'This Is Pretty Much It': New GM President Acknowledges Cadillac's Last Chance For Glory

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

Cadillac is at a crossroads. While the brand has enjoyed growth in Asia, domestic volume never fully recovered from the Great Recession. It’s come back a bit, with sales dipping and rising between years, but hasn’t managed to keep pace with the overall market. As of 2018, Cadillac possesses the lowest share of the U.S. market in the brand’s recorded history. Fortunately, the fourth-quarter arrival of the XT4 helped to Cadillac stabilize sales as the year drew to an end.

However, General Motors wants the luxury arm to become a legitimate success and prove the automaker’s effort to develop advanced powertrains and new technologies weren’t in vain. Cadillac is positioned to become manufacturer’s leading electric brand and GM’s newly appointed president, Mark Reuss, has acknowledged this is sort of its last chance at greatness.

Leading up to the North American International Auto show, Cadillac announced it would be the first company to adopt General Motors’ BEV3 electric platform with a new crossover.

“Cadillac’s EV will hit the heart of the crossover market and meet the needs of customers around the world,” said Cadillac President Steve Carlisle as part of the corporate announcement. “It will represent the height of luxury and innovation while positioning Cadillac as the pinnacle of mobility.”

And it had better, because Reuss appears to see this as win/lose scenario. “We don’t have any chances left with taking Cadillac to a really new place,” he told Reuters from the sidelines of the Detroit auto show last week. “This is pretty much it.”

While it’s not the first time the company has forayed into electrification, BEV3 represents a broader change for GM and might just dictate Cadillac’s future existence. In fact, Reuss’ words kind of make it seem like everything is riding on these new luxury EVs.

“So we really have to hit the ball here,” he continued. “It’s my job to make sure we do.”

From Reuters:

Reuss did not elaborate on what would happen if the multi-year effort to make the Cadillac brand more profitable failed.

But GM has demonstrated repeatedly over the last two years a willingness to exit unprofitable markets and kill weak car lines in North America. In November it put five North American factories, including four in the United States, on notice for closure and cut almost 15,000 jobs.

GM has struggled for years to make Cadillac more competitive. Last spring the automaker replaced veteran auto executive Johan de Nysschen as head of the Cadillac brand. Appointed in 2014, he outlined bold plans to reshape Cadillac’s lineup with a $12 billion product program.

Cadillac has endured a string of failures in North America. Sales haven’t been as strong as GM would like, moving the brand’s HQ to New York turned out to be a terrible mistake, and most of its advertising over the last few years has been poorly received. But it’s taken great strides to fix all of that. The brand is currently in the midst of a plan to shrink its lineup of sedans and inject more popular sport utility vehicles while placing a greater emphasis on hybrid and purely electric vehicles.

By 2021, General Motors plans to introduce a dedicated flexible electric vehicle architecture to spur the development of at least 20 new models in the United States and China. Cadillac should receive the first of these new models, with Reuss claiming at least one of these models will be on sale through the luxury brand by 2022.

He said it was too early to tell how long it would take for Cadillac’s entire lineup to become electrified, but he anticipated a combination of electrified and combustion engine models “for quite a few years” to come.

“All I’m focused on is what we’re doing right now…” he said, “and getting momentum back in Cadillac.”

As much as we’d like to see that, we know the brand’s real priorities lie in China. That’s where GM expects to see the most growth and that will be the market Cadillac caters to above all else.

[Images: General Motors]

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • Durask Durask on Jan 23, 2019

    My father bought the CTS when it first came out, well, maybe a year or two after it came out. And you know what, for 2003 it was a damn good car. There were a few things that could be better but for that time period the design was new, the car drove well. All in all I could easily say "Wow, that is a good effort by GM, now if they keep improving it...". He drove it for 8 years and never had any problems with it. He finally got tired of it after 8 years and wanted something new, went to check out Cadillac and it was very underwhelming. Other luxury brands improved a lot in 8 years, Cadillac has not. It was pretty disappointing actually.

    • Buickman Buickman on Jan 23, 2019

      real world. one of the better posts I've read lately.

  • Durask Durask on Jan 23, 2019

    Also ironic how people keep handing over money for german cars which are not particularly reliable, have painful maintenance costs and a lot of them have horrible depreciation. But they have great design and great interiors. Compare Cadillac Escalade and Mercedes GLS - GLS is what a Cadillac should have been.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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