The cars of Bob Lutz

Born in Switzerland in 1932, he has been a fighter pilot, a vacuum cleaner salesman and a senior executive at all of the Big Three of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, as well as BMW.

Here we take a look at the extraordinary career of “Maximum Bob” through some of the many cars he has been involved with, arranged in chronological order, followed by one he wishes he had been:

Although he became an American citizen in childhood, Lutz’s first important automotive post was in Germany, where he worked for Opel, which at the time was GM’s primary European brand. He has described Opel as “basically building boring cars for boring people” at the time, and met resistance within the company for creating a relatively sporty version of the Kadett.

Making a case for the GT, which resembled the third-generation Chevrolet Corvette, was hard work too, but Opel was eventually persuaded to convert what had originally been a styling exercise into a production vehicle.

Lutz does not take credit for the look of the Rekord D, but he does claim to have more or less goaded designer Chuck Jordan (1927-2010) into making it appear the way it did. Lutz essentially gave a lecture on the difference between European and American design, and says that although Jordan did not appreciate being told how to do his job, he did take on board some of the comments.

With the Rekord, according to Lutz, Jordan said he was determined to “out-Giugiaro Giugiaro”. Commenting on the result many years later, Lutz said, “That car was near perfect – it was a fantastic execution.”

By the time the Opel Rekord went on sale, Lutz had moved on to BMW, which he says paid him far more money than GM was prepared to. He arrived too late to influence the design of the first 5 Series, but tells a story about why this was the first BMW with the ‘single-digit-plus-Series’ naming system.

It was suggested to him by a sales manager, who “wasn’t a very imaginative or creative guy” but whose idea struck him as being a big improvement over what BMW had been using before. He shared it with his fellow executives, and BMW has used it ever since.

The turbocharged, high-performance model in the 02 range was developed at a time when, Lutz says, “performance was glorified; no autobahn speed was considered excessive”. It was introduced right at the start of a global oil crisis, when the emphasis suddenly moved to fuel economy, rendering the fast but thirsty 2002 Turbo pointless. “BMW took large amounts of heat, and my boss effectively threw me under the bus.”

Despite that comment, Lutz has also said he “never quite” got fired from any car company, though “I admit to leaving two steps ahead of the sheriff a few times”.

Lutz claims that when he saw a full-scale model of what was intended to be BMW’s first 3 Series, “it was a box”. He reports bringing in Paul Bracq to make it look better, and creating a design department with the help of a former colleague at Opel.

Although he was by now making a lot of money, Lutz says he was uncomfortable with the working culture at BMW, and left to join Ford.

Lutz arrived at Ford after the development of the Fiesta, its first front-wheel drive car, which was followed up by the third-generation Escort. He hoped that the replacement for the larger Cortina and Taunus, eventually named Sierra, would also have front-wheel drive, and was disappointed that Ford said it could not afford to follow General Motors and Volkswagen along this path.

He explains that the missed opportunity to make gains in top speed and fuel economy was balanced by the Sierra’s aerodynamic body, which he noticed attracted very different responses in different countries. “The Germans saw it as a modern-day reincarnation of aerodynamic cars of the late 1930s and embraced it immediately. The British looked at it and said, ‘What the hell is this?’”

The XR4Ti was an Americanised version of the Sierra XR4i, with a turbocharged 2.3-liter Lima four-cylinder engine rather than the original 2.8-liter Cologne V6. Lutz, still in Europe at the time, thought it would be a good rival to other sporty European family cars sold in the US.

Sales were disappointing, though, and both the XR4Ti and the Merkur brand were history by the end of the decade.

The TC by Maserati was based on the front-wheel drive K platform which has been credited with keeping Chrysler in business during the 1980s. While most of the many vehicles derived from it helped the corporation financially, this one definitely didn’t.

“It failed,” says Lutz, who had recently moved to Chrysler from Ford, “and when we finally added up what the misadventure cost us, it was close to $600 million.”

When it was suggested to Lutz that his career was based on ‘emotional’ cars, he responded that he was “highly instrumental” in the resoundingly practical second-generation Chrysler minivan range, which included the Chrysler Town & Country (pictured), Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager. “At its heyday we were doing over 500,000 of those things each year and they were ringing the cash registers like mad.

“I get just as excited about stuff like that as I do about a Corvette ZR1 . . . in fact, maybe more so.”

Although many other people were obviously involved, Lutz is generally credited as the father of the Viper, and says he made a speech within Chrysler “dozens of times” that the company should show it could make a car like this as well as far more conventional vehicles. “Canceling everything that’s fun in order to bring the next minivan out on time isn’t always the right answer.”

Although Lutz left Chrysler long before the Viper was discontinued in 2017, he knew why it happened. “The original premise was ‘more power and speed than anyone else’. But the Viper was, in recent years, trumped by the Corvette ZR1 and Z06 and even in its own family by the Hellcat.”

At Chrysler, Lutz led what he describes as a ‘gang of six’ like-minded executives which also included designer Tom Gale and engineer François Castaing (1945-2023), who would meet for lunch every day and share ideas that would usually go on to be approved by CEO Bob Eaton.

Among other things, their collaborations included the development of the LH platform, used until 2004 in cars such as the Chrysler Concorde (pictured), Dodge Intrepid and Eagle Premier. Unlike the K platform cars, their engines were mounted longitudinally ahead of the front axle, allowing Chrysler to create the roomy, ‘cab forward’ look which became a distinctive feature of the brands.

Lutz was the central figure in one of the most dramatic entrances ever made to an international motor show. With city mayor Coleman Young (1918-1997) sitting alongside, he drove the new Grand Cherokee up the steps of Detroit’s Cobo Hall and through a plate glass window.

The whole thing had, of course, been well planned in advance. The window wasn’t the original one (which was refitted afterwards) but one designed to shatter into tiny fragments rather than large shards. But it drew attention to the Grand Cherokee more effectively – and more cheaply – than almost any other stunt could have done.

The second-generation Ram had an aggressive look quite unlike that of its predecessor. According to Lutz, “we got it right” with “bold, different, controversial love-it-or-hate-it design” and impressive power, torque and payload figures, even though he reports that Chrysler was advised to abandon the full-size pickup sector entirely in the face of apparently overwhelming competition from Ford and GM.

The new model was so successful that the same formula has been used for three decades. Today’s Ram trucks (the Dodge name was dropped when Ram became a separate division in 2010) visibly have the same ethos as the one Lutz was so closely involved with.

The trend for retro designs was already underway when the PT Cruiser was launched (the Volkswagen 'New' Beetle had been launched in late 1997), but Lutz’s enthusiasm for it was rare within Chrysler.

Although he had an executive role, and could therefore influence what the company did to some extent, “it was all I could do” to push through the idea, which was “roundly hated internally”.

Lutz continued pushing for retro models when he returned to General Motors after more than 30 years working for other companies. The SSR was a retractable hardtop convertible pickup truck (because who wouldn’t want one of those?) based on the same platform normally used for GM SUVs but made to resemble the Chevrolet Advance Design pickups sold from the late 1940s to the mid 1950s.

“Of course it has to be done right,” Lutz said during the development stages. Apparently, in this case, it wasn’t. Sales were poor, and the SSR was abandoned after the 2006 model year, but that wouldn’t stop Lutz trying again.

The XUV was a curious derivative of the Envoy SUV with a retractable roof. Lutz’s main involvement was trying to kill it, and he wrote later that he “made many attempts” to do so. “I knew it would flop, looking, from the rear, like some towering wedding cake. But marketing and product planning believe it would be a sensational winner.”

Neither sensational or a winner, the XUV was soon dropped for the simple reason that not enough people wanted to buy it.

Asked which car he had been involved with that he would most like to re-do, Lutz nominated the fifth-generation Pontiac GTO, the only car of that name produced in the 21st century. A rebadged, Australian-built Holden Monaro, it was described by Lutz as “a front-engine, high-powered, small-block, rear-wheel-drive car with IRS [independent rear suspension] and superb handling, but for many, a styling letdown. With more time and investment, we could've made it closer to the '60s GTOs in character.”

Lutz has also revealed that a later GTO (a four-door coupé based on the G8 sedan) reached the full-size clay model stage, but got no further due to the closure of Pontiac in 2010.

The joke that BLS stood for Bob Lutz Special wasn’t entirely accurate, but as GM’s head of product development he was certainly involved. The car was extremely unusual among Cadillacs, being basically a reworked Saab 9-3 built in Sweden (and powered, in the case of the diesel, by a Fiat engine) and became the first and last Cadillac never sold in North America. Around 7000 examples of this rather mediocre car were made before it was axed in 2009 when GM was on the verge of implosion.

In yet another attempt to give the world a retro model, Lutz pushed forward the HHR against similar opposition from GM as he had experienced at Chrysler with the PT Cruiser. The two cars looked similar, which could partly be because Bryan Nesbitt (born 1969) was involved with both, though Lutz has said that Nesbitt was brought in to develop the design of an existing concept.

Though not a great success, the HHR at least lasted longer than the earlier SSR, remaining in production until 2011.

The Solstice concept which Lutz drove into the 2002 Detroit Show led to a production model launched in the 2006 model year. In his own words, the ethos behind the little roadster was, “Keep it simple, pure and beautiful.”

Based on GM’s Kappa platform, the Solstice was a close relative of the Saturn Sky, Opel GT and Daewoo G2X. Vauxhall’s VX Lightning was part of the same family, but it did not get past the concept stage.

The first-generation Acadia SUV was, like the contemporary Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Traverse, based on a new platform called Lambda. Lutz has said that early in the development process he was shown a straight-sided design which he was told maximised the interior space and allowed for sliding doors. “Guys, that’s not what it’s about,” Lutz recalls saying, and he asked for changes.

Those changes were made, and Lutz was very pleased with them. “I think the Acadia, Enclave and Traverse are, from a body-surfacing standpoint, some of the best work done by the American industry,” he said in 2011.

The second-generation CTS saloon was introduced in the 2008 model year, and joined soon afterwards by an estate version. Lutz was “highly enthusiastic” about this, and says the media was too. In fact, “Everybody loved it but the customers.”

There was also an estate derivative of the 6.2-liter V8 CTS-V. “I was sure there were enough people out there in the United States that would buy a sporty Cadillac wagon. I guess there wasn’t.”

Anyone involved in creating cars is bound to be asked at some point which one they are most proud of. For Lutz, it’s the Chevrolet Volt, GM’s electric car with the range-extender petrol engine sold both under its own name and, in Europe, as the Vauxhall/Opel Ampera.

He describes the Volt as “the most significant, and the hardest to do, the one that required the most invention and was the greatest challenge to the team executing it. The team pulled it off, and I thought that was pretty spectacular.”

The seventh-generation Corvette wasn’t the car it was originally supposed to be. Lutz says he saw a mid-engined proposal as early as 2003, and there were definite plans to use this layout for the C7. Unfortunately, development would have cost close to $1 billion, and GM’s finances were on the way down. “Instead, it got the nominal sum of $250 million and ‘do the best you can’. There’s no way we were going to get a production-volume mid-engine car for $250 million.”

A mid-engined Corvette did eventually come about, of course, but that was in the 2020 model year, nearly a decade after Lutz had left GM.

While it’s beyond imagining that Lutz would ever have worked for Toyota, he has spoken highly of the Japanese company’s manufacturing process, and regards its first-generation Prius hybrid of 1997 as the rival vehicle he most wishes he could have been involved with. “It made Toyota look like the world’s technology leader, the company that cared.”

GM, he claims, “had several promising hybrid proposals that could have beaten the Prius to market”, but they were abandoned because “the financials were negative”. He has also said that “the general fawning over Toyota and the Prius angered me to the point of creating the Volt”.