'Sad day in Detroit' as GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz to retire

— -- The last of the larger-than-life auto industry executives plans to retire at the end of this year.

Robert "Bob" Lutz, 76, will leave his job as General Motors' top product development executive April 1 but stay on as a special consultant until the end of 2009.

Gravel-voiced Lutz started at GM in 1963, then moved to BMW in 1971. He has worked at every Detroit automaker and overseen products ranging from Chrysler's Dodge Viper V-10 supercar to GM's Chevrolet Volt battery-power sedan due next year. He will be replaced by Thomas Stephens, 60, GM's executive vice president of global powertrain and quality.

Stephens will take Lutz's title as vice chairman and chief of global product development. Lutz remains vice chairman and becomes "senior adviser."

"A sad day in Detroit. This industry will be different without Bob Lutz," Michael Robinet of auto consultant CSM Worldwide told the Associated Press.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner hired Lutz in 2001 to jazz up GM's products. Lutz said in an interview shortly afterward that giving GM's designers and engineers looser rein was "like tapping into a wellspring of talent, a gusher."

Though his sheet-metal accomplishments are many — Pontiac's stylish Solstice two-seater and Chevy's award-winning Malibu, for example — Lutz is perhaps better known for his shoot-from-the-lip style. Sometimes politically incorrect, he likens attractive cars to beautiful women, saying buyers won't bother discovering a vehicle's personality if the car isn't sexy enough to attract them in the first place.

When French automaker Renault paid $5.4 billion for 38.6% of nearly bankrupt Nissan Motor in 1999, Lutz said Renault would do better to dump the money into the ocean. After Nissan's then-new CEO, Carlos Ghosn, pushed the company to remarkable profits quickly, Lutz conceded he underestimated Ghosn.

He has been quoted saying that "global warming is a crock," yet has vigorously promoted the Chevy Volt, which GM says will go 40 miles on batteries before requiring its gasoline engine. Gasoline engines emit carbon dioxide, a gas vilified by activists worried about climate change.