In the early 1990’s Cadillac (and Chrysler) found that the majority of their customers were near retirement age and purchasing their last vehicle, no repeat customers. Most other brands have customers that buy new cars every 3 to 5 years. That is when the shift to sportier cars began, to draw customers in their 30’s and 40’s that will buy more than one car.
I have a friend that has owned 3 Cadillacs, a XLR, CTS-V and a SRX.
Fleetwood Brougham? No thank you.
Cadillac’s most popular vehicle is the Escalade, a SUV that has not changed much in a long time. They brought in the XT series to compete with smaller SUVs, and were not first to those classes. They still have to grow, if they can. One problem with growth in a crowded segment is differentiation. In order to stand out, Cadillac wanted to be similar to the others, but different enough to get noticed. That has downsides as well if the public doesn’t receive the vehicle well. They face the same problems with their CT series of sedans, especially the CT-6. I drove one, and it was an outstanding car. I guess tat Cadillac couldn’t attract enough drivers from other midsize or large luxury sedans, and they had to stop production.
Forty years ago it was my opinion that Cadillac had peaked and was hopelessly running off the end of the tracks proudly offering owners the privilege of exuding ostentation to the max. But that opinion is to be expected from a gentleman with a great appreciation of understated elegance such as myself. But everything from the Cimarron to the 4100 engine were indicative to the flamboyant flatulence of the brand.
As a kid my first job was at a corner service station (busy place, actually) at a time when the HT4100 was just coming out of warranty. I marveled at the aluminum block and cast iron cylinder heads and all the electronics. The boss’s wife drove an 81 Eldorado with the V8-6-4, and I learned a lot because of it.
To be fair, what else were the Big 3 offering at that time? Plymouth Reliant, Ford Tempo, Chevy Citation? Even living in car-crazy SoCal there wasn’t much to get excited about.
My dad’s business partner had a Cimarron, it saved them gas on their weekend trips to Palm Springs. Even as a teenager it occurred to me that if you need to save gas on your weekend trips, maybe you shouldn’t be taking weekend trips.
+1
But, if he was really interested in economy, he should have bought the mechanically-identical Buick Skyhawk, or Olds Firenza, or Pontiac J2000/Sunbird, or Chevy Cavalier. He could have bought a mechanically-identical Cavalier for ~ 1/2 of the price of that Cimarron!
But there are a lot of people going into that category and with the end of the Lincoln Town Car, there isn’t any competition. Who cares if they are last time buyers or first time buyers, as long as there are buyers enough to keep the lines open.
Cadillac put all their eggs in the high-performance sedan basket, a market dominated by the Germans, and offered little to make people want to change. And they’ve been slow on the SUV/CUV market explosion, selling lots of old-tech Escalades, but letting Lincoln get the jump with independent rear suspension models.
If you buy a car that expensive, I expect the internals and externals to last a bit longer…
Caddys are known for cheap electronics from everything I’ve heard. GM stopped making anything remotely reliable in the car segment cough3800cough, and that signaled the downfall of their sedan quality. And I swear they have never made window regulators that hold up.
Planned obsolescence sadly is the norm, but they took it too far.
Do they use the same supplier that VW uses?
So thanks for proving just another lie by Fox…since Hannity and Fox was the one reporting they were banned.
I use to listen to Fox…until about the time Clinton was running for election (or had just won). And Fox talking heads were spouting about how Clinton was going to cut VA benefits just like Carter did. It was abut 1987 when I got the letter from the VA telling me my benefits were being cut (under Ronald Reagan)…NOT Jimmy Carter. That was such a blatant lie. And they’ve continued ever since. They found their perfect audience. Either too stupid or too lazy to question anything they say. There are websites dedicated to Fox’s Lies.
Fox is banned in my house.
The Snopes link I provided attributed the story to an article Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote for the Huffington post, not Hannity nor Fox News.
Your obsession with Sean Hannity (a political pundit, not a journalist) and Fox seems to be getting worse. Have you considered professional help? From a good, independent local therapist?
America has two choices when watching the news, running of the tracks on the right watching Fox or running of the tracks to the left watching MSNBC. The truth is mystically mingled in a soup of partisan agenda from each.
BTW, does Cadillac advertise on MSNBC? And does Subaru advertise on Fox?
The really most reliable source of news is long gone–the party telephone line. One could pick up the receiver and get any news worth knowing. I guess the social media is beginning to fill that void.
Back to Cadillac: The first Cadillac I rode in was a 1951 Model 61. This was back in 1954. I was really impressed with how smoothly and quietly it rode.
My brother has a 1994 Cadillac and a 2003 Cadillac he purchased used. Both have gone almost 300,000 miles with very few problems. A year ago, he purchased a new Cadillac SUV. It isn’t an Escalade, but I don’t know the model. He and his wife thought they wanted a Buick, but they were able to buy the equivalent Cadillac SUV to the Buick SUV for less money. I have ridden in his new Cadillac SUV and I thought it had a very smooth, quiet and comfortable ride.
I thought the Cadillacs had a dignified look until the 1959 with the enormous fins. I didn’t like the looks of that 1959 model at all.
I noticed through the late 1960s through the mid 1980s, the Cadillac was replaced by the Mercedes Benz as the car to drive among university faculty who “had arrived”. The Mercedes Benz in this time period period had a quieter, more conservative, dignified styling. IMHO, for purchasers of the high priced vehicles, it’s more the image than the actual quality of the car.
But he pretends to be a journalist. You should listen to other REAL journalists sometime.
I don’t listen to or watch Hannity.
Sometimes, I don’t know what news source to trust. Fifty years ago, my first wife and I both had interviews for our respective degree programs at a major university. All the way to this university we heard on the car radio that there had been student riots on campus and a fire had been started in the old library, presumably by these radical students. This was the time of protests about the Vietnam war. I was worried that we might not even be allowed to enter the campus. Well, we had no problems getting into the campus. In fact, it was a beautiful spring day. Many of the students were out in shorts and we saw no signs of a riot. After our interviews, I decided to drive around campus and look for the riot. We finally saw about a dozen students marching with black armbands. A television crew from a major TV station was following them. When we got back home that evening and I turned on the TV news, the TV crew had made it look as if hundreds of students were in the protest march. The news media also made a big issue about the fire in the old library. The following fall when we were enrolled in our respective degree programs, I was reading the local paper. There was a little back page article about the fire in the old library. It was started by a deranged staff member in the library. I think the news I heard as a kid picking up the receiver on the party line was more accurate. When I was in 8th grade, I was “going with’” Little Iodine. I attended a country school but had met a girl in town. I had called this girl and we had gone to a movie. The news got back to Little Iodine because one party on our line had picked up the receiver and heard me arrange a date with the city girl. Little Iodine rode the same school bus and from then on, we sat on opposite ends of the bus. There was no way I could tell Little Iodine she had heard Fake News. If this had happened today, I am sure my stepping out on Little Iodine would be on Facebook.
There’s a lot more than that. I watch commercial television for local, national, and international news. I have a choice of 8 local channels for news and 4 channels for national/international news. Duplication of network news in Baltimore and Washington. I also get national and international news on PBS. That doesn’t count all the news channels on cable. BTW, both Fox News and MSNBC have real news, just not at prime time. That’s when they trot out the commentary.
Considering the nearest Cadillac dealer is 70 miles away, I’m surprised at the number of them running around here. Especially Escalades.
To me, Cadillac styling tanked decades ago. The one thing uglier than an Escalade is that Cadillac Escalade EXT pickup.
Still, I expect at some point that Cadillac will fold and so will Buick. It also would not surprise me to see GMC pickups go under as all they do is mimic the Chevy line.
Lots of duplication and yes, with some effort the high lights of real news will be breezed through on all the networks. BBC comes the closest in my opinion to looking into and reporting real news stories. But considering there are numerous round the clock news networks with $billions to spend we are less well informed than when Walter Cronkite was on the air.
And back on GM, etc., how about that tailgate commercial. Talk about phony. Someone please tell me they have slammed a 1950s stepside pickup tailgate and heard it latch.
But even funnier is the commercial for some stop smoking Rx with a turkey getting out of his early 70s Bronco with wipers at the bottom and remote locks. And there’s no top on the truck. Who smokes anymore anyway?