DETROIT/WASHINGTON: General Motors’ top engineering executive, a longtime colleague and key lieutenant of Chief Executive Mary Barra, is retiring in the automaker’s highest profile executive change since the massive recall of vehicles with defective ignition switches linked to at least 13 deaths.
John Calabrese has worked with Barra in various roles over the past 15 years and has been GM vice president of global engineering for the last three years.
In a reorganisation announced on Tuesday, Calabrese’s role will split in two to improve vehicle safety, the automaker said.
Global product development chief Mark Reuss, to whom Calabrese reports, said the engineering chief’s exit was not related to the recall of 2.6 million vehicles this year. Calabrese, 55, will stay on through August to help with the transition.
Company documents provided to congressional investigators show Calabrese was apprised at least once of major developments of an internal ignition switch probe that led to the recall this year, but his role in the process is not clear, and GM declined to comment. One former GM executive said Calabrese’s exit likely reflected Reuss putting his own team in place in the product development operations rather than a move related to any role Calabrese might have had in the recall. “I rule out the notion that anyone was sacrificed,” said the former executive, who asked not to be identified discussing the turnover. “As with any super big job, at some point you get to pick your team.”
The top engineer’s departure follows the exit last week of two senior vice presidents in charge of global human resources, and global communications and public policy. Barra last month appointed a global safety chief, GM veteran Jeff Boyer, who reported to Calabrese. The company also shifted Robert Ferguson, who is head of the Cadillac brand, back to Washington to help steer the company’s response to the recall crisis. At the time, Barra was asked why Boyer reported to the engineering chief, who might be part of an internal probe into the recall. Barra said she had confidence in the engineering and product development organization, declining to speculate on where the internal probe could lead.
The automaker said global vehicle engineering is being split into two new organisations: global product integrity, and global vehicle components and subsystems. The company said it also more than doubled the number of people assigned to investigate complaints about its vehicles. Reuters
