Car Guys vs. Bean Counters

A big name at Ford, Chrysler, and GM, Bob Lutz tells his story during the 2008 crisis while leading GM. They say his opinions are polarizing, but it’s entertaining. Let’s see.

I have to say it was very interesting. Lutz has a strong personality and seldom takes blame, but he knows his job and has an excellent big-picture view. When he joined General Motors, he found heavy bureaucracy, lots of power in the hands of business managers, and a pile of internal KPIs and parameters that ensured cars met internal standards but were dull and boring for customers. So they did not buy them.

Lutz then explains GM’s decline driven by the Japanese competitors (in his view because they were already prepared with lower-emission big SUVs, so the press targeted GM and piled on), and how he restored order by giving more room to design, streamlining procedures, and getting out of the tangle of meetings and internal metrics that made for a perfectly oiled mechanism producing mediocre cars.

There is also the 2008 bankruptcy, which allowed them to try again (he assigns little blame, pointing mainly to excessive debt), and the story of the various subsidiaries (Opel, Saab, Cadillac, Corvette, etc.), with many experiments attempted. The Chevrolet Volt is his pride and joy, car of the year.

Takeaways: ignore internal KPIs; focus on what the customer wants. Not the little numbers; you need to invest and take risks. In mediocrity you will never move forward.

I disliked his attacks on environmental concerns and on Japanese cars; take responsibility at times.