High command: Travis Hester’s transition to the role of GM Canada president and managing director, taking over from Steve Carlisle, is underway.

TRAVIS Hester’s rise through the ranks at General Motors has taken another step with the announcement that the one-time Holden technical support engineer is now responsible for GM Canada, which is a major market and manufacturing hub for the US auto giant.

Reporting to GM North America president and former Holden chairman and managing director Alan Batey – one of many former top GMH executives now in key roles in Detroit – Mr Hester takes over from GM Canada president and managing director Steve Carlisle, who has replaced Johan de Nysschen as head of Cadillac.

Mr de Nysschen has left the company, effective immediately.

GM is the market leader in Canada, posting 302,826 sales in 2017 – up 13.3 per cent year-on-year – across the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac brands.

It has continued to grow this year with 65,000 deliveries to the end of March, marking the company’s best first-quarter result in a decade.

Mr Hester will relocate from the Warren technical centre in Michigan to GM Canada headquarters in nearby Oshawa, Ontario, overseeing the operations which employ more than 9000 people and include two vehicle assembly plants, an engine plant and R&D centre.

He moves from his current position as vice-president of global product programs – a role he has held since February 2016 and, according to GM, saw him responsible “for balancing all aspects of vehicle development, including quality, cost, appearance, purchasing, customer acceptance and performance targets”.

In this role he was reporting to another former Holden boss, Mark Reuss, who is GM’s executive vice-president in charge of global product development.

Over the years, Mr Hester moved through a number of engineering positions in Australia, the US and China and served as chief engineer for a wide variety of vehicles including the Cadillac CT6, Buick Regal and LaCrosse, and the Chevrolet Sonic.

Joining Holden in October 1995 after graduating from Latrobe University as a mechanical engineer the previous year, Mr Hester worked on rear-wheel-drive cars like the Holden Commodore and Statesman and rose to technical assistant for the managing director, with responsibility for the Australian company’s global business operations including marketing, manufacturing, IT, purchasing, engineering, design and finance.

Steve Carlisle

He relocated to the US in November 2005 as GM North America’s engineering manager, working on the global rear-wheel-drive advanced vehicle development program for the Zeta platform underpinning the VE Commodore and Chevrolet Camaro at the time.

In China, Mr Hester spent three years at the Shanghai-based Pan Asia Technical Automotive Centre (PATAC) – a joint venture between General Motors and SAIC Motor – and led the engineering team on vehicles such as Regal and LaCrosse.

This involved working closely with European and Korean subsidiaries to integrate powertrains into PATAC products built off global platforms such as Epsilon and Gamma.

Returning to the US in November 2010, Mr Hester served as global vehicle chief engineer for premium luxury vehicles before rising to executive chief engineer for Cadillac premium luxury vehicles in August 2012 – a position that saw him working exclusively on the new Omega platform derivatives and the CT6 launch.

The switch with Mr Carlisle taking the reins at Cadillac comes as GM looks for a faster turnaround for the premium brand than it was achieving under Mr de Nysschen, a former head of Infiniti and Audi in the US who was hired in 2014 to transform Caddy with a reinvigorated and expanded line-up – and a huge $US12 billion budget.

Overseas reports indicate that Mr de Nysschen left on mutually agreeable terms, citing differences in opinion on Cadillac’s direction.

GM president Dan Ammann, to whom Mr Carlisle now reports, said in a statement: “We appreciate Johan’s efforts over the last four years in setting a stronger foundation for Cadillac.

“Looking forward, the world is changing rapidly, and, beginning with the launch of the new XT4, it is paramount that we capitalise immediately on the opportunities that arise from this rate of change. This move will further accelerate our efforts in that regard,” he said.

Mr Carlisle has worked for GM since 1982, joining as an industrial engineering co-op student at the Oshawa Truck Assembly Plant.

His career has taken him across the globe, with leadership positions including vice-president of global product planning (2010-2014), vice-president of US sales operations (2010) and president and managing director of GM’s South-East Asia operations (2007-2010).

Cadillac’s global design chief, Andrew Smith, is also an Australian.

By Terry Martin