• USA Today, Detroit Free Press, Forbes, Marketing Daily, Thursday, December 3, 2009 10:54 AM

Most news stories this morning are playing up the fact that it may take a year or so for Ed Whitacre and the General Motors board to find a replacement for the fired Fritz Henderson, as Sharon Silke Carty reports in USA Today. Whitacre said so himself.

It's also clear that the new leader will come from outside the company. Vice chairman Bob Lutz said so, opining that the board would be looking for "the world's best businessman with a deep automotive background, huge credibility, fast on his feet, charismatic personality, able to convince investors that they should invest in the stock," as Tim Higgins reports in the Free Press.

Actually, the man who can save General Motors is sitting right under their noses, Jerry Flint writes in Forbes. He's got all of the qualities above and more. But they'll probably never pick him. "He is too outspoken, he's too colorful (an ex-Marine pilot who still races cars around the track at top seed and flies a fighter jet and a helicopter) and most of all, he's too old." In fact, he's Bob Lutz.

But as we learned from Karl Greenberg's reporting in this morning's Marketing Daily, that's not a universal sentiment. Auto marketing consultant Todd Turner, for one, says that Lutz doesn't "have the gimlet eye for product" that some give him credit for .

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