Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz [11]
At this time in the design, Pete Estes had retired and, as I recall, Irv Rybicki did not fight this decision or direction from the engineering community. Wayne Kady, who was the chief exterior designer for Cadillac, thought it was a terrible decision. I think if Pete Estes and/or Bill Mitchell had been there, things might have turned out different because the proportions did not look right. In all fairness, at the time, the feeling was that we should err on the side that “smaller” is better. Additionally, we were somewhat a victim of that first downsizing of our cars in the late ’70s. While the Sales and Marketing guys were all concerned about the downsizing at the time, it was somewhat a nonevent, and GM gained share in the late ’70s.
• The other major disaster was on the new TFWD personal luxury cars (i.e., Eldorado, Seville, Toronado, and Riviera). The various (LFWD) that we produced from 1979 to 1985 basically required two shifts and maximum overtime for the six years they were produced. We printed money with these cars, and the divisions fought about allocations of production volume for six years! With the new downsized TFWD versions, we could hardly keep one shift going. Again, a major drop in market share and profits.
Everyone had concerns that we had gone too far in downsizing these cars, and even though the divisions raised concerns, Jim McDonald said we were going forward. He did allow the program to be delayed one year in order to fit the Cadillac V8 in the Eldorado/Seville, which required widening all of them by three inches. Of course, as you know, we ended up redoing those three years after they came out to make them bigger and more stylish/better proportions, but it was almost too late.
One interesting point about this program: Design had actually proposed the Eldorado and Seville could share more panels. We had money for all specific panels, but Design felt that we could share deck lids, hoods, and front fenders on the two cars. I can’t recall how much of this was driven by Irv, but given the challenges to come up with a dramatic design for the Seville, I can’t imagine Mitchell supporting this. Irv was definitely more finance-oriented than the previous design leaders, but whether this in the end was the best overall business approach could be debated.
Look-alike cars haunted us during the 1980s and caused a question about GM’s product design leadership that, I am sure, hurt us somewhat in market share but not anywhere near the magnitude that the quality issues did—mainly because our interiors were still pretty good compared to the competition at that time.
America’s car buyers, blessed with better fuel economy, were disappointed with smaller cars and smaller engines, and even more disappointed by the constant trips to the dealerships to fix everything that went wrong. But what of Japanese and German competition? Surely they suffered too? Not at all—for decades, they had produced vehicles for the world markets, most or all with fuel prices at multiples of that in the United States, so their cars were already small, light, mostly front-wheel drive and four-cylinder. The antithesis of what the uniquely blessed American public wanted.What a gigantic gift to the imports: Detroit’s own federal government was forcing the Big Three to be more like the imports, and fast! The Japanese and German companies, to comply with CAFE legislation, had to do exactly . . . nothing! No reengineering! No retooling! Just sanctimonious press releases (eagerly snapped up by a liberal anti–U.S. corporation media) emphasizing that superior Japanese wisdom and innate frugality plus marvelous technology