Automobiles are for most a fashion statement and status symbol and the manufacturers try to take best advantage of that situation. Station wagons became gauche and SUVs the rage yet there isn’t a great deal of difference in them. And the Hummer took the SUV image to its extreme yet the H2 and H3 were just cobbled up GM Suburbans and Blazers. The sales pitch form many models is basically "For $XXXX each month you can make yourself look like you’re important-sporty-outdoorsy-wealthy and of course financially challenged.
I cannot think of any other car that deserved criticism as much as the Cimarron. The car was an absolute ripoff. GM’s attempt to pass that thing off as a Cadillac and charge an outrageous price borders on fraud. GM did damage to their flagship brand with that stunt. Whoever made that decision, and I have no doubt it was a senior executive, should have been fired.
Yes, the Cimarron was unimpressive, but there was no reason Cadillac shouldn’t have had a small car in their lineup, and at the time they were being strict about sharing as much as possible between brands. The problem was that the Cavalier was like a tinny econobox and no amount of chrome and leather would make it a real Cadillac. I suppose they could have come up with unique styling and beefed up the suspension, making it more of a ‘real’ Cadillac, but there is no way they could have done anything but start with the Cavalier platform Sales for a small Cadillac at that time would never have been high enough to pay for a unique car. The Cimarron was just a little too blatant in its sharing with cheaper cars.
^@MarkM
But I thought that “near luxury” (I.e. luxurious versions of standard GM platforms) was Buick’s thing, and actual, dedicated luxury cars was Cadillac’s. The Cimmaron should have been a Buick…or should have been scrapped.
A luxury small Cadillac may make sense today: but back then, American luxury meant Grandpa-mobiles: huge cars that rode like a waterbed. It would never occur to the Big three to go after BMW–“performance” and “luxury” were opposites.
Cadillac learned this lesson. The next time they brought out a small car, it was a good one - the Catera. This one was a reworked Opel, and got a lot of good reviews. Unfortunately, following the Cimmaron hurt it in the marketplace. Drivers in the lat 1990s weren’t ready for a small Cadillac anyway.
I always thought the main problem with the Catera was its styling. It looked nothing like any Cadillac ever, and not especially classy. Until the CTS it had been a long time since Cadillac had been building cars that weren’t closely related to other GM models. They tried with the Allante and it flopped. Even the Eldorado, an interesting attempt to build something different, had a sibling in the Riviera. Probably their most profitable model of the last fifty years, the Seville, was closely related to the Nova and its styling wasn’t very distinctive (until the bustle backed version, which sold a lot worse.)
In theory Cadillac might have been the division building cars to be the standard of the world, but they hadn’t acted like it for decades. The Cimarron was no worse a car than the Seville. If they had changed a few more body panels and been a bit more restrained with the added chrome it might have done OK. Or been less of a joke, at least. There was a fair amount of scoffing at the Seville until it started outselling every competitor and every other Cadillac. Meanwhile poor Lincoln was stuck with the Versailles, a glitzy Grenada. It’s largely forgotten now, but in the seventies it attracted the same kind of hatred the Cimarron earned a few years later. It probably deserved them more, as it really was an awful car.
The 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were the Dark Ages for the auto industry, especially the Detroit 3. Uninspired designs from the Detroit 3 meant low profits, which led to shortened development schedules. The first year or two of production became design shake down that Japanese manufacturers blended into their track development cycle. GM got around the design problem on the Catera by using an existing Opel platform, but couldn’t get past market perception of what a Cadillac was supposed to be and not be. People that wanted a smaller luxury car had other options like BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes Benz to choose from.