A new challenge

MICHAEL VAUGHAN From Thursday's Globe and Mail One of the most colourful executives in the auto industry in Canada is returning home to Spain. Diego Ramos, the head of Audi Canada for the past three years, is going back to his home town of Barcelona to rejoin SEAT. SEAT's an acronym for Sociedad Espanola de Automoviles de Turismo — the Spanish auto maker founded in 1950 to build Fiats under licence. In 1986, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group and since then it's fallen into a bit of a rut as VW's other European budget brand, along with Skoda. Ramos, who will become SEAT's product marketing manager, says, "I want to be like Bob Lutz [the vice-chairman and product czar at General Motors]." Ramos established Audi as an independent Canadian subsidiary (previously it was run from the Audi U.S. office in... [read full story]