By David
This is an unusual post, a little bit outside what we normally cover here. But I couldn’t let these major milestones pass without comment. In the past couple of weeks, two major figures in recent Cadillac history have moved to new stages of their lives. And these aren’t just a couple of generic team members, or interchangeable execs. These are two major architects of Cadillac’s historic ongoing renaissance, and people whose fingerprints are all over our newest and best models.
Jim Taylor, Cadillac general manager since 2004 and a major leader for Cadillac over the past decade, has moved to a new role as CEO of HUMMER. For car enthusiasts, it’s important to note that Jim spearheaded Cadillac’s move back to rear-drive cars. This was a sea-change for Cadillac, to say the least. Jim led the development of the initial CTS sedan – a project that began in the late-1990s, prior to its debut in 2002. This led to the subsequent RWD/AWD models like the SRX and STS that further helped redefine and expand Cadillac. Since 2004, Jim has led the brand’s global marketing and sales efforts, leading a period of tremendous worldwide growth the development. Beyond all of that business stuff, it just needs to be said that Jim’s a terrific guy who’s well-liked and respected by an unusually wide spectrum of people who deal with Cadillac all over the world. Jim’s still around in a big way, as he’s now our colleague at HUMMER, so this is not a farewell. But his impact on one of the car industry’s most legendary nameplates has been very significant and worthy of special mention here. And, very simply, many of us have had a heckuva good time working with and for him!
The other milestone I want to mention is the retirement of John Heinricy, an executive with GM’s Performance Division and chief engineer of the new CTS-V. John’s history inside GM and in motorsports is tremendous. Here’s a really good profile of John.
John’s probably best known as a championship driver -- I won’t go into all the details, as some of them are legendary in our industry and in U.S. sports car racing circles. Despite years of work on cars like Corvettes and Camaros over the years, we think of John as a Cadillac guy at heart – a big Eldorado convertible from the mid-70s graces his garage, crowding out the driving suits, helmets and racing gear! As an engineer, his skills are evident in lots of high-performance machines on the street today – we’re partial to the CTS-V and STS-V, but he also led development of many of the recent and very fine Chevy SS models, to name just a few. (The new editions of the Cobalt SS and HHR SS, are tremendously fun and great values. Not just toeing the company line – those cars are a riot!) John was an occasional “guest driver” for Team Cadillac is SPEED World Challenge GT over the years, also. So his roots run deep with Cadillac – customer, racer, chief engineer. We’re grateful to have worked with John – he’s a real gentleman who we all enjoyed working with over the course of his 38-year career. And the CTS-V, including his “record” run at the Nurburgring stand as pretty significant examples of his expertise, as this video shows.
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