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AUTOMOBILEMAG.COM
ILLUST
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by
TIM
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Back in 2014, a bold post on de Nysschen’s
Facebook page proclaimed Cadillac’s readiness
to be a first-tier luxury maker in short order. It
declared the division’s enhanced independence
from GM systems, standards, and procedures
going forward, an improbable result to be
achieved in part by the even more improbable
expedient of moving Cadillac’s headquarters to
New York City. Heads exploded over the move
and his frank social media posts defending it,
though today de Nysschen says the fix was in
for the relocation long before he arrived; it had
been outlined to him over lunch at the Detroit
Athletic Club by then-GM chairman Dan Aker-
son, before de Nysschen had even taken the job.
Some reports have credited former GM chief
marketer Uwe Ellinghaus, who left the company
early in 2018, with selling the idea to Akerson.
Time marches on, dust settles. De Nysschen
is gone, and Cadillac is moving its headquarters
back to Detroit. Well, Warren, Michigan, actu-
ally. So when I ran into its ex-boss in Detroit at
the North American International Auto Show, it
seemed fitting to arrange a visit back east for the
Cadillac of exit interviews. Recently we sat for a
few hours in a sushi restaurant near his apart-
ment in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he lives
with his wife, his two grown children having
long since flown the coop for other U.S. cities. We
did not drink sake. (You can read the full tran-
script at AutomobileMag.com/features/ethos.)
IT WAS ALMOST five years ago when
this column welcomed Johan de Nysschen to the
Cadillac hot seat. After successful stints at BMW
and Audi (including running its North American
operations during a period of historic growth),
the South African-born executive ascended to the
global conductor’s chair at Infiniti worldwide in
2012, only to be plucked away from that company’s
HQ two years later when he was handed the reins
to Cadillac, General Motors’ serially confused but
occasionally radiant crown jewel.
His appointment came just as the world—and
bankrupt GM—had started climbing out from the
abyss that followed the Great Recession of 2008, and it was a hopeful time.
Sensing the moment, de Nysschen, now 59, brought to the task intelligence,
keen powers of observation, and genuine good taste in automobiles. As an
executive whose career as a younger man was done considerable good by
the enthusiasm of one Ferdinand Piëch, he also arrived with a measure of
the requisite swagger but minus the Piëch crazy—and also without the
longtime Volkswagen chieftain’s unfathomably deep sense of entitlement.
Today, it’s fair to say Cadillac under de Nysschen’s watch was saved,
for the moment at least, with a big assist from China and a buoyant U.S.
economy. But like the rest of GM and the industry, Cadillac isn’t fully fixed.
It could make more money now, some think, but no one knows what’s
going to happen in the future, so where’s the investment in the future? This
fundamentally contradictory equation makes everyone and everything in
the industry, especially share valuations, feel broken. This makes the stock
market and GM executives sad. And then last April, for no specific reason
after four years of forward-looking work, de Nysschen was fired.
Welcome to the automobile business.
IT WAS THE
WORST-KEPT SECRET,
AND I WILL HAVE TO
SAY THAT THE MORALE
OF THE CADILLAC
TEAM WASN’T GREAT
My car for the ride down along the western
shores of the Hudson River from my New York
home was booked long ahead of our meeting
being set. But for now, the Cadillac CTS-V seemed
as fitting a symbol as any for the de Nysschen
era, a fine machine that you’d be proud to drive
as far as they’d let you. Crazy fast, sure-footed,
smooth with pleasingly heavy-duty driver inputs
required through the wheel and pedals, it also
exudes swagger standing still. Kids walked up to
me on city streets and remarked on its coolness.
But the way these things work, the best proof of
what fine things de Nysschen wrought product-
wise might yet unfold. Although surely the just-
launched XT6 crossover—a tarted-up, less practi-
cal Chevy Traverse—isn’t real promising.
THE EXIT
INTERVIEW