Bob Lutz Breaks Down The Failure Of America's Auto Industry
Auto industry legend Bob Lutz may no longer be in the employ of the Big Three, but that hasn’t ever stopped “Maximum Bob” from giving his two cents on what the industry could do improve upon At the New York Auto Show, Lutz held court for a handful of journalists and expanded on what he felt were the key failures of the domestic manufacturers.
Lutz first fingered the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) regulations for helping to give import manufacturers an advantage. While American car makers had perfected the large, rear-drive V8 formula, CAFE forced them to switch to smaller engines and front drive platforms – precisely the kind of vehicles that the Japanese automakers had perfected. Lutz also blamed the typical villains, such as the press, the UAW and foreign exchange rates, but didn’t hesitate to chastise managers of the Big Three automakers, with Lutz deriding the “… Harvard Business School-type, profit-optimization thinking as opposed to customer excellence focus,” as a key culprit.
[Source: Automotive News]
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Thank you Bob! I hope your reading this. I wish your American size Cadillac Sixteen and hopes of selling the Chevrolet Caprice to the public could have happened! Its tragic how American cars stopped looking American, and European sedans are bigger than ours! I speak for all cars!