over the last five years was better than before, every time I started to sort of get satisfied, I'd go sit in an Audi or Lexus and I thought, 'My god, we're not going to make it.'

"And now, to my satisfaction, I can go from a Silverado to a Toyota Tundra, and tell myself we're better.

"I can compare the new CTS and to any German luxury brand and say, 'By God, we're as good as they are.' "

Indeed.

But there's a lot more to do, and Bob Lutz wants to finish the job