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GM’s Bob Lutz Is Faster than Bloggers By Matthew DeBord

A zany little sideshow has been building in carland over the past month and a half. Back in early September, General Motors’ un-retired marketing boss, Bob Lutz, challenged all comers in an unmodified, production sedan to take on a Cadillac CTS-V, driven by him. It was all part of GM’s “May the Best Car Win” campaign. According to some contacts I spoke with at GM, Jalopnik—Gawker Media’s car blog and an outfit I worked for for a while back in 2008—immediately took up the gauntlet. More than a hundred applications later, Lutz and his Caddy wound up today at a track in New York, running timed laps against five finalists.

It’s worth noting that Lutz is 77 years old. This fact wasn’t lost on the GM or Cadillac representatives I spoke with, who stressed that Lutz, at one time a competitive racer (well, 30 years ago), knew what he was doing and had put in some practice, but wasn’t expecting to turn the fastest lap. Overall, concern about putting a man who’s been the voice of the company for years and who’s arguably its most important executive (sorry, Fritz Henderson) behind the wheel of a 550-plus horsepower car to go as fast as possible in a racing venue seemed present but muted.

Concern among makers of luxury sedans wasn’t so muted. Jalopnik initially wanted to borrow a car from Mercedes, but it backed out, as did Jaguar later. You really can’t blame them—this was a great, Lutzian PR stunt, so even if, say, Jaguar had fronted a car, they still would have been putting themselves up against a silver-haired fox pushing 80. No winning that contest. This is the thing about Lutz: he does old better than anyone. He does old so well that it should be closely studied by the young.