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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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may be thin after all these years, I seem to remember that the Allante was a disaster for Cadillac, as was the V8-6-4...as was the Cimarron... It just seemed to me that when Caddy tried to make anything other than their luxo-boats of yesteryear, they were almost always an exercise in futility and their product was junk...as time went on, even the luxo-tanks became junk, and a Caddy was made no better then the Vega...that was then... As much as I like the new Caddys, and they are better than the boat anchors of the 1980s, I always seem to question whether GM management and the UAW will ever REALLY figure out how to compete with Lexus, BMW, et al...one would think that Caddy could tear apart a BMW and just replicate its apparent quality and performance, but it does not do so, and I wonder why...
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Replying to: british_rover (Jan 18, 2007 6:44 am) SAABs should be stylish and cleverly designed, with odd technology AND there has never been a SAAB that was anything but FWD. They should be winning rallies everywhere. In their heyday, they were what Subaru is now - including the WRX rally car history  ">
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Replying to: lokki (Jan 18, 2007 8:04 am) SAAB should have a kappa based roadster called the sonnet... SAAB should have a CTS thing SAAB should have a this or a that. I think a new Sonnet would be neat but it needs to be on a NEW small FWD platform not the Kappa.
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Replying to: marsha7 (Jan 18, 2007 8:02 am)
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Everyone wants them to be something else that what they are.
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Replying to: lokki (Jan 18, 2007 8:24 am) That's also a problem with GM. Everyone wants them to produce a car that's just like the person's preferred auto, in styling, power, drivetrain, etc. And then they would pick it to death because it doesn't this, it doesn't have that, they shoulda' done that, they shoulda' done this, etc. I realize we all have difference ideals for a car in each size category. I'm just talking about no matter what they do, noone would be happy. It's like being a stepmother or stepfather, in most cases. |
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Replying to: lokki (Jan 18, 2007 8:04 am) Until advent of AWD cars such as Audi and Jeep in rallies, FWD setup was only way to seriously compete. Saab and Mini were hot setups in 60's. Nobody serious about competing showed up in a RWD car. Saabs, such as red in photo, were also very durable in event of off-road excursion and rollover. |
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Replying to: lemko (Jan 18, 2007 8:22 am) The car was obsolete at the time it was produced. Simple as that. Benz had a 500SL in the wings and it made the Allante look and feel old and stole ALL the publicity. There's really nothing more complex than that about the story. The 500SL's debut was March 1989, very bad timing for the Allante. It had an emergency roll bar deployment, active suspension (ADS) with automatic leveling. It has 320 horsepower, a governed top speed of 156 mph, and 0-60 in 6.2 seconds. Lotsa razzle-dazzle there. It was also available as a 300SL 6 cylinder and a 600SL V-12. Choose your weapon, spotlight-seeker!! Basically Cadillac was totally overshadowed by this new model line. The SL wasn't a DIRECT competitor, it was just the celebrity of two-seater luxury cars. Allante just remained unnoticed. To us, the difference in price between an Allante and a 500SL seems like a lot, and that these cars were in different markets---but to high rollers who wanted the very best, it really wasn't the case. What's $30K to multi-millionaires? I bet Allante owners felt like wannabees, don't you? MORAL OF THE STORY? Don't fight the last war, fight the next war. Corvette got it right in 2006, Allante didn't in 1988. It wasn't a "flop", it was a non-event.
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Replying to: marsha7 (Jan 18, 2007 8:02 am) GM did make the full size front wheel drive cars similar in body stiffness to the Mercedes E-class. BMW's have not been as dependable as either Buick or Cadillac in the J. D. Power dependability studies, so coping a BMW would seem to be a step backwards.
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Replying to: sls002 (Jan 18, 2007 9:30 am) An automobile is a dynamic entity, and its reputation ultimately comes from the experiences of the owners. If BMWs reputation exceeds Cadillac's, then that's where one must look for the answer IMO.
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