Holden's friend in high places speaks out

The former boss of Holden, Mark Reuss, who is now the head of General Motors North America, has spoken openly for the first time about his tenure Down Under.

Reuss returned to his home town in Detroit in August last year after his posting as the boss of Holden was cut short to just 18 months.

He left Australia without giving any media interviews because he didn't want to take the limelight away from his successor, who was his second-in-command at Holden at the time, Alan Batey.

"A lot of the good ideas and stuff we did came from Alan [Batey] so it certainly wasn't all down to me. He and the team were already kind of running the show any way," he told a group of Australian journalists at the Detroit motor show overnight.

Reuss said he and his family were genuinely sad to leave so soon, and so quickly.

"My kids cried when we left. We just got integrated. It was hard to leave, but [on the other hand] it was easy to leave because we had people in place who knew what they were doing."

Reuss says he likes Australia so much he plans to retire Down Under. "I know where, but I'm not going to tell you guys..." he joked.

He also took a piece of Australia home with him: the 1950s FC Holden that he was restoring was shipped back to Detroit.

It may be a while before the 45-year-old son of the former president of GM Global, Lloyd Reuss, returns to Australia. With the second biggest job in GM globally, he'll have his work cut out for him over the next few years as he helps rebuild "the new GM" post bankruptcy.

Reuss, who was instrumental in the survival of Holden during the financial crisis -- and helped save it from being sold off or shutdown in GM's global restructure -- revealed how close Holden was to hitting the wall.

"On the [possibility of being] sold out, I really can't answer it because it wasn't under my bailiwick. But going under and stuff, that was scary. You never really want to think about that, but my whole team every day looked at cashflow, looked at sales, looked at stock and looked at our burn.

"We got fenced off from the parent company when [GM] started taking [government] loans here in the United States. And that's when it starts getting pretty serious for you. At least it did for us. This was emergency money and it was every day. And it was every day for a while. Even through Christmas. We looked at everything every day."

He revealed that he had to abort an anniversary dinner with his wife to spend much of the evening on the phone in the car to negotiate with government ministers -- while his wife sat inside at the restaurant table.

"It was my anniversary in the middle of May. I had planned to go with my wife to eat at the Stokehouse [restaurant] in Melbourne. But then some trouble hit and I needed to talk through it right then and there with a couple of ministers. And we worked through it that night."

Reuss says it was the most intimidating period of his career.

"Don't forget the uncertainty of the world. When you don't know what's happening in the world around you, this was a tough time."

Even though he is overseeing all North American operations, Reuss says he still has a close eye on Holden -- and stays in close contact with his former colleagues.

"Yeah [Holden] absolutely is [important] because I care about it and I care about it deeply. I talk to the guys a lot about workload, possible future models."

He ruled out any chance of the Commodore returning to North America as a Pontiac G8, but hinted it could return wearing another badge.

"The exact G8 car coming back? I don't know that we'd do that," he said. "We'd get crucified for not having some of the uniqueness of another brand designed into that car.

"We designed a lot into that car for Pontiac. If we did something with VE it would be with integrity for a different brand."

Former Holden designer Mike Simcoe, who is now head of GM's external design in North America, hinted yesterday that the Commodore would make "a pretty nice Chevrolet", but Reuss declined to comment further.

Reuss oversaw some tough times at Holden: the closure of the four-cylinder engine plant, declining sales and market share, and posting a loss in the most recent financial report.

But he was a key player in negotiations with the Federal Government regarding financial assistance packages for Holden and the local motor industry.

He is also credited with bringing small car manufacturing back to Holden (from late 2010), expediting fuel economy updates to the Commodore (new V6 engines), and finding a replacement for the Pontiac export program (the police Caprice).

When asked if local Cruze production was key to Holden's survival in the GM restructure, he said: "I don't know. It's a like a battle or a war. And you look around at what you've got in terms of armament and tools and everything else. I don't know if we thought about any one thing over another. But we had to do it all.

"I can tell you that a portfolio that is based on any one type of car in a million-car market and whole [import] subsidiary set up around it, that's dangerous. You need to have some bandwidth."

In General Motors' submission to the US Treasury last year about its future business plan, Holden's mention was merely a paragraph near the back of the book that referred briefly to a small car production plan. And no mention of the Commodore.

Reuss says he believes Holden is now in much better shape to weather any further financial storms.

"Holden didn't go through bankruptcy or anything like bankruptcy and I think the reputation of the Holden brand in Australia is probably one of the best in the GM world, if not the best. And that's been cared for by a long time by a lot of people and a lot of good things have happened there. It's a great place to be. We've got a lot of challenges here [in North America]."

Reuss says his current work list includes rebuilding the North American dealer network, improving the marketing of GM's vehicles, and improving customer service, particularly regarding warranty issues.

He has taken to dealing with customers directly via his Facebook page. The problem is many customers don't believe it is really him on the other end of the computer, they think it's a helper.

"The customer is going to have some sort of opinion of GM after we come off bankruptcy. So how do you fix that? We've got to fix it one customer at a time. You're not going to do it with some initiative that says 'trust us, buy our cars,' it aint gonna happen.

"It is going to happen if I start calling customers and make sure their cars get delivered on time, putting steering racks into cars that we couldn't get before.

"There was a Cobalt owner who had a wheelhouse liner come off in winter driving and thought there was something wrong with the car because it was making noise. I had two of my engineers drive eight hours in a snowstorm to Pennsylvania to fix the car, wash the car and deliver it back to the customer. This is what we're going to do.

"So there's no parlour tricks on this, it's going to be hard. On the other hand I find that helping customers is very rewarding.

"I can't do it all myself. But if I don't model that behaviour, sure as hell no-one else is going to do it."

He said GM had made promises about improving its image, its cars and its sales many times before, but this is the most concerted effort yet.

"I think the company awareness of the problems is probably larger than it ever has been. For a long period of time -- decades -- you talk about GM's problems instead of what GM has to offer and ... the good things about the company. And I think we're in a position to talk about the good things in the company for the first time in a long time. And so while the challenge is great, I think the opportunity is great.

"It's got to start with leadership and how we behave. People ask how you change the culture in a company. To me it's about leadership and how everybody at the top behaves."

When asked if he aspired to get the top job and run GM one day, he said candidly: "I have no aspirations to have the job I have. In fact, being an engineer in the company is a great thing. And I only did it for four months!

"I can only control what I'm doing today. I want the company to win, that's all."

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