If you happened to be watching the Oscars last night, you may have seen the first glimpses of the Cadillac CT6, the upcoming flagship Caddy that has been a controversial and well-discussed part of Johan de Nysschen’s radical overhaul of the brand. Plenty of Caddy faithful are wringing their hands and bemoaning de Nysschen’s near dictator-like methodology of “shut up and do as I say” and might have an honest gripe with Cadillac HQ moving to SoHo, but as the old saying goes, “it could always be worse.” Cadillac knows what “worse” is…we remember the Catera, and Europe knows the BLS, a very re-hashed Saab 9-3. But not even those two pinnacles of failure can stand up to what was described by Dan Neill as “Everything that was wrong, venal, lazy, and mendacious about GM (General Motors) in the 1980s was crystallized in this flagrant insult to the good name and fine customers of Cadillac.”
Of course, we’re talking about the overloaded and underpowered Cimarron. It was essentially a Chevy Cavalier in drag, the absolute worst form of re-branding that GM ever attempted to pull off. In the first two years of production, the car was “Cimarron by Cadillac” and salesmen were instructed to inform potential customers that the Cimarron was not a Cadillac. Though, to be quite fair, that was unnecessary as any individual with eyes to see could’ve told you that. GM’s plan was to go hunting a younger audience and the European buying crowd…with a tarted-up Cavalier. Any guesses as to how that worked out? The younger crowd could see through GM’s bullshit a mile away and stuck with their BMWs and the older crowd that liked the big yachts were disenfranchised with the brand for stooping to such a new low. Even with upgrades the car’s cheap feel and expensive price tag kept it from selling well, and the plug was yanked in 1988.
This video is out of MotorWeek’s historic vault, where they compare the 1982 and 1983 Cimarron. Take note to how hard the otherwise very polite John Davis tears into the Cimarron’s faults. It’s difficult to find a MotorWeek clip where Davis goes for the throat, but he pulls no punches, even going so far as to claim that the 1982 car might have a mechanical defect to blame for it’s stunningly poor performance. Ouch.
What a turd. But they gave you gold keys with it. Still remember a few around though. I saw one last week. That Johan guy better not get too wackey or he is going to make more trouble for them.
Who says car companies can’t have a sense of humor? GM sure made laughing-stock out of a good handful of wanna-be yuppies with that one. Hopefully they got at-least a few months of the smug pride they paid for, before beginning to notice the snickers and sideways glances. All BMW and Mercedes owners ever since, I would bet.
” How far we’ve come ” ???
As it pertains to Cattlecrap ?
Oh yeah . They’ve come such a long way ;
Still building rebadged Chevy’s with Cadillac emblems [ as they have since the late 50’s ] … now with rebadged OPEL’s and Holden’s to go with them .. still marketing their crap as BMW – Audi Mercedes [ and now Infiniti Lexus ] competitors that in fact can’t even compete with themselves ! .. Still trying to pull the wool over the luxury markets eye … while continually getting a Black Eye themselves .. still trying to be EuroSnob wanna be’s while those of us smart enough to buy the real deal laugh our @&$es off at the fact that they paid as much or more than we did … for a rebadged Chevy/OPEL/Holden ..
And ahhh … did I mention Cadillac still being the 2nd largest [ occasionally #1 ] money LOSING division in the entirety of GM … globally … 2nd only to Corvette !
Oh Yeah .. Cadillac’s come a long way baby .. from the Gold Standard of luxury cars to pretentious GM turds in Cadillac party dresses posing as luxury cars .
Golly … can’t imagine why I chose a Mercedes … for less money I might add … over its Cattlecrap wanna be competitor
“Plenty of Caddy faithful are wringing their hands and bemoaning de Nysschen’s near dictator-like methodology…”
Bemoan away, but remember this is the guy that turned Audi around.
I have to admit to a perverse desire to own one. Just to see what I could make of it.
The ultimate turd polish, if you will.
It has to be a great car for screwing around with: J-body parts are cheaper than dirt, and I’m sure that bigger valves can be added to the head and a Flea-bay turbo can be slapped on.
It would be the greatest car to own and not care about in the least.
GM must have good cocaine back then to believe anyone would think some leather on the seats and different emblem in the grille would pay $4,000 more than a Cavalier. And, that Cavalier got lambasted as well, just everyone was expecting it to be a POS.
Anyone self respecting Yuppie was driving a Mustang GT convertible back then anyways, until Vanilla Ice came along.