• Detroit Free Press, Tuesday, October 13, 2009 10:41 AM

Whatever the historic significance of Susan Docherty's promotion to the top U.S. sales position at General Motors -- she is the first woman to hold the title and will be the only female on CEO Fritz Henderson's nine-person executive committee -- is dwarfed by the enormity of the task in front of her.

"This isn't: Wait three years, five years for a product plan to come in. This is: Deliver results now," Gary Dilts, svp of global automotive for J.D. Power and Associates, tells Tim Higgins.

Docherty, 46, got her start at GM working the midnight shift at a transmission plant in Windsor. She subsequently helped to launch the Saturn brand in Canada, led a turnaround of Cadillac and Chevrolet in Europe, headed Hummer, and led Buick-Pontiac-GMC. She also had a hand in the launch of the Cadillac Escalade SUV, which breathed new life into the Cadillac brand.

"She is very smart and very feisty," says Mike Mullaney, owner of a Buick-GMC dealership in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "She has very strong opinions about the way she wants things done and a very, very good grasp of what should be done."

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