GM Losing One of Its Last Old-School Engine Guys

Just the Facts:

• Vice Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Tom Stephens, a 43-year GM veteran with perhaps the company's deepest engine-development chops, is retiring in April.
• Stephens' departure comes as rumors persist that GM management decided to cut back on upgrades for its next-gen V8.
• Stephens is one of the last top-tier GM executives who was with the company prior to its 2009 bankruptcy and restructuring.

DETROIT — General Motors announced over the weekend that Vice Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Tom Stephens will retire in April. But don't let his current banal title fool you: Stephens spent most of his time at GM engineering and hot-rodding engines and is one of the last of the remaining old-guard GM upper management qualified to lend "car-guy" support to Vice President and President of GM North America Mark Reuss.

Stephens is most closely associated with GM's powertrain operations, where he served as a vice president and later, group vice president for global powertrain from 2001-'08. Stephens' gradual move away from powertrain development came as GM itself systematically incorporated powertrain engineering into its larger global product-development practices.

In 1990, when GM Powertrain was formed by merging the Hydra-matic and Engine divisions, the unit was nearly as powerful as any of GM's carmaking divisions. But Powertrain's eventual absorption into the company's broad product-development processes, finalized with its joining of Global Product Operations in 2010, greatly reduced the influence of GM's engine-and transmission-engineering division and the individuals who shaped it.

Stephens probably is best known as one of the primary engineers for GM's Northstar V8, the company's first contemporary overhead-cam V8 when it was launched in 1992, but he also held high-level engineering positions with GM's truck group and, more recently, as a vice president for global quality.

The announcement of Stephens' retirement comes as talk in Detroit said GM upper management scuttled an investment in the company's next-generation small-block V8 and a fully developed "premium" V8 dubbed the UV8 remains on the shelf, perhaps never to be salvaged. The fifth-generation small-block will be upgraded with direct fuel injection, as GM confirmed late in 2010, but a high-tech valvetrain innovation long believed to be penned into the Gen V program reputedly was rejected as a bad investment as rigorous new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards take hold beginning in 2016 and engine downsizing is rampant in the industry.

If true, the move could signal GM plans for a future in which V8s will be offered only for pickup trucks and the Chevrolet Corvette, both of which have seen relatively drastic declines in demand in recent years. The company sold just 13,164 Corvettes in 2011. Although 2011 Corvette sales were up 4.3 percent compared with 2010, since the recession, the sports car has been enduring some of its worst sales years since the early 1960s.

Sales of full-size pickups such as the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra respectively were up 12.2 percent and 14.9 percent in 2011, but sales volumes in the pickup segment remain far off their historic highs and many analysts believe increasing CAFE and fuel-price pressures may mean full-size pickups never again reach their former sales glories, a possibility that may be shaping how GM is approaching its investment in the small-block V8.

Inside Line says: Right or wrong, another of those who for decades helped shape GM is moving on.