With the arrival of Cadillac’s Lyriq electric SUV to the Australian market, it is timely to recall the brand’s lowest point.
And that was the 1982 Cimmaron.
The Cimmaron was Cadillac’s version of GM’s global front- wheel drive J-car.
After a decade of false starts, GM saw the J-Car as its first real global challenge to Japanese mid-sized imports.
The basic shape was created by the Opel and Vauxhall design teams.
Chevrolet, Buick, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Holden, Isuzu, GM Brazil and South Africa then added their own design requirements.
A latecomer to this process was Cadillac.
Its General Manager, Ed Kennard, desperately wanted the car.
He was under intense pressure from Cadillac dealers to give them a car with which they could fight BMW’s 3 series and Mercedes W114/W123 models.
The German marques were taking younger affluent buyers away from Cadillac, never to return.
GM’s President, Pete Estes, warned Kennard not to do it.
He reasoned that the J-car did not have the prestige of BMW or Mercedes, nor did it have the appearance of a luxury car.
Estes feared Cadillac’s brand would be tarnished by what many would see as a cheap Chevrolet with more bling.
He was right.
When it was launched to great fanfare, Kennard told motoring journalists that the Cimarron would be “a BMW killer” and also take on the Mercedes and Audi.
Trouble was, the Cimarron was no match for any of them.
It had no electronic fuel injection, automatic climate control, signal-seeking radio or other niceties found in luxury imports.
A manual transmission was standard.
Even power windows were optional.
And this car was supposed to be “The Standard of the World”?
The target market buyers saw Cimmaron for what it was.
And that was a mass market J-Car being passed off as a Cadillac via lazy badge engineering, and being sold at a 40 per cent price above the Chevy donor car.
Market research showed traditional Cadillac customers were not happy either.
What Cadillac did not have an automatic transmission and power windows as standard?
Cadillac’s marketing gurus did not help the issue by calling it “Cimarron by Cadillac”, rather than putting the “Cadillac” brand name first.
Essentially, they were saying what everyone else was saying.
It’s not a Cadillac.
Expected sales of 75,000 a year were never realised.
It averaged 20,000 annually until it was eliminated from Cadillac showrooms in 1988.
As Estes had predicted, Cadillac’s luxury image took a big hit and, along with other poor product decisions, the brand spent two decades regaining that lost ground.
David Burrell is the editor of retroautos
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