Cadillac chief argues for more autonomy from GM – report

According to Automotive News, de Nysschen told a gathering of financial analysts that Cadillac will, by 2017, enjoy "a far higher degree of autonomy and self sufficiency" within the General Motors corporate structure, and outsiders will be able to see how much money it is making or losing.

He claims that Cadillac in its current state "makes a very sizeable contribution to the overall profit at General Motors". De Nysschen hopes to grow the brand from 263,697 sales globally last year to 500,000 by 2020.

To do that the brand is planning a "massive product offensive" to broaden its "very narrow product portfolio". Most of these models, though, won't appear until 2018.

De Nysschen took over as boss of Cadillac in the middle of 2014. Since assuming the hot seat, he's moved the brand's management, marketing and sales teams away from Detroit to new offices in New York's trendy Soho neighbourhood.

He's also begun the process of renaming Cadillac's products, with all new sedan and coupe models set to wear the CT prefix, and all crossovers starting their names with XT. The first model to utilise the new naming scheme is the CT6 sedan (above), which was unveiled at the New York auto show; a new XT5 crossover will debut next year.

From 2012 to 2014, de Nysschen was the head of Nissan's luxury marque, Infiniti, where oversaw similar moves. At the Japanese company, he moved Infiniti's headquarters to Hong Kong from Japan and initiated a renaming of its entire product lineup, with names such as the G, M and FX being ditched for Q50, Q70 and QX70.

Prior to this, the South African-born executive was the head of Audi's US arm.