(FORTUNE Magazine) – The highest praise in the auto industry is reserved for those deemed to be "car guys." They are believed to understand instinctively what customers want and to be able to translate that often inarticulate desire into sheet metal and chrome. Car guys can judge a design by sweeping their hands over it, spot an engineering flaw at 50 paces, and quietly analyze the ride and handling while sliding through an S-curve at 60 mph. When the old Chrysler Corp. was churning out innovative designs in the 1990s, it was reputed to be full of car guys. General Motors, on the other hand, which relies on focus groups and customer surveys to drive its product development, is said to be car-guy-challenged.

By many accounts, the industry's preeminent car guy today is a German engineer named Wolfgang Reitzle, 51, who has spent most of his career at BMW and now runs Ford's luxury-car group. It is said of Reitzle that he can spend half an hour explaining his philosophy of door openers--the shape of the handle, the pressure of the pull, the working of the hinge. Former Chrysler vice chairman Robert Lutz, a preeminent car guy of the 1990s because of his connection to such vehicles as the Dodge Viper and PT Cruiser, says of Reitzle, "I've almost viewed him as a younger version of myself." Lutz adds, "Wolfgang is so passionate about cars and so tied in to the car culture that he is able to anticipate trends before they emerge."

Reitzle's personal style--impatient, energetic, imperial--also sets him apart. That style, which served him so well at BMW, may get him into trouble at Ford. Instead of concentrating on a single, highly focused brand, Reitzle has to oversee the six makes of cars from three countries that together form Ford's Premier Automotive Group: Lincoln and Mercury in the U.S.; Jaguar, Land Rover, and Aston Martin in England; and Volvo in Sweden. Ford CEO Jac Nasser wants Reitzle to use Ford's resources to boost sales of each line and double their collective profit margins--without eroding the qualities that allow them to be marketed as luxury cars. That is a delicate tradeoff between mass and class that has so far eluded most of the world's automakers.

In recent weeks Reitzle's profit-boosting challenge has taken on greater importance as Ford has grappled with questions about the safety of its vehicles and the recall of tread-shedding Firestone tires. The issue touched Reitzle's group for the first time in late September, when the tires on some 58,000 Lincoln Navigator sport-utility vehicles were recalled by their manufacturer. Meanwhile, safety investigators are beginning to question the basic engineering underlying the Ford Explorer, which could possibly devastate future sales.

As if turbocharging the performance of six different car lines weren't challenge enough, Reitzle has decided to manage the task in a radical new way. Rather than assemble armies of strategists, auditors, and engineers, he is attempting to oversee the production and sales of more than one million vehicles a year with a cadre of 20 people--count 'em, 20--including secretaries. Reitzle believes that new technology will enable him to manage the business by pushing more responsibility down into the individual vehicle units. "With the Internet, we can operate without a huge bureaucracy raising questions and writing papers," he says. "Each brand will be responsible for operating its business and its brand development. Others talk about being nimble; we really have to be nimble."

To demonstrate his conviction, Reitzle has billeted his staff in a 220-year-old townhouse in London on ultra-fashionable Berkeley Square, a short walk from Buckingham Palace. The building was actually selected by Nasser during a weekend visit and renovated to Reitzle's specifications. The new building is highly functional--the centerpiece is a war room with videoconference facilities--but, as Reitzle delights in pointing out, 20 people is all it can hold. There is no space for expansion.

Reitzle believes that the posh London setting will help him establish a new aura of luxury for his disparate lines. "It is up to the individual brands to focus and sharpen their market identity," says marketing executive Victor Doolan, who worked with Reitzle at BMW before joining him at the Premier Automotive Group. "But you do need a few people at the center to help them do that and ensure there is no overlap." A few weeks ago Reitzle hosted an open house at the new headquarters for dozens of guests and then conveyed them to the London Philharmonic in Volvos, Jaguars, and Land Rovers for a special PAG-sponsored concert celebrating the return of Kurt Masur, a friend of Reitzle's, as principal conductor. Afterward the guests decamped to the millennium Ferris wheel on the banks of the Thames, where they were served a champagne supper as they viewed the city lights from 400 feet in the air. Try doing that in Detroit.

In looks, energy, and ambition, Reitzle appears to have been bred for the role of an international auto executive. Slightly under six feet tall, he sweeps his hair straight back and affects a pencil moustache. Natty to the point of foppishness, he wears custom-made Italian suits with high arm holes and rope shoulders. His bespoke shirts feature a cuff of his own design that is folded back and secured with two buttons rather than cuff links. Besides the de rigueur collection of exotic cars, Reitzle is also a collector of classic watches.

In fact, Reitzle may be the most enthusiastic consumer of European luxury items at Ford since Henry Ford II was alive, and that could lead to friction with his Michigan colleagues over business decisions. "Wolfgang dresses a notch above where Detroit executives do, and the company hasn't faced up to that yet," says a Ford insider. "For him luxury represents a pinnacle brand, so he looks at a Town Car and asks, 'Why didn't you build it right?' In Detroit thinking, you put a little gingerbread on a Lincoln and sell it for 20% more than a Ford."

That won't be the only sticking point. What Reitzle is trying to accomplish remains as much an art as a science. Boosting the profitability of luxury models by substituting common parts wherever the customer can't see or feel them is an idea that has been around for decades, but it is devilishly difficult to execute. How do you convince consumers, for instance, that Jaguar's S-type sedan is worth $13,000 more than a Lincoln LS, even though analysts say one-third of its parts are the same as the Lincoln's?

Besides having to learn the individual personalities of each car line, Reitzle has to fight the natural tendency to make them look and feel like the ultimate driving machines that he worked on at BMW for 23 years. Says Jonathan Browning, Jaguar's managing director: "I'm sure Wolfgang will go to his grave with some BMW blood in his veins. But he knows that although we have to have an acceptable package or interior space, we can't give up the flowing lines that make a Jaguar. And he knows that our cars can't be silent like other luxury cars; they have to growl like a cat."

Reitzle has a lot of responsibility to make his car lines successful, but not the proportionate authority to demand results. Since he doesn't sit atop a huge organization, he has to negotiate with the heads of powerful functional departments like engineering and purchasing to get what he wants. Jaguar's design boss, for instance, doesn't report to Reitzle but to worldwide design director J Mays in Detroit. Explains Mays: "Those designers are very much in charge of their brands, but my job is to keep them focused and make sure their work does not overlap. When we're working on a design for Jag, I'm going to review that design. If I don't like it, I talk to the Jag designer about it. If it is really serious, I'll call Wolfgang."

Quick-witted, extroverted, and knowledgeable, Reitzle has had to brake his natural tendency to ignore Ford's thousands of paper-pushers, who actually run the business day to day. "Wolfgang doesn't go to meetings," says the insider. "His attitude is that Ford is populated by middle-management bureaucrats. Sooner or later they will have to deal with him, and he won't go along if he doesn't like what they are doing."

Still, he seems to be coming to grips with the differences between his old employer and his new one. "BMW was a neatly focused Bavarian company selling globally," says Reitzle. "Ford is a truly big, global corporation. There are a lot of things you have to do here that are not directly related to the product." Bill Cosgrove, the rumpled chief financial officer of PAG, says Reitzle has managed to keep his impatience in check. "Wolfgang has a short fuse," says Cosgrove. "He is fairly demanding and does not accept mediocrity. Ford has been a learning experience for him, and he will occasionally get frustrated with it."

Each of Reitzle's car lines presents a different set of issues. Jaguar is poised to more than double its sales volume, to 200,000, over the next four years with the introduction of a new small sedan, code-named the X400, that will sell for about $30,000. Reitzle favored killing plans for a Jaguar station wagon, because Jag's traditional styling didn't leave enough room for the luggage compartment. But he's still trying to develop a version of the F-type sports car displayed on the auto show circuit that Jaguar can manufacture profitably. Although Jaguar has made money for the past several years, its margins don't approach the 10% or more of pretax sales earned by competitors like Mercedes and BMW.

Neither do Volvo's margins. It has been earning less than 4% on sales, and Reitzle has tried to light a fire under the company. In June he moved aside its laid-back president, Tuve Johannesson, and replaced him with Hans-Olov Olsson, who had boosted North American sales. Reitzle's message: It is no longer good enough for Volvo to rely on selling schoolteachers cars shaped like bricks. Volvo will be adding a range of small sedans built with Ford parts as it tries to raise its annual sales to around 600,000 in 2005 from 425,000 this year.

Land Rover's classically functional designs are unmistakable, but its profitability has been underachieving. Ford bought the company from BMW for $2.8 billion in March, but it is losing money because it makes too many models that require unique engineering. Ford sells as many units of the Expedition in the U.S. as Land Rover sells of all four of its models--Range Rover, Discovery, Defender, and Freelander--worldwide. Using Ford's purchasing power and engineering base, Land Rover has to lower its costs and boost its volume. The same applies to sports-car maker Aston Martin, which Ford has owned for a decade. With sales of only 651 cars last year, Aston Martin is likely to raid Jaguar's parts bin to produce a new range of less expensive vehicles.

The two most profitable lines in Reitzle's group could be problematic. Lincoln has announced plans to double the number of its models, to eight or more, in the next few years as it tries to stake out a stronger market position and find younger buyers. Lincoln is zigging while the rest of the industry is zagging. At a time when other upscale makers are Europeanizing their designs, Lincoln is trying to make a virtue out of "American luxury." For inspiration, its designers are looking back to such classic land-yachts as the 1956 Mark II and 1961 Continental, which represent "exuberant American proportions," according to Lincoln chief designer Gerry McGovern.

Lincoln executives say Reitzle has always been a closet admirer of Town Cars--but only because their cavernous trunks can hold four golf bags. If that's true, Reitzle should love the upcoming Lincoln Blackwood, a luxury pickup truck with four doors that will sell for more than $50,000.

The odd man out at PAG is Mercury, which is so mid-market in its aspirations that Reitzle doesn't consider it a full-fledged member of his luxury group. Though 375,000 Mercurys were sold last year (vs. 176,493 Lincolns), its future product offerings have been trimmed from seven to five, and there aren't any plans to expand the line. Though no decision is due on Mercury's future for a couple of years, it could follow Plymouth, DeSoto, and Edsel into the automotive junkyard.

The curse of huge companies like Ford is global travel, and Reitzle's job demands more than the usual amount of airplane time. He has already filled his calendar through September 2001 with meetings. One week a month, he flies from London to Detroit, and then goes on to Los Angeles, where the sales and marketing operations of Lincoln and Mercury are based. Aiming to make himself as available on the road as he is in his office, Reitzle travels with a Sony laptop, a Nokia satellite phone, and a Palm V. He keeps his weight to a slim 163 pounds through constant exercise and stashes running shoes at the hotels and offices where he stops in his travels. When in Detroit, he works out at 5:30 a.m. in Ford's executive gym with the same personal trainer who looked after Henry Ford II.

On the ground, Reitzle divides his time between conference room, factory floor, design studio, and test track--and seldom wastes any of it. When he inspected the new Volvo S60 midsize sedan a few months ago, a pair of engineers commented that Reitzle needed just 30 seconds to find two defects--a paint mismatch between the car body and a piece of trim, and a problematic door hinge--that had been overlooked for six months. Nor did it take long for Reitzle to prescribe some improvements for the redesigned Lincoln Town Car that goes on sale in January 2002. "He's a blur," says Lincoln boss Mark Hutchens. "I've never seen anyone get into the details like he does." He asked for larger tires to fill up the wheelwells--big wheels signal power to Reitzle--better leather on the seats, and redesigned tail lamps to give a classier look to the rear end.

Though still unknown in the U.S., Reitzle gets full celebrity treatment in Europe. Divorced two years ago, after 18 years of marriage, he gets stalked by paparazzi when he ventures out in public with his tall, blond girlfriend, Nina Ruge, a German television personality. He is an ardent golfer who attained executive nirvana seven years ago, when he was invited to join Augusta National. "It is like heaven," he says.

Born in Ulm, the same Bavarian city that produced Albert Einstein and 17th-century astronomer Johannes Keppler, Reitzle whizzed through school and earned the German equivalent of a Ph.D. at the precocious age of 25 after writing a thesis on sheet-metal metallurgy. Starting at BMW in 1976, he learned the car business from the ground up by working in the paint shop and welding area. Early on he caught the eye of BMW's longtime chairman, Eberhard von Kuenheim; he became Kuenheim's assistant in May 1983. Reitzle helped BMW through a bad patch in product development by making new-model critiques that von Kuenheim found flawless. Characteristically impatient, Reitzle chafed until von Kuenheim made him general manager of product development. At 35, he was the youngest person ever to hold that position.

Reitzle expanded his engineering empire to encompass purchasing and sales and marketing as well. But he lost the race to succeed von Kuenheim in 1993, after he dithered over an offer to become head of Porsche, and the prize went instead to manufacturing specialist Bernd Pischetsrieder. The two men worked cooperatively for a time but had a very public falling out over Rover, the failing British car company that BMW had acquired. With Rover's losses spiraling out of control, Pischetsrieder was forced to resign in February 1999, and when Reitzle discovered that he was not going to get the top job, he quit too.

Which is when Jac Nasser came calling. Nasser recruits executives the way some pro football coaches draft players. First he seeks the best available athlete, and then he finds a position where he can play. With Ford already in the process of acquiring Volvo, Nasser needed someone to develop a framework to run the Swedish company along with his other non-Ford car lines. With no visible opportunities to run his own show, Reitzle signed on.

But while hiring Reitzle was a masterpiece of improvisational thinking, it remains to be seen whether PAG will become a permanent part of Ford's organizational chart or just a temporary fix. Also, Reitzle has to demonstrate that he can function effectively both as a subordinate to the equally impatient Nasser and as a colleague to the rest of his peers at Ford. If not, Reitzle would be smart to go someplace where he can be in charge. The auto industry is very fluid these days, with executives changing companies much more frequently than in the past. Whatever happens to PAG, it seems likely there will always be a place in the business for a high-profile car guy like Reitzle.