A different side of the story: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/bob-lutz-myth-11-lutz-hates-car-design-clinics/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/0

A different side of the story: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/bob-lutz-myth-11-lutz-hates-car-design-clinics/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/bob-lutz-myth-11-lu... Bob Lutz is known for bragging about the Viper being designed "from the gut", but Michael Karesh points out that Lutz's most successful projects at Chrysler were based on both intuition-based design and extensive market research. In the case of the 2004 Cadillac SRX, the designers successfully argued that poor clinic results could be ignored because the general public couldn’t tell what they wanted in the future, that they lacked “reach.” As we now know, the first-generation SRX flopped. When the 2004 Grand Prix tested worse than the old design, the VLE reacted by telling the senior executive board that he wanted to take a baseball bat to the research group. Apparently the board bought this “argument,” as they approved the design despite the clinic results. The market then vindicated the clinic. Lutz put an end to these practices. Designers’ passions and creativity are essential to creating beautiful cars, and Lutz did what he could to free them. But he also required that every design win its clinic by “a substantial margin” to get approved. Designs with merely decent (or worse) scores were revised, even if this or that gut suggested that the clinic results were wrong, and even if this made the project late and over budget. As is often the case, there isn’t a correct choice between “right brain” guts and “left brain” clinic scores. Successful cars follow from the proper combination of the two.