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Cadillac's Butler announces surprise departure

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Cadillac's vice president of global strategic development, Don Butler, has resigned. Butler has held the position since April, after a term as vice president of US marketing for General Motor's luxury brand.
As the report explains, the timing here is pretty unfortunate for Cadillac. Butler is the third high-profile member of Cadillac's brass to depart in recent months, following the firing of US sales boss Chase Hawkins and the pending departure of Susan Docherty. Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell told the Detroit paper, "Bob [Ferguson]," global boss for Cadillac, "and other leaders asked him to stay on. Don's here in the office today - and told our team that his decision is purely on a personal level. After three years of putting everything into Cadillac, he is stepping away for some personal time, and to consider new avenues in his life."
Butler says his decision is part of a decision to "recalibrate, reassess my priorities." Whatever the reason, it's an unpleasant surprise for Cadillac, which has been on a surge in 2013, with 30-percent jump in sales on the heels of the hot-selling ATS.

Cadillac dealers get $5,000 incentive for ELR test drives

The 530 Cadillac dealers - out of 940 total dealers - that signed on to sell the brand's ELR for $75,000 or lease it for $699 per month have managed to move 247 of them in the last five months. That's a little less than two cars for each dealer more than two dealers for each car if you need help with the math. With inventories of the luxury plug-in hybrid building up - Automotive News reports a 725-day supply - General Motors has created the Demonstrator Allowance Program to billow the sails on that slow moving ship, giving dealers $5,000 to promote ELR test drives.
A dealer with one ELR in its test fleet that racks up 750 test driven miles between May 1 and June 2 earns the fifty Benjamins, a dealer with two ELRs in the test fleet will get one hundred Benjamins. That will be added to summer incentives for dealers that pay $2,000 for units sold in July and $1,000 for units sold in August, while on the customer side, Cadillac has put "customer discount certificates" worth $3,000 on the hood for buyers and lessees.
Cadillac suggests this is about raising awareness of the ELR, but the question is how much dealers will be able to do for a car that observers - and buyers, apparently - still consider highly overpriced.

Cadillac dealers frustrated over Escalade production snarls

Lincoln went through it during the launch of the MKZ last year, Jeep went through something similar with its Cherokee launch, and now the 2015 Cadillac Escalade has apparently caught the bug: dealer delivery delays because of quality control checks. Automotive News reports that Cadillac dealers have been waiting three times longer than usual - a month or more - from the time an Escalade leaves the assembly line to when it gets delivered. Worse, dealers are saying they don't always know where their vehicles are in transit, or when they are set to arrive. The situation has upset customers who have put down deposits and things have gotten so bad that some dealers have reportedly stopped taking pre-orders.
Cadillac says it has the delay, called "dwell time," down to two weeks, and it expects to cut that to a week by the beginning of September. The company said "a lengthy quality-assurance process on some interior parts" has caused the lag, the report citing additional issues with figuring out which vehicles should be delivered first. A spokesman said that more trucks have been put in the distribution system to work through the backlog, but it's clear it's still going to take some time to set things right, with one dealer telling AN that cars ordered in February and March still haven't arrived.
Brand chief Kurt McNeil said additional personnel are at the Escalade's Arlington, Texas factory to speed up the checks, and spreadsheets tracking every order have been distributed to field staff. Even with the snafu, though, the Escalade is Cadillac's best seller through July.