Word: detroiter
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...breed entirely. Rolled out to great acclaim at the Detroit Auto Show last week, this luxury sportmobile may not exactly be elegant. But not since I drove the limited production BMW Z8 roadster last summer have I been behind the wheel of a car that prompted so many oohs and ahs, and not a few Wows - including one from yours truly when I punched it on the FDR drive just minutes later...
...finished more like a European car than an American one (read: the dashboard and door liners actually fit together without those yawning gaps). The wood on the top of the steering wheel is...wood. There aren't the bewildering array of buttons and switches that the Japanese taught Detroit to love. But there are some very useful, innovative touches, like the jog dial stereo volume knob on the steering wheel. The biggest problem I had: it took several days to figure out how to set the clock. At one point I pressed the "OnStar" button that offers a wireless link...
...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's Chrysler in 1986. Lutz has become legendary in Detroit for his fearlessness, whether he's flying or driving fast or giving executives around him the straight talk. That's one reason he never became CEO of Ford or Chrysler--and why in 1999, despite his crucial role there, he was eased out by chairman Robert Eaton, who seemed nervous about...
Still, as with any great movie or music executive, Lutz's greatest asset is an uncanny sense of what makes a hit. He compares Detroit to Hollywood, arguing that in both cities, cost controls and clever marketing--while obviously important--will avail you little if you don't make popular products. And like many successful entertainment execs, he holds that focus groups will take you only so far: there's always an element of gut, and of risk. Lutz used his gut to propel a struggling Chrysler to greatness in the 1990s with a series of cars and trucks that...
That's why Wagoner decided to hire Lutz. The two had never talked much until last May, when they found themselves seated together at a Harvard Business School function in Detroit. The GM CEO started grilling the former Chrysler vice chairman on "how to make cars people want to buy." Not too many days later, Wagoner asked if he could drop by Lutz's office for a 6 a.m. breakfast. (Lutz, not a morning person, nearly balked.) "I asked him how I could find a 50-year-old Bob Lutz," recalls Wagoner. "And it took about 13 seconds...