The Kneeslider

Doers Builders and Positive People

GM’s Bob Lutz is really a biker!

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Bob LutzBob Lutz, General Motors Vice Chairman, gave a talk about the future of the automobile to the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany while attending the Frankfurt Auto Show. He went to great lengths to explain how a multitude of high tech electronics would be added to cars in the future, controlling much of what the cars do, slowing the car down when it senses other cars slowing, using transponders and sensors of all types. Cars would prevent drivers from doing anything dangerous, or at least that's the idea behind it all.

Toward the end of his lengthy talk, Lutz finally added:

"This type of technology, unheard of 10 or 15 years ago, is real. And it’s coming. It’s just another step toward the fully automated driving experience. Which is anathema to those of us who are driver’s drivers… who are suckers for the thrill of controlling a speed machine.

But that’s why people like us will always have motorcycles!"

Bob Lutz, a biker. Whoda thunk?

Comments

  1. Bravo!!! hear,hear,hear… No one could have said it better. Aside from the power of controlling the machine, I may say that we, bikers are adventure and thrill-seeking people. We don’t only thrive from the control power we have, we also blossom because of the satisfaction it gives us to be able to unleashing it.

  2. Bill Mitchell, the man that inherited the GM Design Chief mantel from Harley Earl in the 1970’s, was a motorcyclist whose hobby was designing and building custom bikes. He did some amazing bike concepts in an era when factory bike styling was mostly collecting a frame, an engine, a tank & some fenders. He favored fairing’ed, boat-tailed sporty Japanese four cylinders, but also did custom Harleys and BMWs.

    PS – Lutz rides a Suzuki, right?

  4. Bob Lutz was part of the Eller Industries motocycle endeavor…I think the Kneeslider confirmed this awhile ago.

    Eller Industries had/has an intense portfolio of prototypes:

    -“Chief” – fresh looking while simultaneously recalling hints of the original

    -power/sport cruiser

    -short-wheelbased, twin sportbike with the engine mounted longitudinally but with chain-drive.

    I’ve read that Bimoto wanted to build a bike with a Guzzi motor with chain final drive; not sure what happened to that project.

    (see http://www.motorcycle.com/mo/mcmail/bears/swallow.html).

    That would have been something! …all that low-end torque in a light-weight, superb handling package

    -I think Eller had a 4th prototype, too. I’m not sure if one of those website graveyard sites can pull up the Eller website….but they had sketches on the their now defunct website.

    Eller was striving for the Indian brand name — had they won the name, they probably would be business and we would have 3 American motorcycle companies….

    c’mon Victory, build a cafe bike with that torquey 100″ motor

  5. not sure if anyone else couldn’t reach the Guzzi article on Motorcycle.com….but if you couldn’t reach it, try a Google search of “guzzi chain drive” & you will see the article entitiled, “Swallower Guzzis and the Supermonster”

  6. Lutz rides a Harley? What’s he drive – an F-150?

    Suzuki is part of GM’s extended family. You can actually click straight through from http://www.gm.com to Suzuki motorcycles.

  7. for the swallower there is a cool site at http://www.guzzi.daytona-it.com/ hit the “swallower” button on the left side.

    for doug… if you wanted a big inch cafe, see yamaha’s mt-01. if yamaha doesn’t think it will sell on these shores, polaris may not take that gamble. if victory really wants to destroy buell they could (and will, i suspect) use ktm’s v twin. not quite “all american”, but the v-rod has more of the U.K. and germany in it than some will admit.

  8. thanks, Aaron. I forgot about the Victory/KTM relationship, but still dig the new Victory motor.

    I think Yamaha missed on the execution of a great idea with their MT-01. The bike is “weigh” too heavy and phyiscal size too large.

    I read they shoe-horned the engine into a R1 chassis during development. The final result should have been somewhere in between the R1 experiment and what is now called the MT-01.