Mark McNabb is jumping ship from General Motors where he was responsible for the Cadillac, Hummer and Saab brands to become the new CEO of Maserati North America. Industry veteran McNabb announced he was leaving GM "to pursue other opportunities" ten days ago, and only officially leaves the American carmaker on June 1, the day it is expected to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

McNabb will start work at Maserati on June 1. He will replace Marti Eulberg who quit after just 11 months in charge of Maserati North America which is headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. She was appointed on June 1, 2008 and since her abrupt departure on April 21, Maserati's Italian commercial director Raffaele Fusilli has been standing in temporarily. Prior to Eulberg's appointment James Selwa was CEO for three years, having taken up the job in the summer of 2005.

McNabb only joined GM thirteen months ago, assuming sales and marketing control of the carmaker's "premium channel", comprising of the Cadillac, Hummer and Saab brands, in the U.S. and Canada. Much of his last year will have been occupied with trying to find buyers to offload the latter two brands as their sales have collapsed. A Cadillac spokesman said last week that there had been "a lot of positive change here" during McNabb's year-long tenure "and we have a lot of product in the pipeline and so we're well positioned for the future."

McNabb arrived at GM after a second, year-long stint at Nissan in the United States. Previously he had worked for Nissan, as Vice President and General Manager of the Nissan division of Nissan USA, after a long period at its luxury niche Infiniti brand, where he was corporate vice president of its global business unit. With two decades at Nissan under his belt he left to join Mercedes-Benz in 2005 as vice president of sales and marketing when the Japanese firm moved its North American headquarters from California to Nashville, joining around half the sales and marketing staff in quitting the company. Sales flattened out during his absence and he quickly returned and was welcomed back to Nissan in the summer of 2007 to take up his old position again.