Less ATS, More XT5: Cadillac Boots President

New York- via Detroit- based car company, Cadillac, have recently ousted their man-in-charge John de Nysschen. de Nysschen spent four years with the famed American luxury manufacturer. He’s been replaced by Steve Carlisle, formerly GM Canada’s President and Managing Director.

de Nysschen, previously with Nissan and Audi, is responsible for the current naming scheme at Cadillac. Remember how they used to be CTS and STS and DTS and SRX and Escalade (wtf?) but now they’re all Cadillac XT5 and CT5 and Escalade (da fuh?)? That’s de Nysschen.

That’s kind of his thing.

Infiniti used to give their vehicles names like G35 and M35, but now go by Q40 and QX40; that’s the de Nysschen effect. Dude goes bananas with the alpha-numeric. It’s seriously like his favorite thing to do. His kids have names like PT-3 and LND-1. GM saw the massive change that made for Nissan and were like, ‘Yup! Let’s get ’em!’

One of his first moves was to relocate Cadillac HQ from dirty, dirty Michigan to upscale NYC. He thought relocating to the world of upper-class gentrification would help wash away the image of poor American manufacturing.

Things didn’t work out so great, though. He wanted to make badass cars like the ATS-V (though he wanted it to be the CT3-V, which sounds like a Star Wars character) but consumers want things like the Cadillac XT5 (formerly known as the SRX), so he got de boot.

Carlisle, on the other hand, is a company man and will likely acquiesce to his corporate overlords. With any luck this means we can start seeing some badge engineering come back to the States. Here’s to getting the coat of arms on a leather-interior Cruze by late 2019.