Bob Lutz Myth #11: Lutz Hates Car Design Clinics
Ed’s Ph.D. thesis. He told a different story. While Lutz is most famous for the Viper, his most profitable successes while at Chrysler were the far more practical, far less flashy minivans and Jeep Grand Cherokee. These vehicles were based on extensive research. Even with Lutz heavily involved, the Viper was the exception, not the rule. (See Ed’s Myth where Lutz claimed to get equally excited about both sorts of products.)
When Lutz took charge of GM’s new product development in 2001 I was still in touch with people inside GM’s design analysis and market research groups. They were fearful that Lutz would cut them way back or even shut them down entirely, based on his popular reputation. I told them they had nothing to worry about as long as GM got the actual Lutz and not the one that occupied the popular imagination. Lutz was against the mechanical use of market research and other data, but firmly believed in clinics as a tool to inform decision-makers’ judgment.
Which brings us to Car Guys. Before rejoining GM as a senior executive, Lutz had assumed that poorly conducted research must be to blame for the unattractive styling of many GM cars. But this wasn’t what he actually found. As he recounts, “To my surprise, I found GM’s research methodology to be excellent, much like that used to great success by Chrysler, and in some ways even superior.” The actual problem: “a general disdain for consumer input.” GM executives were disregarding clinic scores that were mediocre at best, and that were often awful. Vehicles like the Aztek were approved despite failing in clinics because revisions would require missing critical time and costs targets. The Vehicle Line Executives (VLEs) chose a probable future failure in the marketplace over a certain immediate failure to achieve their goals.
Lutz put an end to these practices. Designers’ passions and creativity are essential to creating beautiful cars, and Lutz did what he could to free them. But he also required that every design win its clinic by “a substantial margin” to get approved. Designs with merely decent (or worse) scores were revised, even if this or that gut suggested that the clinic results were wrong, and even if this made the project late and over budget. As is often the case, there isn’t a correct choice between “right brain” guts and “left brain” clinic scores. Successful cars follow from the proper combination of the two.
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"Just doing the Viper" was the least risky of any "we just did it" exercise. I'm not impressed. It was just Chrysler's Corvette; no imagination needed, really. For such a low volume car, there's always a market with the expendable-money crowd if it's fast and nice looking, at least in the first few years. till the reputation catches up with it. The Aztek was much more of a risk, as it was intended to price and sell like a mainstream model. GM was too full of executive ass-kissers to halt a bad idea, or bad design. Even when the Azteks were in production, I thought it was nice to see an attempt at it, and not just another rounded, bar of soap, Japan-imitator.
I've been reading since fargo. I rarely comment. But this whole lutz thing just stinks. A big check clear from his book or something?