Mark Reuss, a General Motors lifer and licensed IMSA driver who has pushed the development of high-end performance cars, has been named the company’s president. He replaces Dan Ammann and becomes CEO Mary Barra’s number-two man.

Reuss, 55, became Cadillac president and executive vice president of nearly everything—engineering, design, safety, quality, purchasing, product planning—starting in June 2018. (Ammann is now head of Cruise Automation, the company’s autonomous car division.) Before that promotion, Reuss led the company’s purchasing and product development since 2013 and in 2009, months after his like-minded colleague Bob Lutz retired as vice chairman, he became president of the North American division. Reuss created GM’s performance division in 2001, which led to cars such as the Cadillac CTS-V wagon, Chevrolet Trailblazer SS, and the importation of Australian muscle from GM’s Holden nameplate. He has regularly lapped the Nürburgring as a GM test driver. His father, Lloyd Reuss, was GM president from 1990 to 1992. Reuss has been with the company since 1983.

Car and Driver honored Reuss as one of our top auto executives of the year in 2015 for his commitment to higher quality and risk-taking, all while he was under considerable pressure to slash overhead in the decade following the GM bankruptcy in 2009 and $49.5 billion bailout by taxpayers. Since then, while GM has closed plants, yanked sales from multiple continents, and faced billions in liabilities from the ignition switch scandal that killed 124 people, the company has become successful. Record sales, a 200-mph Cadillac, the first sub-$40K electric car to break 200 miles, and the soon-to-be-unveiled mid-engine Corvette—they’re all in no small part because of Reuss.

But GM is shifting priorities yet again, and Reuss must quickly adapt. CEO Barra is ordering massive layoffs and more plant closures, killing off sedans and smaller cars, moving Cadillac back to Detroit, and going full-steam into automation and electric vehicles. Reuss has followed her in lockstep, with his audacious proposal in October that the federal government mandate sales of electric cars and criticizing President Trump’s plan to freeze EPA emissions levels through 2025. GM announced in 2017 that it wanted to introduce 20 new electric models (including fuel cells) by 2023. In December, Trump called this a “mistake” that “is not going to work.”

But given GM’s reliance on trucks, fleet sales, and incentives, Reuss has to walk a thin line between technology disruption and keeping the company afloat as competitors move into the spaces his company is abandoning or underperforming. The company wants to cut more than 10,000 employees in the U.S., and no matter his new title, Reuss’ number-one job is to ensure GM can function internally. That may be his toughest task yet.

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