DETROIT - Bob Lutz, the General Motors Co. product development leader who postponed retirement last year to help steer the automaker out of bankruptcy, plans to call it quits May 1, Automotive News reported.

Lutz, 78, has been a vice chairman and senior adviser to CEO Ed Whitacre since December, after a plan for Lutz to lead GM's revival through marketing unraveled within six months.

“There is something that gets old about getting up at 4:30 in the morning," Lutz said today in Switzerland after the Geneva auto show. "At some point you have to do something new."

He has also been an outspoken executive who both challenged global warming and advocated GM's Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid. He is credited with revitalizing GM's products after being hired by former CEO Rick Wagoner in 2001. Lutz guided the creation of such well-received vehicles as the current Chevrolet Malibu sedan and Equinox crossover, GMC Terrain crossover and Buick Lacrosse sedan.

GM announced Lutz's departure today, a day after the company again shook up the sales and marketing staff in its home market.

On Feb. 9, 2009, Lutz said he would step down as vice chairman of global product development and serve the remainder of the year as senior adviser to Wagoner before retiring. Those plans were scuttled when Wagoner's successor, Fritz Henderson, said he was “unretiring Mr. Lutz” and put him in charge of marketing, advertising and communications.

Lutz vowed to tackle GM's nagging image problems. The automaker had improved product quality and design, but many shoppers, particularly on the East and West coasts, still consider GM cars stodgy.

“I have always been a vocal critic of much of the [advertising] that we do,” Lutz said after being picked for the post. “Maybe one of the reasons I got the job was ‘OK, you don't like it, you fix it.' ”

When the GM board ousted Henderson on Dec. 1 and added the interim CEO title to board Chairman Whitacre, Lutz lost a trusted ally. Within days, Whitacre took away marketing, leaving Lutz vice chairman and adviser on design and global product development -- but without operational duties.

In an interview today, Lutz said he has been a “minister without portfolio for generalized advice of counsel.”

“I was kind of the last in the all-new management team," he said. "I think I served a role in creating the connectivity to what had been done in the past, what was decided in the past and why things were decided the way they were, why we did the things we did.”

Retaining oversight of design and product “was all good,” he said.

In late February, Whitacre named Steve Girsky, a former investment banker and Wall Street analyst, as special adviser and vice chairman in charge of corporate strategy. The move raised more questions about the tenure and role of Lutz.

Lutz's evaporating clout was further highlighted yesterday when one of his loyalists, Bryan Nesbitt, was shifted back to GM's design staff. Lutz had promoted him in August to be general manager of Cadillac.

Lutz also had been a senior executive at Chrysler Corp., Ford Motor Co. and BMW AG.

Lutz, a cigar-smoking former fighter pilot and collector of military jets, had been a backer of high-horsepower performance cars throughout his career and oversaw the development of the Dodge Viper sports car during his stint at Chrysler.

But at GM, he demonstrated his versatility by overseeing the plug-in Volt, scheduled to roll out this year. The Volt became a cornerstone of GM's effort to reinvent itself and show it could compete on hybrid technology.

In 2006, Lutz assembled a team of engineers and designers to develop the concept version of the Volt that the automaker showed off at the 2007 Detroit auto show.

The goal, Lutz and others involved in the project have said, was to create an environmentally friendly "halo" car that would challenge the prestige of the market-leading Prius hybrid from Toyota Motor Corp.