If The Cars had flirted with high-tech in the past, they outdid themselves with Heartbeat City, their most successful album. New collaborator Robert John "Mutt" Lange coproduced with the band, making Roy Thomas Baker's mega-productions sound like garage tapes by comparison.

"Without a doubt, The Cars' most successful and well-received album, Heartbeat City was an explosion of musical brilliance with an experimental new sound noticeable in every song, on both singles and album songs. This album also welcomed a new producer, Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who was a perfectionist in every sense. He co-produced the album with The Cars."

From an interview with Ric Ocasek:

(on lyrics) I think it's still a kind of poetry, or some sort of poetic form with music. Mutt Lange used to say, "Nobody ever listens to the lyrics anyway, so who gives a shit?" I like Mutt, but he just has firm beliefs about things like that.

"Drive" was a simple song, direct. I thought it was kinda weird for a single. It was all two, three chords and droning; the subject matter was kind of depressing. But Mutt always said, "It's a big single." I always went, "Sure." [Laughs] But I was happy it was a big single.

We could have produced it ourselves if we wanted to [Heartbreak City]. But as a sound person, I really like Mutt's sound. I thought that the combination of the sound he gets and what we do would mingle pretty nicely. Mutt's never done a band like us; he's done a lot of heavy metal. But I thought the two could mix." Indeed they did, but not in the way one might have expected. Certainly there's a lot of Mutt Lange in the beefy crunch of "Magic" and the crisp shifts in dynamics that spur "It's Not The Night," but that's largely a function of his way with guitar sounds, and there really isn't much guitar on the album. "Strangely enough," says Hawkes, "part of that was working with Mutt. I say strangely because you would expect that for a producer with his background there would be more guitar and less synthesizer. But I think Mutt was really intrigued with working with keyboards a lot. I think it was a way for him to do something different."

"Mutt's a definite stickler for feel, he'd sit there with somebody for hours working on a part, and only looking for the feel. If he didn't hear the feel, it wasn't down on tape. Mutt would always refer to the demos and say, 'You've got to have the feel of this,' or, 'This doesn't have the feel of the demo -- do it again.' That's the point of reativity, it's always trying to get that feel. Because the demos, when they've got it, just naturally work, whether they're out of time or not, no matter where they sit. They just *work*, because they're done quickly and at the point of inspiration. You have to marry the feel to the technology to get it right." (thanks to Jack -zephyr 102)