Word: lutz
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...hiring Lutz, Wagoner is making a bold bet: that GM solves its problems not just by exhorting the bean counters to keep cutting costs and endlessly haggling with the unions but also by taking big risks to create exciting, popular products that bring in new revenues. Wagoner and chairman John F. Smith Jr. have carefully laid the groundwork for the kind of product-driven revolution Lutz has in mind. But he has to move fast, for the clock is ticking on his three-year contract...
...Lutz, the quick development of the Solstice is a welcome signal that things at GM are not as bad as they seemed from the outside. But they are still pretty bad. "When I got here, I started asking people to describe the design process, and nobody could do it," he says. "I realized it was just plain dysfunctional." Cars were being designed once in the studio and then analyzed and reanalyzed by engineers and marketing experts and constantly redesigned to suit their needs along the way. "It's called paralysis by analysis," says Bryan Nesbitt, the designer who worked with...
...Power & Associates for customer satisfaction among light SUVs. The trouble is, not many customers can stop laughing long enough even to look inside an Aztek, whose boxy, butt-ugly design has inspired more jokes than any vehicle since the 1957 Ford Edsel. It's kind of what Lutz had in mind a year ago when he described GM's products, among others, as resembling "angry kitchen appliances...
While the Aztek was well engineered and efficient to produce, design was relegated to the backseat. "There wasn't anyone who would take responsibility or threaten to quit over his principles," says a GM design executive. Lutz, however, as friend and foe agree, is just that kind...
...wisecracking, Cuban-cigar-smoking, martini-drinking former Marine Corps fighter pilot, Lutz is passionate about beauty and speed. He not only loves sports cars but also flies his own Czech L39C jet fighter and sometimes commutes to work in his own helicopter. Born to Swiss parents in Zurich, Lutz has always moved back and forth between Europe and the U.S. He smashed his uncle's Ford coupe into a wall at age eight and walked away from a helicopter accident in 1991. He started at GM in 1960, cruised through BMW, lodged at Ford and then landed at Lee Iacocca...