Cadillac moves HQ to New York to get back into the luxury car race
Cadillac is fighting back against luxury car makers such as BMW and Audi by moving the brand headquarters to New York from Detroit.
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The shift is the biggest shake-up yet by Cadillac’s new president, Johan de Nysschen, who joined the company last month from the Infiniti division of Nissan, the New York Times reports.
He was previously at Volkswagen, where he made Audi a top competitor against BMW and Mercedes-Benz in the luxury car market.
Cadillac is desperate to get into that elite group, but for years it has struggled to find its footing, says the NYT.
In August, the overall luxury car market has surged 14 percent over a year earlier — but Cadillac's sales are down 5 percent, with its sedans falling by 15 percent.
De Nysschen has promised bold moves to restore Cadillac’s once-renowned luxury image. Moving his team to New York, he said, would help it break with the past and connect with another lifestyle.
“It allows our team to share experiences with premium-brand consumers and develop attitudes in common with our audience,” he said in a statement.
The new Manhattan headquarters, opening next year in SoHo, will house the “majority of functions with oversight and responsibility for both global and U.S.” Cadillac operations, G.M. said in a statement.
But the product development teams and manufacturing facilities will remain in Michigan.
The move also underscores the challenges Cadillac has had in finding its voice within the larger G.M. organisation, whose gleaming Renaissance Center towers over downtown Detroit, says the Times.
“Cadillac has been through a tough year of lower sales, including decreased sales of some of its newest cars, in a luxury car market that is booming,” said Michelle Krebs, senior analyst at AutoTrader.com.
"It’ll take more than moving the headquarters to New York to fix that.”
By moving top Cadillac officials across the country, the company hopes to give its luxury brand more autonomy.
A few months before de Nysschen arrived at Infiniti in 2012, Nissan’s luxury division moved from Japan to Hong Kong, in an effort to focus on the Chinese market and provide greater autonomy and luxury focus.
Audi, de Nysschen’s previous top brand, also has German offices separate from its parent, Volkswagen.
Krebs said New York was also where many deals were made on cooperative ventures that Cadillac wanted a piece of, so the move could help it compete with BMW and Mercedes-Benz, which have their North American HQ in New Jersey.