March 25, 2008
General Motors vice chairman talks cars
(Photo by Jeff Watts)
Addressing a group of MBA students at the Kogod School of Business last Tuesday, General Motors (GM) vice chairman, Bob Lutz, didn’t pull any punches.
“I don’t want to tell anyone what kind of car to buy, but if I were, I would tell you to buy American,” he said.
Lutz—who started his career with GM in the ’60s and returned to the world’s second largest automaker in 2001, after stints with BMW, Ford, and Chrysler—admitted that “for a while, we forgot the recipe of what makes a great American automobile.” Today, though, after overhauling GM’s global product development division and focusing more on design, the company is turning out vehicles “as good or better than anyone else.”
The 76-year-old Lutz credits the turnaround, in part, to a renewed focus on design. A car, he said, is “basically your exoskeleton”—a very visible reflection of the driver’s style and personality. Thus, in today’s automotive marketplace, style equals sales.
“Today, safety is no longer a differentiator,” he said. “Every new car on the road is safer than the safest car 10 years ago. We can’t win on safety, and we can’t win on quality, because the so-called quality gap is basically gone. So, nowadays, design has to be your differentiator.
“Basically,” Lutz continued, “it comes down to buying a car that you love.”
Until recently, design was an after-thought for GM. The result, Lutz admitted, was a fleet of vehicles that was anything but aesthetically pleasing. Today, however, “we start at the design-end, then bring in the engineers.” He also said the company is focused on creating rich-looking interiors, and turning out “$20,000 Chevrolets that look like they cost $40,000.”
During the talk, Lutz also sought to dispel another myth about GM: “that we only produce gas guzzlers.”
In recent years, Lutz said, GM has improved gas efficiency by 130 percent for its cars and 80 percent for trucks. The company is also committed to developing an array of “green” technologies, including hybrid and electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells, and ethanol, of which Lutz is a huge proponent.
Over the next four years, Lutz said, GM will roll out 16 new hybrids, including a Saturn Vue, which will get 60–70 miles per gallon.
The only one of GM’s brands that doesn’t seem to fit with the new eco-friendly focus is Hummer, said Lutz.
“If we developed a Hummer with daisies coming out the exhaust pipe, environmentalists wouldn’t believe it—and Hummer enthusiasts wouldn’t buy it,” he said.
