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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: gagrice (Apr 08, 2007 6:19 am) I'm not "excited" at all about Toyota products, I'm just impressed with their success. They are rolling over everyone like a freight train it seems. I don't see anyone stopping them in the immediate future. But as you say, the auto business is like the Wild West, you never know when you're going to run into a faster gun and end up in the dirt. Many of the mighty have fallen in the past. Which is, of course, kind of the subject of this topic.
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Replying to: mediapusher (Apr 06, 2007 1:31 pm)
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why everyone thinks the Cimarron was so bad. I don't think it was a bad little car for the time. I will agree that it was not much of a "Cadillac", but it had a much nicer interior than the other 4 versions. The Cimarron's interior may have been nicer than the CTS's.
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| that the 8-6-4 engine was a maintainence hog, not unlike a Mercedes 600. The 4100 engine was, I think, much worse though, until they finally (after a few years) figured out the problem and fixed it. The Cimarron may have been the only Cadillac without major engine troubles in the 1980's. | |
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Replying to: sls002 (Apr 08, 2007 8:43 am) Let me ask you, if you don't mind---were you old enough at the time to sort of witness or experience the Cimmaron in "real life"? It was really an embarrassment of a car, not only to Cadillac, but to the American auto industry. When it came out, everyone knew it was just a tarted up Chevrolet, and the styling, appointments, ergonomics and running gear---it was all hopelessly outdated. Cimarron was almost a National Lampoon parody of an American car at its worst. And just so you know I'm not making this up, the legend of the Cimarron lives on to this day: Check out this website on "crap cars": http://www.metroactive.com/metro/12.07.05/rev-0549.html) Or this one on "automotive atrocities": http://www.amazon.com/Automotive-Atrocities-Cars-Love-Hate/dp/customer-reviews/0- - - - 760317879 The car was heavily ridiculed in the media at the time of introduction. It was a sad, sad commentary, and I didn't enjoy watching it happen either, as an automobile enthusiast and as someone who remembered the glory days of the American car in the 60s, and Eisenhower in his 50s Eldorado or Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio cruising down Wilshire Blvd in their Caddy convert or Elvis giving away Cadillacs to his roadies and toadies. I remember being really PO'd at GM for doing this. It looked to me at the time like deliberate murder of a famous brand name. It seemed like a senseless decision, or a desperate one. I can still remember talking to this old used car guy named Herb Zisser. Great guy. He had a little lot in San Francisco. One day about two weeks after the Cimmaron "debuted", we were sitting around talking and we heard sirens in the streets. He turned to me with a sly grin and said: "Hear that? That's an ambulance going to another Cadillac dealer". True story. And amazingly enough you still see Cimarron comments, even in 2007, in blogs and auto magazines whenever a car company decides to come out with a cheap re-badged model. I don't think enough people appreciate what a fatal blow the Cimarron was to Cadillac prestige and how it is STILL rippling out there in people's consciousness. It was to my mind Cadillac's "Pearl Harbor", only difference being the fleet was scuttled by its own admiral.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Apr 08, 2007 8:50 am) It is my understanding that much of this rebadging etc is a result of the CAFE rules on mileage averages imposed on each brand. I could be wrong. That is the only reason I can imagine for the Cimarron, "C" MB or the IS Lexus.
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Replying to: gagrice (Apr 08, 2007 2:39 pm) I really don't know why they did it. CAFE sounds like the theory of apologists, but no answer is simple, so maybe there's at least something to it...one of a combination of factors? You might find this website interesting. I really enjoyed reading it. http://web.archive.org/web/20001217123800/http://www.rideanddrive.com/disasters/- disasters.html The author posits that Cadillac was trying to lure BMW 3-Series buyers with the J-body/based Cimarron. Now that is pathetic if true.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Apr 08, 2007 2:50 pm) That's very dark humor.  >CAFE sounds like the theory of apologists IIRC CAFE was an import part of marketing a small, fuel efficient car--anything to increase the sales of more fuel efficient cars to avoid CAFE penalties. A friend of mine had a Cimmaron, manual trans IIRC and it had a 1.8 motor? But I believe the motor was different than the OHC 1.8 motor I had in a Skyhawk '85 at the time. He loved the gas mileage it got. The hope was that a small, perky car would keep some buyers from going to small cars from such as BMW. I don't recall it was vice-versa.
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Replying to: imidazol97 (Apr 08, 2007 3:14 pm) Marketing a Cadillac for gas mileage makes no sense. That's what Chevrolet was for. Cadillac should have gone UPSCALE to challenge Mercedes, not DOWN. GM just gave Mercedes the high end on a silver platter. Even some GM execs were apparently appalled at this decision. But typically gutless nonetheless, to protest very much. The early 90s Cadillacs should have been the early 80s Cadillacs....that would have changed everything. |
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Apr 08, 2007 4:18 pm)
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