Quote Of The Day: Maximum Retirement Edition

With news of Bob Lutz’s planned May 1 retirement leaking to the web, the auto journalism world is falling all over itself to get his reaction. When the Chicago Tribune caught up with the man of Maximum, they asked him to describe his work at GM and compare himself to (get this) either King Midas or Jesus Christ. You know, for the purposes of journalistic inquiry. Lutz’s reply avoided the self-flattering comparisons, and revealed some of the dynamics that led him to retire:

It’s gotten a little scary. Everything has been so good since I got here [at GM] that I’ve been thinking there really is no place to go but down because not all of my ideas will succeed. No one bats 1.000. It’s been so nice that it’s been a bit disconcerting. I try to establish a climate of irreverence as well as fun. I want to talk, but I want to listen. I want people to disagree and talk me out of things, too. But I’ve gotten no resistance from anyone to anything I want to do here.

My role here is to modify a system to ensure sustainable success that doesn’t depend on my presence and continues to operate after my departure,”

The idea that Lutz is leaving in part because nobody challenges his decision-making is a fascinating insight into the inner workings of GM. Especially considering that he clearly had some misgivings about killing Pontiac. When asked by Automotive News [sub] about his role in GM’s brandicide and whether he thought killing Pontiac was a mistake, he replied:

No. While I loved Pontiac, I think Pontiac was on the cusp of finding an identity, which is the identity of a moderate, priced-high performance brand focusing primarily on rear-wheel-drive vehicles. We were on the cusp of really getting that going, and a new demographic was starting to buy the G8, real performance car fans. So to me, it was genuinely unfortunate that we had to drop it.”

We knew we had to drop four brands. Two were easy: Saab and Hummer. Saturn was a little more difficult, but we were still able to do it because it really never made any money. And, Pontiac was No. 4. I think a number of us felt a deep attachment to the Pontiac brand, and I still do. I have Solstices that I intend to keep forever.

Even yesterday walking the show — and maybe it was because many of the design concepts were so depressing — that I really thought: ‘How much longer do I want to keep doing the same thing?’