By Ted Biederman
Editor, MotorwayAmerica.com

(March 2, 2010) LOS ANGELES, Calif. --- Bob Lutz, GM vice chairman and senior product advisor showed up in L.A. sans tie, a limited entourage and a new sense of pride for the progress GM is making with product and results in California and the “smile states.”

He also brought along his penchant for bluntness and his sense of humor. Lutz, at 78 is still the best face forward for GM.

Lutz admits that sales penetration progress has been a challenge for GM and the other domestics in California and in many of the Southeastern states, but things are improving, if slowly. He also admits to being a “domestic” offender as he would only drive imports when he was an undergraduate and grad student at Cal (University of California at Berkley).

GM’s market share penetration nationally is pushing 20-percent, a far better number than the nine-plus percent in import crazy California. But nine-percent is a far better number for GM than the three-percent in the past decade and is up more than one share point since 2008.

It is no surprise that the growth in share is being powered by the success of GM’s compact crossovers such as the GMC Terrain, Chevrolet’s Equinox and the Cadillac SRX. Large cars are also making some inroads according to Lutz.

Without a doubt the marketplace in California has been unkind to GM brands for a long time and with reason; a lack of focus according to Lutz. He professed that too much time and energy had been directed to such items as shareholder equity, managed mediocrity to save money and everything else except building world class cars.

Today at GM the controller’s office is no longer in-charge and the mission statement has been boiled down to “design, build and sell great cars and trucks.” Bean counters be-damned!

Lutz says that many of the management and workers that fostered that mediocrity by doing the minimum to stay under the radar and that “good enough” was enough have been retired or bought out, leaving an enthusiastic and driven force that demand the best and want to build world class vehicles. “(The) good news at long last (we’ve moved) from good enough to best in class,” says Lutz.

Proving that to style conscious California car buyers is still a work in progress.

Focus groups held here start the same; a room full of cars painted the same silver color and totally without badges and other brand identifying items. GM vehicles have been pretty good a winning in that competitive setting. But Lutz says the winning margins have to be large enough to overcome the negatives when the group sees the vehicles again, the second time branded.

The aesthetic judgment changes when the cars are identified and GM branded cars go from wow to woe. Some of that has been changing; in the last three or four years the drop has narrowed.

In a recent clinic for a future Cadillac product, most likely the XTS, shown in January at the Detroit Auto Show, the car not only won the unbranded portion but when branded the car not only won and the margin actually grew. A remarkable first considering the history.

Lutz ran through a line-up of future product without revealing anything we didn’t know about: The new Cruze C-segment to be built in Lordstown, Ohio will have one model that will achieve 40 mpg highway; the B-segment Spark is now U.S. ready, but GM has modest expectations for the car; the Aveo RS, contrary to popular belief was designed and engineered at GM and not at the company’s Daewoo subsidiary, filling the sub-compact slot; and the new European developed Buick Regal GS should put the “old lady” thing about Buick to rest; and the new Chevy Caprice Police cruiser will be a long wheel base rear drive developed by Holden in Australia based on what the former Pontiac termed the G8 – a great car that will finally find a home in the U.S.

About diesels: according to Lutz you shouldn’t hold your breath. Too costly, no market, no reason seems to sum up his feelings about the technology. He thinks it is a nice halo thing for the premium brand Europeans, but in the short and long term it doesn’t make sense for the U.S. market. In the time it would take to bring a diesel to these shores, the work on a Stratified Charged high compression internal combustion engine could be complete. Fuel economy could be competitive with diesels, he notes.

Lastly Lutz made mention of the edgy Chevy ads with Howie Long, liking the sharp competitive nature of the “May the Best Car Win” TV spots. Although Lutz has moved on from his marketing role with GM he got his back up a bit when questioned about the upcoming change from Campbell-Ewald (Chevy’s long time ad agency) and the biting Long ads to Publicis’ (a new Chevy agency) upcoming commercials that show a softer, family oriented Chevrolet.

Lutz was sure that if GM boss Ed Whitacre thought them “wishy-washy” that a change would be made – “quickly.”

At that Lutz picked up his bag and headed home to Detroit, although we think he would have preferred to head back to his daughter’s house in Hollywood to wait out the coming of spring and the prospect of warmer weather in middle-America.

The bacon and eggs were okay.