Bob Lutz Leaving GM by Year’s End
From DETROIT FREE PRESS -
Famed auto executive Bob Lutz, General Motors Corp. vice chairman of global product development, will retire at the end of 2009, the automaker announced this morning.
Lutz, 76, will transition into a new role effective April 1 as vice chairman and senior adviser, providing strategic input into the automaker’s global design and key product initiatives until his retirement.
Tom Stephens, currently executive vice president of global powertrain and global quality, will become vice chairman of global product development effective April 1.
Lutz is credited with breathing new life into GM’s vehicle design, championing such projects as the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac CTS. He also has been big behind GM’s Chevrolet Volt, an electric-drive vehicle that’s slated to hit the market late next year.
Lutz joined GM in 2001. He had already made a name for himself at Chrysler Corp., where he worked from 1986 to 1998, reaching the role of vice chairman. He also had served as president and chief operating officer responsible for Chrysler’s car and truck operations. He also spent 12 years at Ford Motor Co.
“Bob Lutz was already a legendary automotive product guy when he rejoined GM in 2001 and he’s added to that by leading the creation of a string of award-winning vehicles for GM during his time here,” Rick Wagoner, company chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
He’s enraged environmentalists with his public comments, saying as recent as last year that global warming a “total crock of” (expletive).
“My thoughts on what has or hasn’t been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors,” Lutz later wrote on GM’s FastLane blog last February in defense of himself.
“The point is not why and how did we get where we are, it’s what are we going to do to get where we’re going. And I think that many of the people who’ve been spewing their virtual vitriol in my direction in the past week are guilty of taking the easy way out.”
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