Here’s an odd PR move making the blog rounds today: Bob Lutz, the General Motors Vice Chairman who’s driving the charge to build the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid, was recently quoted in D Magazine calling global warming a “crock of s**t.”

Popular Science Why do you have such a passion for design?

Bob Lutz The exterior is the first contact a potential buyer has with a car. If a person falls in love with the exterior, they'll go to a dealership, look at the interior, inquire about pricing—they're already on their way to buying it. Twenty or 30 years ago, people would say, "It's not very good looking, but the engineering is great and the quality is good." But now everything is great. Everything handles wonderfully. Everything has great brakes.

Bob Lutz never minces dreams. The 70-year-old ex-BMW, ex-Chrysler, ex-Ford executive and ex-U.S. Marine Corps aviator joined General Motors last September with a no-nonsense, ambitious agenda. His immediate task as the automaker's vice chairman and product czar: to snap the world's largest vehicle manufacturer out of its longstanding, self-inflicted catatonia.