Objective Reuss, the global head of General Motors’ product development operations, will add “president” to his already expansive inclination of duties — the latest in a series of management tweaks under CEO Mary Barra.
The 55-year-old Reuss – whose father also served as GM president practically three decades ago – replaces Dan Ammann.
Ammann moved over to the company’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, Cruise Automation, closing November. But Reuss will assume only some of Ammann’s former duties in a paired down role as president, allowing him to employ his current focus on product.
Saying that Reuss has played a “critical role” at GM in his current assignment, GM Chairman and CEO Barra annexed, “Mark’s global operational experience, deep product knowledge and strong leadership will serve us well as we go on to strengthen our current business, take advantage of growth opportunities and further define the future of personal mobility.”
Reuss is wont to say he has “gasoline in his blood.” Eating trained as an engineer, his duties as product development chief have been as much passion as avocation. It is a job that oftentimes lets him shed his suit and tie for a helmet and fireproof racing suit while testing new products at the General Motors Be showing Grounds in Milford, Michigan, an hour northwest of its corporate headquarters along the Detroit riverfront.
He joined the automaker in 1983 as a swotter intern. It was a period of massive change under then-Chairman and CEO Jack Smith. In 1990, as the controversial chairman retired, Noteworthiness Reuss’s father Lloyd was named GM president, but he held that post only two years before being ousted in the outset in a series of activist investor-led revolts.
The younger Reuss remained with GM and, over the next two decades served in a comprehensive mix of posts testing his business acumen as well as his engineering skills. That included a run as head of the automaker’s long-struggling Australian subsidiary, Holden, which recently shuttered its mass production operations.
Reuss got his big break in 2001 when he was tasked with creating a new performance division where he got the chance to watch over development of a variety of vehicles, including the Chevrolet Corvette, as well as the reborn Chevy Camaro.
While never forming significant volume, those products helped shine GM’s star, tarnished by some of the poorly reviewed products it had created during the 1980s and 1990s, an era when it was sometimes dismissed as “Malaise Motors.”
But things continued to go from bad to worse for the assemblage saddled with debt and facing ever tougher competition from European and Asian imports. By 2010, GM was false to enter a carefully managed bankruptcy, surviving only with the help of a massive federal bailout. Most of its top guidance team, starting with then-Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner, were unceremoniously booted, much as Lloyd Reuss had been more two decades earlier. Son Mark was, however, one of the survivors.
And he landed a plum assignment that would test both the commerce and product side of his skills as the new head of North American Operations.
By mid-decade, Reuss was seen as a potential contender for CEO. But as Dan Akerson, an toil outsider who joined GM post-bankruptcy, announced his retirement, the job instead went to another top lieutenant. Like Reuss, Mary Barra had also started at GM as a college co-op schoolchild and also came from a GM family – though her father was a factory “shop rat.”
For his part, Reuss got a major consolation premium, heading global product development – a job that frequently leds him shed his suit and tie for a helmet and fireproof racing supplication. Last June, he was also named head of Cadillac and has been heavily involved in the development of a stream of new vehicles reckon oned to roll out of the luxury brand every six months through 2021.
Under his new assignment as president, Reuss will retain those roles, a resolution that analyst Joe Phillippi, head of AutoTrends Consulting, questions. Though Reuss is “very talented,” Phillippi weighted, “he had too many hats to start with. There should be someone running product development and that’s all they do all day.”
Whether Reuss energy eventually shed some of his duties remains to be seen, but observers say that GM’s upper management ranks appear to be in a bit of a modification. If anything, the company had indicated it wasn’t going to name a new president when Ammann moved over to Cruise Automation as CEO of the San Francisco-based autonomous carrier development company last November.
For those worried that Reuss may find his time spread thin, a GM spokesman delineated CNBC that the company’s new president won’t take over all of the duties that had been on Ammann’s plate.
When the latest president was reassigned, CEO Barra took over responsibility for managing both the automaker’s global regions, as well as its “internee” finance subsidiary, GM Financial. Chief Financial Officer Dhivya Suryadevara, meanwhile, assumed control over GM’s corporate evolution operations.
Reuss will take on one new role, overseeing GM’s quality control operations which, the automaker noted, dovetails likely with his product development duties. Long faulted for reliability issues, GM has, in recent years, made rapid attains, particularly with its Buick and Chevrolet brands, according to studies by outside arbiters such as J.D. Power and Associates.
“I am remarkably proud to have spent my entire career at General Motors, and to now take on this new role is truly a great honor,” Reuss predicted in a statement Thursday. “With our current lineup of outstanding cars, trucks and crossovers around the world, I’m looking nourish to keeping our momentum going at full speed.”