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Automotive Industry

Triple Lutz - Cunningham Automobile Company - Brief Article

Automotive Industries, Oct, 2000 by Lindsay Brooke

The industry's greatest "car guy" talks Exide's future, predicts the next hot niche in vehicles and reveals his latest car program.

Bob Lutz is in typical form the day I walk into the Exide Corp. offices in Ann Arbor, Mich. He's entertaining his staff with the story of a recent weekend motorcycle ride. As he explains it, one of his riding group had missed a tricky left turn and ended up in someone's front yard along the way.

"That's easy to do, even when you're careful," he says with a sly grin that hints he once may have exited there himself. "But let me show you one of my favorite driving routes."

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We move into his personal office, a room that my wife would describe as "a real guy's place." As I examine the scale-model cars (plenty of Vipers), model aircraft (including each of Lutz's own planes), artwork (a strong U.S. Marines theme), shelves packed with automotive history books (with Weber carburetors serving as bookends) and countless memorabilia from his four decades in the industry, Lutz unfolds a map of Switzerland and lays it on his desk.

"Now look at this," he says, pointing to a thin green line slicing through the middle of the Alps, near his Swiss home. Much of the route consists of jagged squiggles that resemble a seismic plot taken during earthquake season. One challenging drive, I offer.

"Billiard-table smooth. Fantastic," Lutz enthuses as he describes each corner in the road: "100-mph sweepers all through this section...second-gear hairpin here...a major drop-off here, if you're not alert."

It's unusual talk coming from the CEO of a Tier 1 supplier, but it's standard fare for Lutz. Simply spending a few hours with the man many consider to be the industry's greatest "car guy" reminds me how the auto business needs more executives like him, equipped with his rare combination of leadership, enthusiasm, product knowledge and savoir faire.

But there's only one Bob Lutz -- luckily for everyone, he might joke. And that's a competitive advantage for Exide, the giant batterymaker he's been running for the last two years. Since leaving Chrysler, he's had no chance to sit down. He completed his book Guts, took the Exide job and began tackling the company's gritty reorganization (see page 39). For relaxation, he racks up flight time in his second restored L-39 Aero Albatros jet warbird, often with wife Denise in the co-pilot's seat. At age 68, he's still as hard-charging and outspoken as ever. And he's preparing for the Detroit Auto Show debut of his next new-vehicle program -- the resurrection of the legendary Cunningham Car Co.

The "Cunningham project," as Lutz calls it, consumes just a small amount of his attention every day, but it's work that delights him. It puts him back on the OEM side of the car business. A long-time Cunningham devotee and owner (see p. 37), Lutz is the principal outside investor in the plan to build the only $200,000, American-built V-12 luxury sedan. And the dramatically-styled 2+2, featuring Saturn-like half-doors for back seat access, is being developed using what Lutz sees as the next business model for automaking -- the "virtual car company."

"Briggs Cunningham III, the son of the original company's founder, owns half the new company with his family, and I own half," Lutz explains. "We hired a small, outside design house, Stewart Reed in Macatawa, Mich., who did a 1/4-scale clay model and scanned it into digital CAD data. From that we're having a full-scale fiberglass concept car built for the Detroit show by Mark Gerisch of M&L Automotive Specialists in Two Rivers, Wis. The work of both Reed and Gerisch is absolutely outstanding," he reports.

After the global media coverage gleaned from the show, the two partners will take the concept to investors. Lutz is confident that it will require "a relatively modest outlay" to get the Cunningham Car Co. into business.

"This will be a gorgeous, world-class concept car good enough to have our investment banker start generating interest," he asserts confidently. From there, he indicates that $10 million to $15 million in start-up capital will fund the necessary prototypes, built by a specialist constructor such as Jack Roush in Livonia, Mich. Roush is designing the Cunningham's aluminum, dohc V-12 and building the non-running concept car's mockup engine.

To keep costs down on the actual production powerplant, Lutz says it will contain "as much stuff as possible from other peoples' parts bins." He hints that the manifest could include Cadillac Northstar reciprocating components, for example.

The Cunningham Car Co.'s initial planned annual volume is 100 cars, ramping up to no more than 1,000 cars per year if the project bears serious fruit. "We're exploring many avenues on sourcing," he explains. "There is nothing that you have to do by yourself to be an automaker anymore, except manage the brand. And make sure you select the right companies with whom you're associated."

That's the basic philosophy of the "virtual car company," the new business model Lutz believes will soon transform niche automaking. The virtual automaker purchases everything -- design and engineering, certification and crash testing, manufacturing, even distribution and warranty services. It's the trend Automotive Industries detailed in last month's cover story, "Start Your Own Car Company." And Lutz is convinced that it's going to happen.

Automotive Industry

Triple Lutz - Cunningham Automobile Company - Brief Article

Automotive Industries, Oct, 2000 by Lindsay Brooke

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