Quote Of The Day: Maximum Eulogy Edition

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

Fritz was and is an outstanding executive, and I’m very sorry to see him go. You can argue there never is a good time for any of this, but in this case, the timing is particularly inopportune… He guided General Motors through perhaps the most difficult period in its history. I think all of us were surprised and the whole General Motors team I think is genuinely saddened over what transpired

GM Marketing boss “Maximum” Bob Lutz eulogizes his erstwhile boss at the Los Angeles Auto Show [via DetN]. Historians of the Lutzian oeuvre should note that this quote represents MaxBob’s attempt at exercising “enormous skill in the non-answering of [Fritz-related] questions.”

While I wish the timing was different, I don’t think it will set us back. You can dwell on what happened, but that’s not the way I was trained as a Marine. It’s a distraction, but we’ll have a lot to talk about. The public buys cars, they don’t buy management teams.

Though Lutz apparently spoke at length about the Volt and electrification and other matters of great interest [full speech here], these triflings don’t seem to have generated any real media interest. Life after Fritz was the topic du jour, underlining Lutz’s point about the whole timing thing. And don’t worry, we’ll find out what really happened… someday. “You will have to wait until I publish my next book,” Lutz teased the crowd. “Presumably when I retire, possibly several years from now.”

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • PeteMoran PeteMoran on Dec 02, 2009

    Errr... Is he challenging Whitarce's authority??? Maybe he'll be gone next week after those comments. The public buys cars, they don’t buy management teams. Really? That one is gold. The US public are the owners. I suspect they have a significant interest in the management team and couldn't give a crap about the cars, which of course, is the KEY problem.

  • Texlovera Texlovera on Dec 03, 2009

    Well, if we're going to have a pilot run GM, I nominate Sully. At least when he had to crash land his plane in the Hudson, everyone survived. And he's got a MUCH fasterr OODA loop: it only took him about 60 seconds to figure out his strategy; the current GM guys couldn't figure it out in 60 months...

  • Buzz Buzz on Dec 03, 2009

    The people who got GM into the mess won't be the ones to get them out!

  • Panzerfaust Panzerfaust on Dec 03, 2009
    "He guided GM through perhaps the most difficult period in its history." Some might say that the difficult period isn't over yet, and therein lies the trouble with the current pack of GM executive fellow travellers.
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