This week's edition of Bob Lutz's GM Fastlane blog is a tribute to Dave Hill, who'll retire from GM on January 1 after 41 years, only the third chief engineer the Corvette's ever had.
Forget the fact that you care or don't care about sports cars. Forget the fact that the Corvette created a new standard of sexual energy for millions of mid-century males. The thing that struck me about the post was Lutz's graceful ackowledgement of someone heretofore only visible to the gearhead subculture.
The Dave Hill's of the world are major figures to minor populations. They are "niche stars." While several million Americans could readily identify the Corvette's chief engineer, many multiples of that number could not. But that didn't mean we didn't appreciate what Hill had created; we just didn't know that it was he who'd done it.
Bob Lutz righted that slight today, in a nice gesture to someone for whom he obviously held genuine affection.
Good for him.
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