Cadillac: ‘We've got one chance'

DETROIT — Behind General Motors' bold pronouncements about a high-tech, electrified future for Cadillac lies a grimmer reality: Despite a decade of similar efforts to elevate and transform the brand, it remains in fragile shape.

Strong China results lifted Cadillac to record global volume last year, but U.S. sales for the quintessentially American luxury marque were down for the third straight year, and 2018 marked another upheaval of its executive ranks.

But Americans love a comeback story, and Cadillac, led by GM President Mark Reuss and brand chief Steve Carlisle, is promising to deliver one — first, through an influx of new and freshened sedans, crossovers and SUVs, and then through leadership of GM's charge toward all-electric vehicles.

Cadillac this month previewed an electric crossover expected in 2021 that will be the first vehicle to ride on GM's next-generation EV platform.

"We've got one chance. This is it," Reuss told Automotive News last week. "We will leave nothing on the table, but we've got to get there. ... We're going to get there."

Reuss and Carlisle expect to succeed where others have failed by leveraging Cadillac's growing popularity and profits in China, which became Cadillac's top market in 2017.

They'll be building on an aggressive product plan orchestrated by Johan de Nysschen, the former Audi and Infiniti executive who left a plodding brand-building effort unfinished when he was ousted as Cadillac's president in April.

At the same time, they're erasing some hallmarks of the previous leadership era, during which Cadillac moved its headquarters to New York, embraced esoteric marketing and sought more autonomy from executives in Detroit.

Cadillac is now giving up its New York presence entirely and relocating to a refurbished building in suburban Detroit. Reuss took oversight of Cadillac from then-GM President Dan Ammann in June.

Cadillac Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl, who returned to the auto industry after a 10-year hiatus to succeed Uwe Ellinghaus last year, is bringing more upbeat, less-pretentious marketing and advertising to the brand.

Cadillac is still dogged by a reputation as a large-car brand, she said, but there are "pieces of its heritage that are still strong in people's mind."

Returning Cadillac to some measure of its previous glory and positioning it as an EV leader promise to be a heavy lift. It means going up against not only the traditional luxury leaders from Europe, but also electrification pioneers with far stronger brands that are establishing beachheads in high-performance or luxury EVs, including Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche.

Cadillac's performance against luxury rivals during its current three-year product blitz will either build a firmer foundation for the brand to make that climb into EVs or bury it in an even deeper hole.

Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer, who is leading the launch of Lagonda as a zero-emission luxury marque, is skeptical that Cadillac can break through. "There's a real disadvantage of being a premium brand inside a mass company," the former Nissan executive said last week at the Automotive News World Congress. "Basically, Cadillac inside of GM, Lincoln inside of Ford or Infiniti inside of Nissan — none of them will make it."

Within a mass-market company, Palmer said, such brands are forced to push sales volume and profits for the company, even when it risks undermining the brand with incentives. Brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, he said, don't have that problem.

In 2018, Autodata estimates, Cadillac's incentives averaged nearly $8,900 per unit sold — among the highest in the auto industry. BMW and Mercedes-Benz were both at roughly $5,750.

As Cadillac unveiled the XT6 three-row crossover last week in Detroit, there were already murmurs that it may not be up to the challenge. A long-awaited vehicle in a fiercely contested segment, it opened to middling reviews for its performance numbers, technology and conservative design, similar to the response that greeted the XT4 compact crossover when it launched last year.

"There's no reason why the XT6 can't sell well," said Stephanie Brinley, IHS Markit principal analyst. "But when you think of Cadillac as the leading technology brand, it doesn't have as much technology as some of its competitors."

Given the amount of time Cadillac spent on the vehicle, and its being on an established platform — shared with the midsize XT5 and other large GM crossovers — the lack of innovations "leaves you scratching your head a little bit," Brinley said.

Missing from the XT6, for example, is Super Cruise, the hands-off driver-assistance system for highways that launched in 2017 on the Cadillac CT6 sedan. It's designed for the kinds of long-haul road trips that a family might take in an XT6.

Reuss, who last year announced the technology would expand across Cadillac's lineup beginning in 2020, made no excuses for the technology not being on the XT6.

"I'm very respectful of all the people who have worked on Cadillac in the past [and] work on it now," said Reuss, who has led GM's product development arm since 2013. "I will take all the heat for it not being there, and that's the way it is."

Removing excuses has been part of Reuss' plan since he took oversight of Cadillac last year. It's one of the reasons why he says it was important to move Cadillac's headquarters back to Michigan after the four-year run in New York.

The move back, he said, eliminates travel time and moves Cadillac's leadership right across the street from the GM Technical Center just north of Detroit, the automaker's epicenter for product design and development, including battery EVs.

"Nothing against New York, but we need really talented people to ... bring Cadillac to a different place than it's been in my entire career, frankly," Reuss said. "I'm trying to eliminate all the excuses of why we're not. And that's one of them."

Jack Walsworth contributed to this report.