EDITORS’ AWARD
Diane Miller
Stellantis’s director of the parts distribution centre at Ellesmere Port could never be accused of painting herself into a corner.
STEVE CROPLEY asks what drives her
D iane Miller, Stellantis’s top UK car manufacturing executive and winner of Autocar’s 2025 Editors’ Award, has loved cars all her adult life – preferably in very large numbers – and can vividly remember the day the obsession began.
From a post-graduate job at Ford’s then mighty Fiesta plant in Dagenham, Essex, Miller has spent the past 30-odd years mastering ever more responsible automotive jobs around the world – for Ford, Aston Martin, GM and most recently Stellantis, in the UK, Europe and the US.
Miller is decisive but modest and as a result reluctant to identify any particular secret of success. But if you converse with her long enough, she will eventually admit to one asset: “Finding a way to get on with people.” It is for this that she is known and loved by the people who have worked for her. Having discovered its effectiveness early on, she has deployed her liking for people in every car job she has had, and she has become famous for it.
Miller’s most spectacular achievement to date has been the 18-month conversion of the former Vauxhall Astra plant at Ellesmere Port, near Liverpool, to the manufacture of battery-powered delivery vans for five Stellantis marques: Vauxhall, Opel, Citroën, Peugeot and Fiat. It has been a vital move in rescuing volume vehicle manufacturing in this country.