Writing a profile of Bob Lutz, any funny anecdotes to add?

I got the raw infor from Wikipedia. But I like the stories where he is pushing a car too radical for Detroit, Here's what I got so far, i thought Michigan engineers might have an an anecdote to add before I post this on a website.

PEOPLE Bob Lutz, auto exec
Being Swiss American, I always looked for examples of Swiss who accomplished something. I was always a car guy so became a fan of Bob Lutz who I once met at Pebble Beach when he and Tom Gale were judging the best classics. He asked if I could speak Schweitzerdeutsch and I couldn't so it was a short conversation.
He was born February 12, 1932) in Switzerland to an upper middle class family, his father being a banker.

He eventually became a Captain of industry at each of the Big Three having been in succession executive vice president (and board member) of Ford Motor Company, president and then vice chairman (and board member) of Chrysler Corporation, and vice chairman of General Motors.

Lutz left Switzerland at the age of seven and spent time in Scarsdale, New York,a posh suburb. He became a U.S. citizen in 1943, but returned to Switzerland in 1947 to attend school in Lausanne.

Ironically, Lutz went to UC Berkeley , a school identified with anti-war politics but joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve's 4th Marine Aircraft Wing to become a fighter pilot.

Wikipedia says he also was a vacuum cleaner salesman in Walnut Creek, California.

After leaving the Marines, Lutz spent eight years with GM in Europe before joining BMW serving as executive vice president of sales at BMW for three years. Always interested in cars on a driver level, it is said he had a lot to do with the development of the BMW 3 Series as well as their Motorsport division. He also worked at Ford Europe and had a lot to do with the Escort.

Then it was to Detroit where he became head of Chrysler Corporation's Global Product Development, including the very successful Dodge Viper and LH series cars. It is ionic that everyone assumed he'd be the next President of Chrysler but Former Chrysler chairman and CEO Lee Iacocca, who helped bail out Chrysler after arranging receiving loans from private banks backed by the U.S. Government in 1979, said he should have picked Lutz as his successor rather than Bob Eaton at the end of 1992. Lutz and Iacocca were both car guys but opposing each other throughout.


Eaton was responsible for the sale of Chrysler to Daimler-Benz in 1998 which Daimler ended up backing out of in 2007 when it sold Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management. Wikipedia, in referring to the job performance of Eaton, says that Iacocca claimed that Lutz "would eat him for lunch".

In 2008, he was one of the first Big Three executives to say "the electrification of the automobile is inevitable".


He retired from GM ,saying that one reason for his decision was the increasing regulatory climate in Washington that would force GM to produce what Federal regulators wanted, rather than what customers wanted.

Lutz back over a decade ago expressed skepticism on the issue of global warming but may since have changed.

He also was involved in a couple of concept cars produced privately but none of them reached production. .

In late-2017 Lutz wrote an article for Automotive News predicting upheaval within the car manufacturing industry, anticipating large-scale fleet ownership, removal of dealerships and an eventual ban on human driving of vehicles for transport.

His car collection in Michigan includes at least one Chrysler Windsor drop-top, maybe that's a prewar, and then a president’s car, then a LaSalle open car , a hot dog ’55 Chrysler 300 and 11 motorcycles. includes an Autokraft Cobra (which he drove while at Chrysler),two Vipers, one a roadster with VIN 002 and the other the 99th of 100 special GTS-R coupes—and a Chrysler V8-powered Monteverdi, a short lived Swiss luxury car. Plus two European off road cars--a Steyr Daimler Puch and a Pinzgauer. He has a couple homes in Europe in Montserrat and Switzerland. He has a Cadillac XLR in the Swiss garages, a red Hummer H3 and a Pontiac Solstice on Montserrat.

And then there's the airplanes. He started with helicopters but somehow bought two German Alpha fighter trainers, two seaters that will fly up to 50,000 ft, and do 500 mph. He's infamous for once landing one wheels up. That's my favorite picture of him--as a jet jockey, not just a bizjet but a fighter plane.
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