Cadillac Brand HQ Moving To NYC To Be Closer To People Living Lives Of Luxury
DETROIT (WWJ/AP) - Cadillac is moving its headquarters to New York next year to be closer to more people living lives of luxury.
General Motors also says the high-end brand will become a separate business unit, giving it more freedom to chase global growth.
"With the relentless upward repositioning of successive new-generation Cadillac products, the next logical step is to provide Cadillac more freedom to cultivate the brand in pursuit of further global growth," GM President Dan Ammann said in a statement.
Cadillac's U.S. sales are down nearly 5 percent this year, even though luxury vehicle sales and the overall U.S. market are growing.
"We have to have some new thinking in how we go to market with that brand," said GM Vice President of Product Development Mark Reuss.
Most of the luxury growth has gone to Cadillac's German rivals. Autodata Corp. says Audi sales are up nearly 15 percent, BMW is up almost 12 percent and Mercedes-Benz up 9 percent. Toyota's Lexus luxury brand also posted a 16 percent increase.
Cadillac's leaders will move to offices in the trendy SoHo section of Manhattan. The company is still evaluating which employees will make the move, but Reuss said it will be about fifty people in sales and marketing, a small number compared to how many people GM employs in Michigan.
"We employ 46,000 people here," he said. "We put five billion dollars into the economy."
Reuss says technical product development teams will remain in the Detroit area, and manufacturing will not change.
"We still design, we still manufacture, we still engineer all of our products right here. Frankly we make most of our products right here in Michigan as well."
But, the hope is that moving Cadillac's sales arm to New York, will result in changes that make the products more attractive to people on the coasts, who are far more attracted to import luxury vehicles.
"We are very proud of our Detroit roots and heritage, and the majority of the Cadillac workforce will remain in Michigan," Cadillac President Johan de Nysschen said in a statement. "But there is no city in the world where the inhabitants are more immersed in a premium lifestyle than in New York. Establishing our new global headquarters in Soho places Cadillac at the epicenter of sophisticated living. It allows our team to share experiences with premium-brand consumers and develop attitudes in common with our audience."
WWJ AutoBeat Reporter Jeff Gilbert (@jefferygilbert) contributed to this story.
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