General Motors stated on Wednesday that Cadillac is going to switch its headquarters back to Michigan from New York after just three years to be nearer to engineers and design teams as the luxury brand plans to present two new vehicles yearly through 2020.
Cadillac moved to New York under Johan de Nysschen, who operated the brand from 2014 until his abrupt ouster in April. The shift to the Big Apple in 2015 accompanied bold strategies to reshape Cadillac’s lineup with a $12 billion product program in 2015 and was supposed to bring the brand closer to the urban customers who for years had shunned it.
The automaker replaced De Nysschen with Steve Carlisle, who earlier served as managing director of automaker’s Canadian operations.
After betting enough on sedans models that are progressively unpopular with U.S. customers, last summer Cadillac announced a strategy to catch up with market shifts by shrinking its lineup of sedans to support larger, more popular sport utility vehicles.
Through the first six months of 2018, Cadillac’s U.S. sales increased 5.4 percent, driven by growth in SUV sales.
Next April, Cadillac will shift to Warren, Michigan, a stone’s throw from GM’s main design hub.
A GM spokesman stated Cadillac will remain a separate business unit. The brand hires 110 people in New York, all of whom will be offered jobs in Michigan, the spokesman stated.
The spokesman added that Cadillac will also play a “big role” in the automaker’s strategies for developing self-driving vehicles and that it made sense for the brand to be nearer to the rest of GM.
