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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
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Replying to: louiswei (Dec 25, 2007 10:23 am) Across the board? There is no evidence. We do know that GM quality wasnt as good as Toyota quality in the past but that is not the same as saying every GM product ever made in the last 30 years was junk. My personal experience and the experiences of other car owners I know are proof of that. Gm had a problem with inconsistent quality but you cannot argue that they never made a quality vehicle until 2006 or 2007. I really havent heard much about MB quality other than Lexus sent them back to the drawing board after showing them luxury cars could be reliable. I'm not going to evaluate current offerings based on twisted perceptions of automotive qualityin the 80s nor am I going to base it on what people are the country club are going to think. The whole "but its a Mercedes" argument doesn't mean much to me when comparing luxury vehicles. I would take the CTS over the C class and the STS over the E class any day of the week. The supposed unreliability of 30 year old GM cars wouldn't affect my decision, nor would the fact that some friends would "respect" me more if I didnt drive a Cadillac. Frankly, the luxury cars that are revered by those in the 50s and 60s may not be what I want to be driving. I like the looks of the C and the E and to some degree the S, but none of them have the visual appeal of the CTS and none of them convey my youth the way the CTS would. Not that I can afford any of them. If Mercedes is the superior car company with the superior legacy of reliability and engineering then the C class should have more power than the CTS, more quality than the CTS, a better interior than the CTS and more features. It comes up short on all counts and Edmunds' long term car has had a malfunctioning sunroof already. I'll take my chances on a CTS with a warranty. I dont plan to keep any car for 200k miles so the chance that the C will get to that mark and the CTS supposedly wont is irrelevant to me. |
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Replying to: louiswei (Dec 25, 2007 10:23 am) Never said that. I honestly cant say where L-finesse came from, but I will say its not pretty and it looks rather juvenile for its price point. Overall Lexus designs are heavily influenced by MB and to a lesser extent BMW designs. Lexus has never been known for styling innovation and I suspect they never will. You wont mistake an STS or CTS for a GErman car.
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Replying to: mrsyj (Dec 25, 2007 6:59 am) I think the car will do well also. I still don't understand why a car that's the size of a C ad E is compared to smaller cars (C and 3) and priced right along with those smaller cars. At that price it SHOULD do well. While there are many people who wont give the car a chance because its American and they hate American cars and would love to see GM go bankrupt, there are plenty of people who will drive a no excuse car like teh CTS I never said they wouldn't. You asked me for reasons why some wouldn't buy the CTS and get the C instead and I gave you some. What's the problem? BTW, the CTS isnt too big compared to luxury cars like the E class, and 5 series. Its only big when compared to the compact 3 series and c class. I originally compared the car to the C Class. The E & 5 were never part of our original convo. The car is the size of an E and 5, but priced like the 3 and C and compared to them also. I wonder how the CTS would fare if it were PRICED like the E and 5? We'll never know, but my guess would be sales would drop. I see nothing admirable about a compact luxury car that costs $40k. That's nice.  Cadillac has been getting good reviews on their products since the 2003 CTS came out nearly 6 years ago. This isn't a new phenomenon. I'm not so sure about that. The 1st Edmund's review on the CTS had it dead last against the Acura 3.2, Audi A4, BMW 330i, and G35. http://www.edmunds.com/apps/vdpcontainers/do/vdp/articleId=73569/pageNumber=17 CAdillacs were criticized in the past for being too soft but they have never hit the quality lows than MB has hit in the last 10-15 years. Their parent company had been rumored to go bankrupt due to quality issues in recent years. (Thankfully they haven't.) But if GM went under where would that have put the CTS??? Maybe you can distance Caddy from GM, but many people can't and won't. Merc may have had quality issues, but what about IMAGE issues? Caddy is no where near what they were in their hey-day of decades past and their sales plummeted. Even with all the talk of quality lows for Mercedes, people keep buying them. I haven't seen any on the side of the road with the hood up, and I still see plenty 10-20 year old Mercedes being driven in good condition. Even with Mercedes' quality problems over the years, the company is still touted as 1 of the top luxury makers in the world by many outside of this Caddy board.  The CTS is doing well and I'm glad, but it's only 1 model. They are trying to regain their image of being a top luxury car but as a whole they are still considered behind Merc, Lexus and BMW. The CTS is a good start, but in order to play with the Big Dogs, they need to have a car to rival the S, 7 and LS, a car to rival the SL and Bimmer Roadsters. Hopefully it's coming.
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Replying to: laurasdada (Dec 22, 2007 10:40 am) That's the last thing they need at this crucial point. Hopefully they can get this problem fixed and it'll be the only problem for the CTS. I personally think the new CTS is a quantum leap above the prior version in terms of style. Not a fan of the front end, but they've done a nice job of cleaning up a bunch of the superfluous, overdone lines and shapes. And the prior CTS had possibly the worst interior style/materials that I"ve seen on a "Premium" car. The new interior works for me. I like it too. I think it looks great! They did a good job with this car IMO. Same issue with the XLR. I like it and am considering buying a used one as a toy. But the interior style and material appearance, and more importantly, the much too highg msrp spelled disappointing sales for the XLR from the get-go. I like the looks of the car personally. But I think if they price the car lower like they did the CTS it would sell pretty well. I don't think the public is ready to pay big bucks for Caddy as of yet.
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Replying to: lemko (Dec 22, 2007 1:25 pm) 
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Replying to: mrsyj (Dec 25, 2007 1:43 pm) That's just too bad...
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Replying to: mrsyj (Dec 25, 2007 1:40 pm)  And, please, Roger Smith... Bean counter extrordinaire. He made 'em cheap and made 'em look/feel cheap... Conversely, our history with Acura/Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Toyota/Lexus and even Mercedes Benz has left nary a single quality/reliability tale to tell (although MBs are bloody expensive to maintain/repair). I'm not preaching Japanese perfection here, but our Japanese vs. our GM: night and day. Having said all that, I posted that I think the CTS is a nice piece of work. I hope GM turns it around, a lot of good people rely on GM to earn a living. But that recall I (and others have) noted here, to most folks is SNAFU for GM. And that has to stop. 
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Replying to: bigo08 (Nov 27, 2006 12:16 am) |
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Replying to: laurasdada (Dec 25, 2007 6:08 pm) Very true. This is old news, but GM was well aware of the quality issues they were having: http://www.businessweek.com/print/autos/content/sep2006/bw20060906_198888.htm SEPTEMBER 7, 2006 Autos By David Kiley GM's Big Bet on Quality To reverse perceptions about its cars' quality, GM boldly extends its warranty coverage to five years or 100,000 miles General Motors (GM ), battling to regain market share amid a financial battering that saw its U.S. auto business lose $10.6 billion last year, today announced an expanded warranty on all its vehicles intended to alleviate, if not remove, doubts that many consumers have about GM's quality being competitive with that of Japanese automakers. |
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Replying to: lemko (Nov 27, 2006 9:54 am) |
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