Why a Former GM Executive Quit to Start a Blank-Check Company

Just five years after being recruited for an executive post at General Motors Co., Barry Engle in November 2019 ascended to president of the automaker’s $100 billion North American business, the company’s profit center. Then in August, not even a year in that post as one of the automaker’s top five executives, he quit.

Engle already had been pondering a move to a place where he could be a CEO. At 56, he’s just two years younger than Mary Barra and unlikely to get a crack at the chief executive job. One defining moment, he said, was the March news that clean-energy trucking startup Nikola Corp. signed a deal that would eventually raise $700 million and go public via a reverse merger with VectoIQ, the special purpose acquisition company started by former GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky. Engle reckoned that if Nikola — which had a novel idea for hydrogen-powered semi trucks and little else — could get that much cash, then the time was right for an automotive entrepreneur to make a move.