GM's Bob Lutz to retire

DETROIT (AP) - Bob Lutz, the longtime auto industry executive who led nearly a complete overhaul of General Motors' lineup, will retire May 1.

Lutz, 78, confirmed his retirement in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

"My work is done here," Lutz wrote from a restaurant in Geneva at the Geneva Motor Show. "The whole organization, top to bottom, now has absolute product superiority as the highest objective which enables all others. So, I can retire in peace."

Lutz, GM's vice chairman and a former U.S. Marine aviator who once crashed his personal helicopter at a Michigan airport, has been responsible for overhauling design at GM and has held senior positions at three other automakers. He has called the Chevrolet Volt, the gas-electric sedan that can go up to 40 miles on battery-power alone, his proudest achievement.

Lutz is also credited with leading crosstown rival Chrysler Group LLC to great success in the 1990s and spent time at Ford Motor Co. and Germany's BMW AG.

"Nobody had better call this 'early retirement'!" Lutz told The AP.

Lutz said recent vehicle successes at GM, including the Buick LaCrosse, Cadillac SRX, GMC Terrain, Chevrolet Equinox and Chevrolet Camaro, played heavily into his decision to retire. GM Chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre praised Lutz's influence on the automaker.

"I, along with many other men and women in GM and throughout the industry, have greatly benefited from his passion, wisdom and guidance," Whitacre said in a statement.

Lutz began his career at GM in 1963 holding sales and marketing positions. In the following decades he worked at Ford, BMW and the former Chrysler Corp. Through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he held senior positions at Chrysler, leading all of its automotive activities including sales, marketing, product development and manufacturing.

During his time at Chrysler, the automaker came out with the new, more aggressive Ram pickup truck, which vaulted Chrysler to a larger market share. At GM, Lutz pushed the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac CTS, two top sellers and symbols of the next generation of GM products. He also upgraded GM's vehicle interiors, making them more competitive with Japanese models.

Lutz was named vice chairman of GM last December, assigned to advise Whitacre on design and global product development.

Over the years he acquired a reputation for candor and flamboyance. Long a fan of high-horsepower V-8 muscle cars, he was in charge in 2008 when GM rolled out the Corvette ZR1, which has a supercharged 638-horsepower V-8 engine, a top speed of 205 miles per hour and can go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.4 seconds.

"Bob had an uncanny ability to champion an idea or a concept through the organization," said Michael Robinet, an automotive analyst with CSM Worldwide in Michigan. "While at GM, he was able to globalize the company and make it think like one GM ... Over at Chrysler, he was able, with a clean sheet of paper, to reinvent the company from a product perspective. He was the ultimate car guy," Robinet said.

His candor sometimes backfired. Despite his support of the Volt, he once criticized Washington's "global-climate-change mania." He worried it would be coupled with "perhaps ill-conceived ways to curb fuel use." Lutz once called global warming a crock, setting off a firestorm of criticism.

Lutz first announced in February last year that he would retire at the end of 2009. He was persuaded to stay on after then-CEO Fritz Henderson asked him to lead the automaker's marketing efforts as it emerged from bankruptcy protection.

Henderson was ousted in December by GM's board of directors, and Whitacre took over as both chairman and CEO.