Is It Hot In Here (Or Is It Just Bob Lutz)?

Can management get too book-smart for its own good? Bob Lutz asserts it has done just that in a new book that offers comforting validation -- or is it I-coulda-told-ya-so despair -- to anyone who thinks that the suits upstairs don't know their tail fins from their elbows.

"Blue-collar types like me have known this "forever," "Randy" posts this morning after having read Rana Foroohar's "Driven Off the Road by M.B.A.s" in Time. "Lacking college degrees of any type, however, relegates us to the status of worm. To hell with corporate America. Oh, wait: That's where they took us, now isn't it?"

Writes Foroohar: "In his new book, Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business, has a message worth hearing," "To get the U.S. economy growing again, Lutz says, we need to fire the M.B.A.s and let engineers run the show."

Lutz, of course, held senior leadership positions at GM, Ford, Chrysler, and BMW during "an unparalleled" 47-year career, his bio tells us, and most recently he was vice chairman of General Motors (2001 to 2010). Actually, in re: that last mission, GM "lured" him out of retirement "with a mandate to save the company by making great cars again." He proceeded to launch a war, we're informed, "against the penny-pinching number-crunchers who ran the company by the bottom line, and reinstated a focus on creativity, design, and cars and trucks that would satisfy GM customers."

advertisement

advertisement

All those corporate titles aside, Lutz really is, as Aaron Robinson writes in a piece posted this morning to Car & Driver, "a doyen, a sachem -- nay, a Caesar -- of the auto industry." In fact, responding to a woman who had asked, "who is that?" after observing the tall and tanned Lutz having his picture taken on a New York street, Robinson says he resorted to shorthand and replied, "Captain America."

In his own mind, certainly, but also in those of countless reporters who could always count on colorful copy from the unfettered mouth of Lutz. Here's Devin Leonard's lede in Bloomberg Businessweek:

"It's been said that Bob Lutz -- Detroit shaman, veteran of General Motors' "Mad Men" era, and inveterate ham -- often attracted as much attention as his cars. The former fighter pilot wore expensive English suits, gnawed on cigars, and once dismissed global warming as 'a total crock of s--t.' While president of Chrysler, he unveiled the first Jeep Grand Cherokee, in 1992, by driving it through a plate glass window. Five years later he modestly shared the secrets of his success in Guts: 8 Laws of Business from One of the Most Innovative Business Leaders of Our Time.

How can you not love a guy like that?

Confesses Alex Taylor III, senior editor-at-large at Fortune in a "full disclosure" statement: "I have known Lutz for more than 20 years, interviewed him frequently, and once shadowed him on the job for two days. Despite his abundant personal charm and skill at dispensing inside-the-industry gossip, I have steadfastly resisted, often successfully, becoming a member of Lutz's journalistic claque."

Now don't go to work thinking that it's just M.B.A.'s who catch Lutz' ire. There's lots of blame to spread around, writes Len Boselovic in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "Mr. Lutz also faults politicians for not gradually raising the gasoline tax so that Americans pay comparable to what Europeans pay for gas." And then there are those costly labor agreements, thank you very much union guys and gals. "And he faults global warming advocates, policymakers and the anti-business media who wrongly fixated on large SUVs for undermining a profitable market that U.S. carmakers dominated."

GM's Hummer H2? "A perfectly good vehicle that consumed no more fuel than a ... Lamborghini Murcielago two-seater" but became "the detested symbol of a 'let them eat cake' insouciance displayed by the moneyed upper middle class."

But wait! Hold on to that egalitarian thought for a moment as we double back to the sidewalk where Lutz was having his picture took in Robinson's Car & Driver piece. Captain America and the scribe were both, in fact, on their way to the première of a documentary called "Revenge of the Electric Car" at the Tribeca Film Festival. In said film, Lutz "appears to reverse completely his earlier antipathy toward global warmers and become, by all appearances, GM's lone champion of alternative vehicles." That would be, of course, the Chevy Volt.

In fact, Robinson suggests an apt alternative title: "Revenge of Maximum Bob, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lithium-Ion Battery." Check out the piece for Robinson's entertaining conclusion. Spoiler alert: It contains the phrase "snow job."

Next story loading loading..