Saint Robertus Maximus

While the media wags (myself included) certainly spend their fair share of time worshiping at the altar of Maximum Bob, even to the point of ignoring and even celebrating the largest financial loss in the history of American automobilia, what is far less known is how strongly the rank and file engineering staff at GM feel about the whole Lutz mystique. I get to spend a decent amount of time kibbitzing with those very guys and one sentiment keeps ringing clear: why did it take Saint Robert to make the current GM product renaissance happen? Pre-Lutz, these guys didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing the right thing for GM, and the blame in all cases is falling squarely in the laps of the middle management tier that now reports directly in to Lutz. It shouldn’t take a larger than life personality to make a decent car, but from Henry Ford on through Lee Iacocca, that’s what it seems to require. Middle management over in Warren should wise up–Maximum Bob isn’t going to last forever, and someone will need to take his place. The way I hear it, a lot of the people who put the parts into production would be willing to do without Jim Queen and the rest of the "it would never happen without Bob" crew.