Foden Alpha left this comment with these pictures of his 1986 Cimarron:
Finally decided to put on my custom made license plate frame for my Cimarron that I ordered last year. I think now curious on-lookers will be slightly less confused as what my car is.
Yes, but shouldn’t it have said “Cimarron by Cadillac”?
That’s how it was identified in its early days.
But by this 1986 brochure, it was “Definitely Cadillac”. Despite the Cimarron’s modest start and iffy image, Cadillac realized that they had eliminate any doubt. Well, and by 1986, Cadillac’s image had tumbled so much, it didn’t really matter anyway.
Foden Alpha posted a couple more shots after a snow fall.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about the exact nomenclature of the Cimarron. It’s name has become iconic, regardless of whether it comes before or after Cadillac. And of course, not in a good way, but as the poster boy of how GM utterly destroyed Cadillac in the 1980s.
Here’s my Deadly Sin on the subject of hubris; mine and Cadillac’s.
“Yes, but shouldn’t it have said “Cimarron by Cadillac”?”
eh, nobody was fooled anyway.
Cadillac’s only contribution was to look at the thing and say “whatever.”
Of course there’s a chance that curious onlookers could confuse the MMC sticker with a Mitsubishi — though I think on Foden Alpha’s Cimarron it stands for Malaise Motor Car.
I was thinking Mickey Mouse Club – Cadillac seemed to call him in for the styling! 🙂
i like this car,when it came out i had high aspirations for it(because BMW was really taking off by this time). As a child i always thought of Chevrolet as a working man’s Cadillac and always enjoyed when i saw styling cues trickle down to Chevy. but this was taking it in the opposite direction. And the idiots at GM blew an incredible opportunity to do what it would later do with the CTS, hand BMW their a$$e$ with a car that really could compete and in all but sales………..Beat BMW and Mercedes. Alas i would love to own one(preferably the later ones)so that i can live out my childhood dream of a Chevy equiped with all the goodies of a Cadillac!! Thanks Paul!!!
Makes sense to me, all Cadillacs of that era were by Cimarron to a certain extent.
Still are…
I recently bought a toilet made by Kohler to remodel our half-bath. Yes it was the Cimarron model, maybe they figured after thirty-odd years it was safe to use the name on something, Cadillac seems to have let that one lapse, oh the irony of the new usage. My wife for some reason preferred it to the one that looked very similar but was half the price, which seemed to be Cadillac’s business model as well. So far it’s working great, plenty of power, lots of throughput, no leaks, comfortable seating position, everybody remarks how fancy it looks…
Did they tell you anything about the durability of the catalytic converter?
BTW, it can be great for one of those new diesel engines that need urea…
I have a Kohler Cimarron toilet too. It’s the Cadillac of Commodes.
GM chose the Cimarron name due to its association with the Cimarron Trail — a connection that few people probably made at the time, and fewer now. Oddly, the 1982 Cimarron brochure contained a (feeble) connection between the Trail and the Car. It’s a name that “stood for the fortitude and skill of those who had the courage to pioneer new territories.”
This was the only western-themed marketing reference that I’m aware of during the Cimarron’s production history.
As for the toilet, I don’t know whether it was named after the Trail, the River, or the Cadillac. None of those seems to be related to a toilet’s purpose, but maybe toilet names work better that way…
I sell them, no…………the San Raphael would be the Cadillac of toilets in the Kohler world……………the Cimarron would be the Oldsmobile.
I had forgotten to mention it has the soft close lid, just like larger Cadillacs, not sure if the Cimarron had it by this time as well.
It’s also the elongated model. Not sure if that’d be more desirable on the Chinese market just like the cars…”Comfort height” is the direction the market is heading though.
Maybe I need to find myself a Cimarron badge at a junkyard to slap on the back of the tank…
I hope this one is injected. Dealing with floats in the bowls is decidedly unpleasant.
I think it has a water injection system. Either way, the intake is enormous but the exhaust is 4″ old-skool cast iron for longevity although it’s not a straight pipe. None of this plastic manifold garbage for me. The intake has a very nice polished porcelain finish on it. I didn’t think there’d be that much point in honing the exhaust port though. I did spring for the very slick remountable gasket though. My kid wanted a fart-can installed but I thought that was a bit too early 90’s fratboy for me, maybe if it was a Japanese Toto instead of a Kohler that’d be more appropriate. The salesman was talking about a government rebate too (just like with Tesla) but they tightened the requirements last year to an even smaller displacement so no go on that.
That looks like a good solid choice, Jim. I’ll bet someone can go quite a lot on a tankful.
Isn’t it interesting, how many car-related jokes we can squeeze out of a toilet?
So is it a 1.8 Liter flush?
1.28l but it has some sort of “boost” technology from what I understand. Kind of a long stroke with a swirl in the combustion chamber.
A turbo flush?
Now Paul, Cadillacs are now specified in Newton-Meters…..or whatever….
Toilets went through their own malaise era just after cars did, and for some of the same reasons. The toilets in my 1960s childhood home (also Kohlers) used about 5 gallons of water for each flush, but in the ’80s new government regulations in the US required new commodes to use 3.5 gallons or less.
Then in the ’90s that was further tightened to 1.6 gallons, and the feeble commodes made shortly after that were Peak Malaise for toilets; parts of the bowl could remain untouched by water after a flush. But eventually plumbing fixture manufacturers figured out how to make them clean the bowl well and not clog (changing from 2″ to 3″ flappers was key), and the 1.28 gallon-per-flush Toto Drake 2 i bought for my current home flushes cleaner than that old 5 gallon Kohler did and has never clogged.
Jim, the “Cimarron toilet” is one of my favorite things from today. I’m dying. LOL
Just had to scroll back to see how we made the leap from discussing a so-called ‘Cadillac’ to discussing toilets! 🙂
HaHaHa! That really is funny and ironic! Love it
Keep your Kohler Cimarron. I’ll stay with my Toto Neorest with a heated seat!!
It’s not a Kohler Cimarron, it’s a Cimarron, by Kohler!
Don’t forget the Ferguson, King of Toilets. Now that’s a man’s flush, son.
“. . . the poster boy of how GM utterly destroyed Cadillac in the 1980s.”
We’ve all heard so many times how bad this car was, but wasn’t the Cimarron’s raison d’entre GM’s attempt to comply with government mandated CAFE standards? The Cimarron, with its higher MPG would balance out Cadillac’s regular low MPG traditional models.
And wasn’t the whole MPG hysteria based on the fake “energy crisis” (which was not a shortage of oil, but more of a “dollar crisis” or devaluation caused by bad government decisions and Middle East policy)? And didn’t this same urgent quest for MPG also result in the V8-6-4 debacle?
So who did who in really–the gov’t or GM? When we get to the roots of our problems, things become more clear.
I was under the impression CAFE was manufacturer specific not brand specific. Kind of how Fiats can counteract RAMs. Cadillac didn’t need to foist a double priced Cavalier on the public for that reason, the Cavalier was doing the CAFE duties just fine as a Chevrolet.
I half agree with you – a combination of inflation (caused by government) and a series of poorly conceived 1970s oil price control schemes (also caused by government) caused a rapid zooming of oil and gasoline prices in 1979-80 – and the fear of shortages going into the future.
However, the government did not cause Cadillac to comply with CAFE by selling Cavaliers. If anyone had the capability to engineer a small sport/luxury sedan to sell as a Cadillac in that era it was GM which was the only really healthy auto manufacturer in the US in 1980-81.
I thought the Cimarron existed to get younger blood into the Cadillac dealerships…?
Anyway, I was a youngster when these were new and I kind of overlooked the “Cavalier-ness” of it and thought of it as another Seville: a new, smaller Cadillac.
And wasn’t the whole MPG hysteria based on the fake “energy crisis” (which was not a shortage of oil, but more of a “dollar crisis” or devaluation caused by bad government decisions and Middle East policy)?
It was all a government hoax; there was no oil shortage at all. And the commonly-stated story that 1973 energy crisis was triggered by OPEC in retaliation against those countries that had supported the Yom Kippur War is obviously fake news. Just as fake as the assertion that the 1979 oil crisis was caused by the Iranian Revolution. The government just wanted us to pay more for oil!
And yes, the government told GM just exactly how they were to respond to rising oil prices. They sent them the blueprints for the V8-6-4, the Olds Diesel V8, the HT4100, and mandated a badge-engineered Cavalier.
It’s always the government’s fault.
“Always” is a pretty strong word.
Jim Klein may be correct–it’s “CORPORATE average fuel economy”, not brand. However, several sources (including Hemmings and commenters on CC and TTAC) state that Cadillac introduced the Cimarron to improve its own CAFE.
As to the whys and wherefores of the Energy Crisis–too much complexity to get into here. You obviously know more about it than I do. But I think it’s clear now Earth isn’t “running out of oil” as we were routinely told in the ’70s & ’80s.
It’s quite obvious Cadillac had been cheapening its products since the ’60s. In the late ’80s, I test drove a Cimarron thinking I’d replace my ’62 Comet. While the Cimarron’s leather was nice, the car seemed tinny, buzzy, and not as solidly built as my Comet. It handled better but didn’t ride as well. I decided not to buy it. The fact that a 25 year old Falcon-based compact seemed better than a newer “Cadillac” really tells you something.
Cars are like fashion–they change. The trendy new luxury was smaller, sportier, solidly-built European–Mercedes, BMW, Porsche. Big, elderly-associated broughamy-cruisemobiles were on their way out, and Cadillac couldn’t (or wouldn’t successfully) compete with the new rivals.
So was it GM or the government’s fault? Probably both, plus other factors too.
“Always” is a pretty strong word.
Only if you always take my words seriously. 😉
Actually, one really could argue that both these oil crises were the government’s fault. If the US hadn’t supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War or propped up the Shah of Iran, both events might well not have happened.
Oh Paul,
Reality has a well-known liberal bias.
The Cimarron was more of a reaction to the shock Cadillac seemed to have that an ever larger number of wealthy buyers were buying a BMW 3 series instead of a Cadillac; any improvement to the CAFE average was just a bonus. To get a car to market asap, they signed onto the J body program in the 11th hour. To be sure, the car was shockingly un-Brougham-like for an early ’80s Caddy, and if the Cavalier didn’t exist it probably would have been regarded as attractive, contemporary, and competitive. But nothing would have made the wheezy carbureted 1.8L four seem up to the task.
Ed Kennard, the General Manager of the Cadillac Division, pushed to have the division get its version of the J-car at the last minute. The division’s total sales were tanking, thanks to the second fuel crunch, and the someone finally woke up and noticed the inroads that had been made by BWM and Mercedes-Benz.
The words of then-GM President Pete Estes were prophetic – “Ed, you don’t have time to turn the J-car into a Cadillac.”
But the division was given the green light to move forward with the project.
And nowadays, industry/market is back to “bigger is better”. Lots of ‘shouda, coulda’. Can beat a dead horse all day, but near 40 years later, why bother?
Many claim Cadillac “shoulda” imported an Opel based car in 70s/80s. But, when they did, we got Catera, a quality nightmare. GM was best to unload Opel onto PSA.
That rear bumper looks like it came straight off a Chevy Celebrity.
I used to really hate these. Now I really love them – as the nicest Cavaliers ever made. Much like the 1957-58 Packards made for the nicest Studebakers of their era.
If I found a nice old Cavalier I suppose I would drive it. But if I found a nice old Cimarron I would absolutely drive it, both because of the novelty factor and because of those great soft leather seats.
The Packardbaker analogy is a good one. The thing is, the Cimarron wasn’t really a bad car. It was a very nice Cavalier that just made a very bad Cadillac.
The next highest rung J-body on the GM Sloan ladder, the Buick Skyhawk, enjoys a relatively unscathed reputation, although it resembles the Cavalier just as much as the Cimarron in every way except for the much more distinctive front end.
As always, it’s generally forgotten that those first year Cavaliers did not have a front end that looked like a Cimarron. It was later that GM tacked the Cimarron front onto a Cavalier. Honestly, that’s the real faux pas GM made with the Cimarron. If GM had just come up with a different front-end for the later Cavalier that didn’t look so much like last year’s Cimarron, history might not have looked so badly upon the Cimarron.
But, as it is, whenever someone spots one of the those first year Cimarrons that looks so much like a later Cavalier, it’s just way to easy to wonder, “what the hell was GM thinking?”.
The Cavalier itself was one of the cars that wrecked the Chevrolet brand in the early 80s. Hard to see how a Cadillac version of a *failed* Chevrolet economy car could be considered a decent car, however it’s examined.
When the economy turned back up in the early 80s, all of the other GM brands bounced back to their late 70s sales volume. The only brand that didn’t bounce back was Chevy–it was down about a million units. That was a combination of the poisoned Citation, the uncompetitive Cavalier, and the antediluvian Chevette. Within a very few years, the happy non-Chevy buyers stayed away from other GM brands, and lots of friends and family joined them.
Perhaps the Cimarron was too small. Maybe they needed to base it on the next size up – what’d that be, the X-car? Hmm, maybe the Cimarron wasn’t so bad a decision! 🙂
GM’s Packardbakers were those late-period Saabs based on already-existing Chevy Trailblazers and Subaru Imprezas, which did as much to save Saab as rebadged Studes did to save Packard.
If Motorweek is to be believed, it was just the ’82 model that was known as ‘Cimmaron by Cadillac’:
I know it’s been 36 years, but man does John Davis look young in that video.
Sadly, we’ve ALL aged…
Looks like that was filmed somewhere in Carroll County, but that makes sense since MPT is located in Owings Mills, which isn’t too far away in northwestern Baltimore County.
“Cimarron by Chevrolet.”
Cimarron built by Chevrolet for Cadillac.
The BaT crowd had a field day with a Cimarron recently:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1983-cadillac-cimarron-2/
In my opinion Cadillac made 2 huge mistakes with this car:
Of all the J-body cars, the Cimmaron looks like the LEAST amount of money and effort was used to differentiate it from the CHEAPEST J-body. (Would the Seville of the 70s have sold if it looked exactly like the Nova?)
And if Cadillac had spent any time and money putting the 2.8 V6 in this car at the very beginning AND made that the only available engine….instead, they even used the Chevy’s dirt cheap/unsophisticated inline 4 cylinder, thus another reason to avoid this car.
+1.
Comedy gold here today. You guys crack me up 🙂 🙂 🙂
Most folks here don’t give a person a tough time, they just go with the flow.
I never understood why they chose the name. It’s a pretty word, but the real river is a typical High Plains river, a mile wide and an inch deep except when it’s flooding. Mostly sandbars most of the time.
The exact opposite of a “compact and powerful” image.
The name was inspired more by the Cimarron Trail than by the Cimarron River. The Cimarron Trail (originally called the Cimarron Cutoff) was a shortcut of the Santa Fe Trail and became quite a popular, though dangerous, route for a while.
“A mile wide and an inch deep” – surely not the image Cadillac was after…..
I’ve asked this numerous times and no one has ever answered. The Cimarron was an evident failure and embarrassment very early on as well as a drag on Cadillac’s image. Why, then, did it have such a long model run (1981-88)? Surely it wasn’t profitable enough to justify the shame.
It probably was profitable enough. Don’t forget that its list price was something like 2.5x a Cavalier, for essentially the same car coming off the same line, with a nicer interior. I would imagine that the gross unit profit margin was quite high, and that overall it was a profitable program even with the fairly low unit numbers. It certainly didn’t have any additional development costs.
There were some development costs. The Cadillac designers put an honest day’s work into the car.
(No, literally, I’m pretty sure they only worked one day on the design.)
🙂
I remember reading about the Cimarron in Car and Driver when it came out. All the PR guff couldn’t disguise the fact that it was so obviously a Cavalier. It was sort of like seeing a train wreck coming and knowing there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
I guess that’s what happens when you have narrow-focussed finance guys in charge – all they see is the potential bottom line and not the damage to the brand and corporation’s image. Yes the company’s in business to make money – but for how long?
Well it may be a few years later than Cadillac was expecting but this Cimarron has obviously met the expectations of bringing younger people to the brand as evidenced by the green and white “N”s on the back. Up here in BC those are part of the graduated driver program and indicate a “new” driver. So well done Cadillac, you have converted a younger person to the brand as was intended by the original release of the Cimarron!
Now to keep them……..
My Other Car is a REAL Cadillac