Some in the auto industry call Lutz "the last of the real car guys," praising his keen instinct for knowing what car designs actually "work."
What's it like, though, to walk the show floor like a real "car guy"—someone who lives and breathes cars full-time, someone who's so powerful he decides which new models you'll see on turntables next year?
MSN Autos did just that, striding through an auto show with Bob Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors Corp. Some in the auto industry call him "the last of the real car guys," a man whose nearly 40 years in the car business have polished an already keen automotive instinct for what car designs "work" and where improvements need to be made. A veteran of BMW, Ford and Chrysler as well as GM, Lutz is credited with helping to bring memorable cars such as the Plymouth Prowler and Dodge Viper to market.
Come with us, as we learn what he sees at an auto show.
Studied Observation
Lutz is an ex-Marine, owner of a fighter jet or two and capable of making split-second decisions. But at an auto show, he takes a measured view of new models and doesn't rush, at least verbally, to judgment.
At a display of the Nissan Fairlady Z—the Japanese version of the upcoming Nissan 350Z—Lutz stood in silence and watched the silver sport coupe make a few slow twirls on the turntable. "This is the first time I've seen it in silver and on a nice turntable and everything," he said. "I find myself rather liking it despite some really strange, some strange lines to it. But overall, it has a lot of visual interest."
Still, Lutz seemed to struggle with something. What, exactly, could be so distracting about this eye candy of a car? Something the uninitiated to car design might not even notice—the slope of the roofline. "I think maybe this is the view [of the 350Z] that takes the most getting used to, with that very severe hump right at the top of the driver's door and then the sort of long, flat roofline," Lutz finally said.
There was something else, something that consumers might notice only when they decide to open the car door. But Lutz saw it already—door handles that are vertical, sizable, protruding and stylized with three small dimples.
Lutz called the handles "unmotivated."
"They are strange and unmotivated and should either not be there, or the idea of having a handle that you grab this way is fine, but why not just flush it in and have an indentation on the quarter panel to where you reach under it?" Lutz wondered. "That just looks totally unmotivated. It's something that's going to add drag and bulk. Why would you do something like that on a sports car where you want to minimize the aerodynamic resistance? . . . Another thing I don't like about it, which is really silly, are the three little dimples on the door handles."
Okay . . . but this is supposed to be the modern rendition of the famous Nissan Z car. Does it look like it to Lutz? Again, there's a pause and finally, "No, I don't really see Z car."
"It is a bit Audi TT-esque," Lutz said. "But very interesting. It has interesting surfaces. It certainly doesn't look like anything else on the road."
Different Design Paradigm for Trucks
A sport coupe like the Z car automatically attracts a car guy like Lutz who loves to drive, and drive fast. But what does he think about some of today's SUVs and trucks? Are they well-designed?
Lutz was stopped at a display of a Nissan Xterra. The brutish SUV was painted bright yellow. Bluntly, Lutz said it wasn't "pretty." But he still found the design had "integrity."
"I don't think it's pretty, but it's this question of radiating the right character, saying what you want the vehicle to say about its personality," he said. "It may have a lot of unconventional shapes, but what it's saying is, 'I'm tough, I'm rugged, I'm capable of doing a lot of different things.' I think the design in that sense, has a lot of integrity. There's nothing weird-looking about it. It all hangs together."
Lutz also found favor with the use of exposed bolts on the fenders of Nissan's Frontier pickup. "This is another element where intrinsically it's not pretty to have external fasteners on plastic cladding, and yet I think on certain trucks to have the visual pronouncement that these parts can be taken off and easily replaced is a good message to send," he said. "I happen to really like that look. I even like the way this was cut away for the fuel filler door. It's an interesting piece of design—unconventional, very tough look, not bad at all."
Modern Interiors
Lutz reacts instinctively to interiors, too. He's both intrigued by and a bit wary of the growing appearance of metal and metal-look accents inside vehicles.
Lutz stood and observed Lincoln's Continental concept car for a good while, for example, and pondered the bright-white leather interior accented by brushed silver-colored accents.
"It's going to be interesting to see whether the public follows us on stuff like that because my worry, when I look at things like that—the hard brushed metal seatbacks and the valences on the sides of the seats and the stuff in the door—is that it all looks very technical and machine-like and therefore radiates a certain amount of coldness," he said. "What we have to ask ourselves is, 'Does the 50- to 60-year-old luxury buyer really aspire to something that looks clinical and cold?' For instance, that white leather combined with that brushed steel results in, to me, a somewhat clinical look, almost as if it was a dentist's office or something."
The Continental concept features four doors that don't have the usual pillar between them. These butterfly or pillar-less doors—commonly called suicide doors—have appeared on more concept vehicles in recent years, including the Mazda RX-8 and the Honda Model X SUV.
Lutz said these doors clearly offer advantages, giving people more room to climb inside and get out of a vehicle. "The pillar-less thing is uncontroversial; if you can get people to believe that it's safe, then I think they'll buy it because entry and egress is so much better," he said. "I think getting rid of the pillar is always a winner."
But Lutz also offered insight into why these doors have remained on concepts only, so far. "The thing is, everybody is somewhat afraid to be the first one to do it. . . . It's the product liability issue, and [so] everybody overlaps [the doors] to where you can't open the rear door until the front door is open—and the question is, on a regular, four-door sedan, would you want to do that? The answer is no, so everybody keeps sticking with the B-pillar."
Insider Info
Lutz was interested in seeing the Chrysler Crossfire up close. The automaker had announced a few months earlier that the car would go into production and the production version was on display at the show for the first time.
As a Chrysler executive from 1986 to 1998, Lutz knew more than what had been in the press about this car. He revealed that the Crossfire originally was called the Icon and was penned by Bryan Nesbitt, a designer who crafted the Chrysler PT Cruiser and was hired away from Chrysler by GM.
The Icon "was going to be a much bigger car and it was going to pay homage to the [art deco theme of the] Chrysler Building," Lutz said. "The project was abandoned because the concept car got way too expensive and Chrysler was starting to feel the [financial] pain, so they dialed it way back and made the Crossfire out of it. But it still shows this sort of art deco-inspired-by-Chrysler-Building [sense] and that's what these lines [on the hood] are about, and also the backlight. It's sort of that streamlining lines thing that's typical art deco."
Okay, so consumers would never guess that Crossfire's history sounds like that of a movie script that's penned, then put on the shelf, then dusted off and redone before finally making it to movie theatres. Bottom line, though: What does Lutz think of this made-over vehicle?
"It's a nice car, I'm kind of favorably impressed," he said. "What I like about it compared to the [original] concept car is the upper has gotten a little easier to take. It's not as high or as stiff-looking and it's become a little more conventional, the grille has become more conventional. They just detuned it a little bit to where it'll be much easier for people to accept. This car is very nicely proportioned. This has this pent-up energy. It has a nice, long hood, a fast windshield, and then has that sort of chunky, hunched back end that makes it look like a . . . cat that's ready to pounce. Nicely executed."
Lutz and Consumers
Despite the praise and admiration that Lutz receives from colleagues at GM and elsewhere these days—one visitor at the auto show approached him to declare Lutz "a hero of the American auto industry" —Lutz admitted he's not the sole arbiter of consumer automotive taste.
Discussing the pros and cons of the bright-white-and-metal interior of the Lincoln Continental concept, for example, he noted, "I'm always very careful not to make judgments on stuff like this because I do realize I am 70 years old (he actually was 69 on the day of the auto show walk-through) and I may be stuck in more traditional tastes. [So] this is one where you would do focus groups or a product clinic with potential buyers in this category—you know, Mercedes owners, Lexus owners and so forth—and you just try it and see what happens."
He also seemed cognizant of the gap between his age and that of younger buyers. For example, he said he liked the look of the Mazda MX Sport Tourer concept vehicle at the auto show. "This would probably appeal to a younger audience, for sure, . . .although it would appeal to me, too," he said, adding that he was "69 and 9/10" years old that day.
The sweptback MX Sport Tourer hatchback "is an interesting design, very interesting," he said. "There are parts of it I just love. It's very fast-looking. It's a very bold design. It could have been a Pontiac. You could easily imagine a Pontiac grille in this thing . . . I think the side is extremely well-executed. It looks like the body had to be stretched over the chassis. The whole thing looks very lean and muscular. I saw this in Tokyo (at the auto show there) and I liked it there and I like it here as a crossover vehicle. It looks good from almost any angle. [But] it has a sort of a spooky flat top look to it."
Auto Show Truisms
Lutz also explained other auto show mysteries, among them color. The MX Sport Tourer was a bright orange. "It's a popular show color because it's very dramatic, but it's almost impossible to do in production," Lutz said. "Silver always works well in shows and for photography. Black looks very dramatic, but we generally don't like to do it because it shows up very poorly in photographs."
Lutz toured the show floor, stopping now and then to inspect fit and finish of body panels on vehicles, size of the gaps between body panels and even the edges of hoods to see if the hoods were symmetric and evenly aligned. He praised the interior door trim on a Volkswagen Passat, saying it wasn't particularly fancy but exuded a sense of quality.
"People don't go around the way I do and look at that, but it's just an overriding, visual impression of quality," he said. "People don't realize why one car looks high quality and another car looks like a piece of junk. But people do, somehow, soak it up, even without going all through the detailed analysis. That's why I say you're better off doing less [inside a car] but doing it with absolute quality and precision, rather than throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the car and making it all out of cheap materials and lousy plastics and carpet that looks like rat's fuzz and everything. You're better off doing less and doing it right."
There you have it, rat fuzz and all. Now see if you don't feel, just a bit, like a real, opinionated car guy the next time you visit an auto show.
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