GM’s Lutz Polishes His Opel

Here’s what we know: General Motors decided at the 11th hour to not sell Opel to Magna, a Canadian parts supplier, backed by a Russian bank. This enraged Germany and Russia, and Germany is now saying that in addition to GM having to pay back billions in bridge financing from earlier this year, it may now not receive the $6 billion in loans that the German government had committed to the Magna deal. However, the GM board seems happy that it’s keeping Opel. And now Bob Lutz, who came out of retirement this year to run GM marketing, has been put in charge of Opel until a new CEO can be found. (The old CEO stepped down immediately and looks as if he’s going to work for India’s Tata Motors, heading up new acquisitions Jaguar and Land Rover.)

What’s it all mean? Well, the new GM board, led by former AT&T (T) chief Ed Whitacre, never liked the Magna deal. So as soon as the EU began making noises about how the sale had been forced on GM, the board acted to kill it. The board was also reportedly unhappy when current GM CEO Fritz Henderson presented the Magna deal as GM’s only real option several months back. It remained unhappy. The question: Is Henderson, who once ran GM Europe, sufficiently at odds with the GM board that a Whitacre-Lutz axis is developing within the new company? After all, not long after Lutz came back to head up GM marketing, Whitacre appeared in a very Lee Iacocca-tinged TV spot for GM’s “May the Best Car Win” campaign.

If you read quasi-car-czar Steven Rattner’s post mortem account of the GM bailout and bankruptcy, it sounds as though Henderson was the quick choice for a CEO to succeed Rick Wagoner after Wagoner was fired. But Henderson insisted that he not be labeled an interim CEO. Has he crossed swords with Lutz? To a degree: Lutz wanted to convert a soon-to-be-discontinued Pontiac rear-wheel-drive platform into a revived Chevy Caprice, but Fritz shot the idea down. Then again, maybe Opel is supposed to keep Lutz busy so he doesn’t cause any more trouble in North America. Still, Lutz has become very high-profile again, suggesting that maybe retirement wasn’t every really what he had in mind.