Longtime Luxury Brand Executive de Nysschen Rejoins Volkswagen

Veteran automotive industry executive Johan de Nysschen, most notably known for recently leading the Cadillac luxury unit of General Motors, returns to Volkswagen Group of North America as chief operating officer.

De Nysschen, 59, will begin the newly created role Oct. 1 and report to Scott Keogh, head of Volkswagen Group of North America. De Nysschen most recently served as a director of New York-based Guident, a company focused on commercializing autonomous-vehicle and drone technology. He worked as an independent management consultant after leaving Cadillac in 2018.

“This industry, and this brand, are at a transformative moment,” Keogh says in announcing the appointment. “Johan will help make us faster, better and smarter. He’ll speed our decision-making and dive deep into our day-to-day business so we can continue to make this brand better again.”

Over 30 years in the business, including 20 at VW Group, de Nysschen established a reputation for bold decisions, a trait that helped drive the German automaker’s Audi unit from an also-ran luxury brand to among the industry leaders in the U.S. during his tenure between 2004 and 2012. He jumped to Nissan’s Infiniti premium brand with intentions of polishing it to an Audi-esque shine but stayed only two years before GM wooed him to Detroit to fix Cadillac.

As president of Cadillac, de Nysschen was given control of a $12 billion product investment plan but with a sedan-centric lineup the brand’s turnaround sputtered as U.S. consumers began snapping up crossovers churned out by rivals such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and Lexus.

However, the globe-trotting executive also clashed with GM leadership late in his tenure over his premium-pricing plan for Cadillac products and many of the brand’s dealers initially balked at de Nysschen’s strategy to elevate the customer experience. He also was saddled with the ill-fated decision to relocate Cadillac sales and marketing personnel from Detroit to New York City’s fashionable SoHo district, a scheme whose true architect remains debated.

Cadillac has since moved back to the Detroit area and is run by GM President Mark Reuss.

VW says de Nysschen’s new role will streamline its executive reporting structure and permit the brand to better coordinate and align operations in North America, where it is aggressively remaking its product portfolio and continues to recover from the Dieselgate emissions-cheating scandal.

“I’m looking forward to rejoining a group and leader I know well and admire,” de Nysschen says in a statement. “This is a great opportunity to play an important role at a company of this scale at a fascinating time.”

VW Group sales were up 2.6% through August to 393,552 compared with 383,743 in the same period of 2018, according to Wards Intelligence. The uptick comes mostly from VW-brand sales, which grew 6.6% in the period to offset a 3.9% decline in volume by Audi.