Dinner in a hay barn doesn't sound exclusive - but when Bob Lutz holds court it's the best ticket in town. Andrew Hamilton was there
IT was undoubtedly the best dinner party during the Detroit auto show and the most exclusive - we dined in a hay barn.
It happened somewhere in rural Michigan, not far from Ann Arbor and about an hour's ride from Motown.
The dinner for a small group of European journalists attending the show was hosted by Bob and Denise Lutz.
Bob Lutz, for the uninitiated, is a big voice at troubled General Motors these days: his actual title is vice chairman, product development.
He is a former president and chief operating officer of Chrysler and previously worked at BMW and Ford. He was boss of Ford of Europe. He has a commanding presence, being six foot something and at 74, after a lifetime in the motor industry on both sides of the world, he is showing no signs of retiring.
"Some of my parts are not moving so well, those cars over there are probably in better working order," he jokes, pointing to a clutch of vintage models in the hay barn.
One in particular is a favourite, a Cadillac La Salle which he remembers having his first drive in as a small infant.
It was the parents' car, acquired in 1934. "It's straight eight with bags of low-end torque. All of the big American engines then were like that. This is the car that triggered my interest in automobiles."
It's the cleanest, smartest hay barn most of us have ever been in but Bob assures us all that it's very much "working" and not just for effect.
The stacked hay that surrounds the dinner tables is for the horses. Denise is a keen horsewoman although she also shares his passion for vintage and classic cars.
Her daughter, she tells us, has just graduated in equestrian law. We tell her she could be kept busy in Ireland.
The dinner party talk is racy, what with conversation about the juicy scandal at a certain major German manufacturer and just what it's like driving the world's fastest car, the Bugatti Veyron. (Bob wants to know from a certain German journalist).
He makes an interesting eco point about when we were leaving real horse power behind at the turn of the 20th century.
"Did you know that the car was seen then as environmentally right?
"The cities were coming down with vast amounts of horse shit in the streets. There was a health threat."
Somehow the talk comes around to his interview in the current issue of Playboy magazine which actually describes him as "a visionary car guy with an eye on performance and pizzazz."
Denise says her ageing mother wants to read the article but Bob thinks it would be more prudent if the article was extrapolated from the magazine, considering that there's a cartoon of a satisfied naked couple on the facing page with a very explicit caption underneath.
GM's troubled state was, of course, on the dinner agenda. Health care and looking after all those retirees is costing $10 billion a year. GM has to look after three retirees for every active worker.
What about Chapter 11 which in the US has a company or corporation protected from its creditors?
"Chapter 11 isn't going to happen. We are getting ourselves in better shape with global products, a global power train. What if we do become number two after Toyota?
"It's better being a resurgent number two than a sick number one, even though I don't think we are sick. The general press isn't helping here."
After dinner drinks are in a garage cum workshop where Bob lights up an enormous cigar and starts up his Cunningham which makes an enormous racket.
Around the walls are lots of memorabilia about cars and aircraft which is another of the Lutz passions.
THERE are about 25 old cars in his collection at the farm including a 1952 Aston Martin DB2 Vantage, a 1934 Riley aluminium bodied sports car built to compete at Le Mans and, more bizarrely, a Steyr-Pinzgauer Swiss military vehicle which naturally has four-wheel-drive competence.
It's time to go and we are driven off into the dark Michigan night, making the one hour trip back to Detroit.
When they have to visit Motown or anywhere in Michigan, Bob and Denise can get there a lot quicker because both are helicopter pilots with their own choppers.
They really are a high flying couple!
Read Bob Lutz's weblog at fastlane.gmblogs.com