John Mendel’s career took him to posts with Ford, Mazda and most recently Honda where he retired this month after serving as executive vice president of the automobile division since November 2004.

Mendel doesn’t appear ready to walk away from the industry altogether as TrueCar announced on Monday that he has been nominated for election to its board of directors.

TrueCar said Mendel will stand for election as a Class III director at its annual meeting of stockholders on May 18. Mendel would fill the vacancy created by the departure of director Abhishek Agrawal, who is not standing for re-election. The other two current Class III directors have been nominated for re-election at the meeting.

“We are very excited to nominate John Mendel for election to serve as a director to the TrueCar board,” TrueCar chairman Chris Claus said. “John is a seasoned automotive executive with more than 30 years of experience leading great automotive brands in sales, service, marketing and executive management. 

“We believe John would serve all TrueCar shareholders with distinction, and would provide invaluable advice and counsel to our management team, as he has a deep understanding of all of the forces at play in our category that influence OEMs, dealers and consumers,” Claus continued.

Prior to joining Honda, Mendel spent 28 years with Ford and served as executive vice president and chief operating officer for Mazda North American Operations. He began his career with the Blue Oval’s U.S. operations in 1976 and held numerous sales and marketing positions within Ford, Lincoln Mercury and Ford Customer Service.

Mendel also served as director of marketing with Ford of Britain from 1999 to 2002 before joining the leadership team at Mazda.

“I am honored and excited to have the chance to be considered for the board at TrueCar,” Mendel said. “I have admired the progress the company has made under the guidance of Chip Perry, and I look forward to being part of an even more exciting future going forward.”

And speaking of Perry, he recently shared with Auto Remarketing what he called the “road map” TrueCar now is following. The first part of the series can be found here, and the second one is available here.