Posted on 09/06/2011 6:32:17 AM PDT by Abathar
General Motors Co. has hired the ultimate car guy out of retirement to advise its senior leadership.
Bob Lutz, 79, a former GM vice chairman for product development, left the company last year, but never really ended his 47-year career in the auto business. Lutz had been informally advising GM on its new products for the past 16 months from his home near Ann Arbor, Mich.
The move by GM CEO Dan Akerson should help the company because its top-selling new products were conceived and designed under Lutz’s leadership. The new models like the Chevrolet Cruze compact and the GMC Terrain and Chevrolet Equinox midsize crossover SUVs, all designed under Lutz, have led GM’s recovery from its 2009 bankruptcy.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
JIT delivery was one of the major policy changes under him, which is fine for production parts, but they put that same policy to work on capital expenditures like tooling, which was just plain crazy. He also wanted all businesses that did work for GM to open our books and see how much profit we were making on their parts.
We avoided that ourselves because the PO's were issued through another supplier, so we could hide it all from them by using that technicality.
I remember one of our biggest customers at the time, Johnson Rubber in Ohio, telling GM to stick it. They pulled all their molds, loaded them up on trucks and sent them all back, even those in production at the time. We got busier than hell adapting and modifying them to run in different presses for our other customers.
I always respected them for doing that, had more suppliers not buckled under and did the same thing it would have put them in their place, but I guess too many throats would have been self cut for many people to follow their lead.
They got rid of him because he did SUVs, classic Liberal idiotic shooting from the hip.
I do know that Lutz is a car-guy who, at this point in time, seems to have a good handle on what the public wants to buy.
With regard to supplier issues, the automotive industry is notorious for abusing its suppliers. The industry can only get away with such abuses if the suppliers have too many eggs in one basket.
Precisely, we learned that lesson the hard way ourselves.
What could go wrong? I mean, if GM thinks it’s a good idea then it’s just money in the bank....
/sarc
We only supplied molds for them, so even though the tool made a million+ parts it was still only a single item to us. The horror stories we have heard from our suppliers on the parts off those tools are enough to pull your hair out though.
We have to consider the source here (Washington Post). But if Bob Lutz were left alone to follow his own hunches, he could be a truly effective product planner.
I seriously doubt that he ever liked the Volt, but went along with it rhetorically for corporate cohesion.
He’s a real car guy and proved his acumen while he was at Chrysler, with products like the Viper & PT Cruiser, and for the Explorer over at Ford. He has a very good track record.
It is pretty pathetic when the current GM management needs to bring back a 79 year old former exec to tell them what to do.
We are not suffering from Global Warming, we are suffering from Global Incompetence with the bozo in the White House a prime example.
ON the finish product yes, but not in his management style for running the company.
Had he stayed where he belonged, in R&D and product development, he would have been great but he had to deal with the other side of the business too, labor, supply, and the countless other decisions that he needed to make day in and day out. That was where he was a lousy CEO, remove that part from his responsibilities and he could do some real good there.
One of my old customers up in Auburn Mi. had a big sign in his parking lot for years saying “If you are a salesman and pulled into this lot with a foreign car don’t bother walking to our door”.
I did notice the sign came down soon after he started doing work for Mazda though...
It looks like what they are bringing him back in for is to advise on what will sell and what won’t. The article doesn’t say much about the manufacturig end.
“Fins....yeah! That’s the answer.....fins! And we can make them electric!”
He never liked that end of the business I don’t believe, had they stuck him with that he probably wouldn’t have come back is my guess.
Putting 40-50 thousand miles a year on a car, I made no excuses for wanting a big ass sedan. The company I worked for provided a new Chevy every spring or summer. They had a steady supply of buyers for these used cars...
a guy who is nearly 80 advising them on new products?
“Edsel II. This time, it’s Electric!”
Couldn't they just look at the actual sales data?
Are Gov't Motors cars selling? Compared to competitors?
I read that Obama’s people had been resisting GM’s attempts to bring Lutz back. Then Lutz repeatedly went on CNBC and bashed Obama. So, IMHO, Obama’s people figured that having Lutz back at GM would help temper his comments.
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