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Automotive News & Views Can GM make Cadillac the standard of the world Again?
6098 messages, Last post on Aug 14, 2009 at 4:43 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: louiswei (Jan 09, 2007 5:20 am)
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Replying to: lemko (Jan 09, 2007 5:29 am) |
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Jan 08, 2007 5:50 pm)
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Replying to: merc1 (Jan 08, 2007 7:06 pm)
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Replying to: merc1 (Jan 08, 2007 10:09 pm)
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My father's 1985 Cadillac lasted precisely 42,433 miles before the cylinder head gaskets decided to retire from active duty in the middle of an Illinois snow storm. We won't mention the V-8-6-4 (3-2-0) or the Cimarron. Lincoln has to atone for cars like Versailles, and the unreliability of its fwd 'Continental' sedans, and the failures of its air suspension systems and AC-control switches. Both marques have committed acts of extremely bad build quality and styling excesses. At one point Lincoln had passed Cadillac as a result---despite some of those failures. What is important to note is what both companies did since then to recover from those mistakes. GM and Cadillac have spent billions to rebuild its product line, enhance its quality and driving engineering and performance. That Cadillac has matched its foreign competition in many aspects shows how far they have come. Cadillac, under the aegis of Bob Lutz, has had a voice of support within the company, and thus able to guide GM's pocketbook to enhance the 'Standard of the World'. That voice remains. So now it is up from here. Lincoln, on-the-other-hand, has had no such champion within the ranks of Ford Motor. Quite the opposite---it's design staff having to fight an uphill almost 'Mt. Surabatchi-like' battle against the entrenched dis-connect from William C. Ford Jr. with respect to Lincoln. Mr. Horbury's latest offering, The 'MKR'---a dramatic sedan concept that should be built at all costs---can only hope to appeal to Mr. Mulally in hopes of seeing the light of day. The public gets to vote, but they are not the deciders in Lincoln's fate. Sadly for Lincoln, the MKR represents no less than the fifth show car within as many years that Ford says 'shows the design future at Lincoln'. None were built. Will the MKR pass the public litmus test enough for Mr. Mulally to approve? At Cadillac it was different---the executives took the reigns and directed the design staffs to act---they pushed Cadillac forward from within and turned the game upside down, thus redefining the and reestablishing the brand. As Americans we can only be thankful. I wouldn't want my choice of Luxury Cars to be reduced to 'which foregin made domestically produced, or imported version is available?' Lincoln is in danger of going to way of Packard, but Cadillac is alive, well, and beginning to kick to competition. DouglasR ...as for Presidential Limousines, GM's Alfred Sloan made disparaging remarks about Mr. Truman's chances in the 1948 election, causing Mr. Truman to kick GM cars out of the White House garage. Truman was still using the 1938-9 Lincoln K 'Sunshine Special used by Roosevelt, and had considered Cadillac as a replacement, but Mr. Sloan's caustic remarks killed that plan. Henry Ford II repsonded immediately and provided 50 special White House Lincolns for use by the Chief Executive and his staff. Ford Motor kept the contract, leasing cars to the government for $1 a year---but the company bore the expense of building them. Reagan preferred Cadillacs, thus GM got its chance. Mr. Bush used the last 1989 Lincoln Limousine (specially built using a 460 V8) during his tennure, and Ford declined to build another White House limousine after that, and Cadillac has carried the Presidential livery ever since. |
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Replying to: 62vetteefp (Jan 09, 2007 4:28 am) |
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Replying to: louiswei (Jan 09, 2007 5:20 am) http://my.net-link.net/~dcline/limopres.htm Imperial was used by Eisenhower. |
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Replying to: sls002 (Jan 09, 2007 7:19 am) Yet the differences in that error don't mean a thing, nothing. That is what I don't get, you keep talking about that (which was a mistake BTW) like it made a difference in the overall scheme of things. It clearly didn't. The Allante sucked and even by your own admission it wasn't int he SL's class. So again, what is the point? What are we talking about here? M
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Replying to: sls002 (Jan 09, 2007 7:27 am) M
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