This is not the absolute worst Cadillac ever to grace the planet earth. No; the earlier 1.8-liter Cimarron is still at large and evading (photographic) capture. However, for the moment let’s consider this mint example that showed up on eBay which solves one of the biggest problems the Cimarron ever had. Its price.
Although the J-cars eventually became adequate cheap transportation, they had a very poor start out of the gate. In a classic case of GM hubris, they thought the Cavalier (and siblings) was going to be a genuine Accord-fighter. Not. Perhaps they really weren’t much worse than say, an early Aries, but GM had to quickly shift the content level, as the earliest ones to hit the dealers were very weak sellers with overly ambitious price tags. Average prices dropped, and for the rest of the Cavalier’s long life, it was sold on its Walmart price. So much for being an Accord fighter.
Due to the second energy crisis and desperate dealers, Cadillac’s General Manager decided Cadillac just had to have a J car too, with less than a year before the introduction. One to take on the established European premium imports, most of all the BMW 3 Series. GM’s president, Pete Estes, warned Kennard, “Ed, you don’t have time to turn the J-car into a Cadillac.” True that.
The Cimarron turned out just to be a slightly dolled up Cavalier, with a different grille,taillights, some brightwork, and a leather interior. Just about everything else was pure Cavalier, including the dashboard and that dreadful, buzzy, feeble 1.8 pushrod four. The biggest change? the Cimarron was sporting a price tag almost double that of its Cavalier donor. Good luck with that.
To make it worse, the Cimarron was kicking what was at one point one of the most innovative brands in the world and a byword for quality, and that was suffering from a horrendous case of rot at the time with the made-of-explodium HT4100 the V8-6-4 needing 2002 technology to work properly. Cadillac survived, barely, and the Cimarron remains as a textbook example on how NOT to adapt an economy car for to be a pretend premium import fighter. And now you have a chance to own one of those textbook examples.
Our featured model is a 1986 Cimarron Brougham (or at least badged as such) Finished in Red over Silver two-tone with a tan interior. Or at least three-tone, considering how the various tan interior parts don’t match.
Power is provided by the corporate 2.8-liter V6 mated to a three-speed automatic. You get a cassette player, full instrumentation and a leather wrapped steering wheel included in the price. The odometer (allegedly) only shows 62,000 miles. I believe them, this car looks like the stereotypical “Only driven on Sundays to church” car. The owner claims that it has been used as a second car for a decade, stored it in the winters and has only had it serviced at his friendly local GM dealership, where it has just received a tune-up, a service and an R134a A/C conversion.
Really, if you have ever wanted to own a Cimarron this has got to be the best example around. It certainly is the best one on sale on eBay at the moment. The listing is here. The Price? $4,995. Suddenly it’s 1982 all over again: It’s WAY too much for an old Chevrolet Cavalier, but of course perfectly reasonable for a mint old Cavalier sporting a Cadillac grille, hood ornament and plush interior. So here’s your chance to prove that all the naysayers got it wrong and that Cadillac got it right with the Cimarron; then, and now.
I don’t know why, but I’ve always liked the Cadillac Cimarron. I’ve always considered it the economy Cadillac. One for those who like Cadillac cars, but can’t afford the larger cars, or don’t want the behemoth Cadillac. Perhaps that was the problem, Cadillac should’ve marketed the Cimarron as the “economy Cadillac, for those who like Cadillac, but either don’t want, or don’t need such a large car.”
Honestly I’ve always loved the look of it. To me, it’s far better looking than the standard Cavs and this looks like what the Cavs should have looked like in the first place. I wouldn’t want one with the 4cyl though, but I did like the 6cyl from that era. If I had the money, I’d grab that Cim right now.. I don’t have my Celebrity anymore and need something to replace it with and this would work just fine for me.
I actually still own and drive my 1985 cimarron. It has the 2.0 and so far with 170,972 miles it’s still running strong. It wasn’t a very bad car.
I have ALWAYS admired and lusted after the interior of this car.
If only the rest of the car could have measured up to the interior!
I don’t wish to go all Zen Philosopher on you or anything, but a economy Cadillac for those who like Cadillac ‘but can’t afford the larger cars’ is not a Cadillac.
There is no problem per se with the idea of a small Cadillac, but it should be something very special – not available elsewhere and of exceptional quality.
Of course in saying this I am holding them to their ‘Standard Of The World’ position, something that probably hadn’t been true for 30 years even in the day of the Cimmaron.
It was very sad really….
Cadillac’s Standard of the World was related to the dewar trophy for having standarized parts that were inter-changable for one car to another. This was unheard of for European cars of that time. It has nothing what-so-ever to do with the goodness or badness of Cadillacs quality.
What does it have to do with then?
What I am getting at is that Cadillac was never THE STANDARD OF THE WORLD
Something like the ATS perchance? Granted, I haven’t driven one, but the reviews have been very positive, it’s quite a looker, and while I’m sure it shares part of a platform with some other GM car somewhere, it’s really the only RWD they have at that size.
AKA, what the Cimmaron should have been.
If the featured car had been the model introduced in 1981, it would have sold. Actually, it would have sold rather well. The V-6 instead of that horrible 1.8, a front end that was completely different from the rest of the J-cars, keep upgrading the interior . . . . . . .
There was a (small, but potentially profitable) market for this car in 1981. But this is quite a bit more than just a rebadged Cavalier.
And congratulations. You finally dug up a brougham that I like. Just dump the luggage rack on the rear deck.
^This. That quote in the article from Estes to Kennard says it all. If Cadillac had just devoted a bit more time to differentiating the Cimarron by using a unique doghouse, more spruced up interior, and the V6 engine from the onset, it might have had a chance. But when they came out with a car that was all-too-obviously a Cavalier for double the price, it was immediately doomed. Worse is what it did to the reputation of the already tarnished marque due to the previous slip-ups.
Even better, as someone else said a few posts down, would have been to make it a Buick. Or, better still, the most ‘European’ GM division, Oldsmobile. Imagine the feature car released as the 1981 Oldsmobile Cimarron for a few thousand less. It could have been exactly the upscale Euro fighter GM was looking for. Of course, that wouldn’t have helped the Cadillac dealers who were screaming for a small, high-profit, upscale import fighter.
GM’s true genius had always been in its ability to disguise any commonality of shared parts by the upper-tier divisions. When they lost that ability, it was only a matter of time before the (almost) end. It was like, “Hey, if the Cimarron is only a bottom-feeder Chevy, I wonder what my deVille is underneath?”. The Cimarron might have been profitable in the short-term, but it really cost GM in the long run.
+1 on the unique doghouse making a *huge* difference. How hard would it have been to give it a wider, slightly more upright c-pillar? That would have brought some commonality with other Cadillacs of the time and been a *huge* step differentiating it from the Cavalier.
Or would they have done better using an A-car as the basis. Larger, but still small. Fill the C-pillar window for a unique look, and cover it with a vinyl roof. Standard V6. Plus if they’d waited for the A, they would’ve had more time to adapt it to make it worthy of the name.
Ah, the wisdom of hindsight!
Ive only ever bought A bodies (on my 7th now) and i have to say i totally agree with you. The Cimarron while a nice car would have been better off being sold on the A body platform…..and if they did that they should have had all body styles available. The A body is a much more solid car than the J body anyway….even tho ive ridden in some that were on their last legs but never gave up.
The problem with that approach is that, even in this form, the car wouldn’t have been a realistic competitor to the BMW 3-Series of the early 1980s, which was Cadillac’s goal. A J-car, no matter how gilded, was not going to fill that role. It was simply a bridge too far for that platform.
I agree with those who say that GM should have made this car (with the distinctive front and the V-6 engine) an Oldsmobile or Buick and cut the price. With that car, you have a decent, slightly upscale compact, which would have sold reasonably well in 1981-82.
Sadly this distinctive front wouldn’t have worked in ’81 as composite headlamps being legal was still three years away. But they could have done *something* other than they did. Heck, just give it the “standard” Caddy front end treatment for that year–drop the bumper down a bit and put slim amber indicators underneath the quad lamps, wrap the light clusters around and put cornering lamps there, subtle peak the grille. Done. Combine that with the roofline changes and you’re starting to have a credible small Cadillac, at least styling-wise.
(It’s also worth remembering that the Cavalier did not debut with quad lamps and an eggcrate grille, that was the ’84 refresh. Another example of diluting a senior car by making the junior car resemble it too much, and a time when GM corporate should have put their foot down.)
The Cimarron was conceived at the tail end of the era when the GM divisions still had a fair amount of operational autonomy. The corporation didn’t generally dole out products or take something from one division and hand it to another because the divisions were supposed to be profit centers; Buick, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile had their own development budgets and their own balance sheets, and they were expected to maintain their own P&L. Typically, if one division wanted something another had developed, they would actually have to buy it, although of course when people moved between divisions, sometimes another division would gain the benefits of the other’s engineering work without buying it.
I actually got to drive an ’87 or ’88 once back in ’88 when a relative loaned me her Cimarron to run some errands for her. Setting aside the issue of price–a big qualifier, I realize–it actually wasn’t a bad car. The later V6 models basically were Cavalier Z24s with better interiors and more mature, if a bit blingy, exteriors. The 2.8 engine had been been repurposed from GM’s fwd midsizes, and by the standards of the day was a torquey engine for a little J-body.
It would have been interesting to see what would have resulted if GM had effected a deeper transformation of the J-body, as they did when they upggraded the X-body Nova to the K-body Seville. (Per Aaron Severson’s Ate Up With Motor article on the Seville, that project did entail some meaningful upgrades vis-a-vis NVH.)
It should be noted that the Cimarron wasn’t the sum total of Cadillac’s post-1964 decline, though a better Cimarron obviously would’ve helped Cadillacs 1980s-through-2010s fortunes.
The Cimarron wasn’t an intrinsically bad idea, although it probably would have worked better as an A-body rather than a J-car. Certainly, the long success of the increasingly elderly Cutlass Sierra and other plusher A-bodies suggests there was a market for such a thing. Its principal problems were that it was half-baked coming out of the gate — so much so that it wasn’t able to recover when it got somewhat better — and that as others note below, even if it had been better-executed, it was still not going to be the BMW rival Cadillac expected it to be.
As I’ve argued at length elsewhere, that was really the thing Cadillac didn’t grasp about the first Seville. The Seville was much better-executed than the Cimarron and was quite successful, but it was NOT really an import fighter and it was so philosophically removed from Mercedes-Benz et al that it wasn’t going to be. It was a decent small Cadillac, but it was not an S-Class or a 7-Series. By the same token, the Cimarron might have become a decent smaller Cadillac, but it wasn’t going to lure many yuppies out of BMW or Audi dealerships.
Wasn’t there a Seville CC which argued that it could be considered a Deadly Sin simply because its moderate success is what led to the Cimarron? It certainly seems like some GM or Cadillac exec figured that if they could make a reasonable profit from a Nova-based Cadillac that had a completely different body, they could make even ‘more’ money from a Cavalier that didn’t cost as much to transform into a quasi-Cadillac.
The trouble was, as everyone now knows, the Seville didn’t look at all like a Nova, but the first Cimarron sure looked to the world like nothing more than a Cavalier with leather seats and Cadillac emblems at twice the price. It was truly one of the most insulting, contemptuous attempts at taking advantage of consumers and I have no doubt that it turned off many of even the most loyal Cadillac owners for many years, if not decades.
Imagine if Ford had tried to pull such a stunt by making the Tempo into a Lincoln. At least they quit while they were ahead by making the Versailles out of the Granada. Hell, even Iacocca was able to disguise the Reliant enough to convince people to pay the higher price for the Lebaron.
(I argued this in the article I wrote about the Seville.)
The last time I saw a cimmaron, it was driven by a girl that worked at McDonald’s and had a cavalier front end.
Join the chorus! Cimarron bad, GM bad, let’s all carry on! Yet these later ones looked decent to me. Not for the MSRP, but probably a fun toy with the V6 if you found a nice one cheap in, say 1993-94.
I saw a new, black ES350 yesterday and other than the giant L, from 50 yards it was pretty indistinguishable from its less prestigious corporate sibling.
But that’s totally different!
It is different because the Camry is an excellent car and the Cavalier was an excrement car.
No, it’s different because this site absolutely seems to hate GM. I do like to browse this website, but the extreme bias against anything GM is irritating.
Really, Deadly Sins for GM? I have yet to see such a thing for any other manufacturer, unless I missed when they did.
I would have to bet that all other things being identical, there are a large amount of GM vehicles that would be praised to the sky if they were from a German or Japanese auto manufacturer. Hell I’ve seen people ask if the Matrix or Vibe was better, and an alarming amount of people said that the Vibe was terrible because it was “A pontiac” and the Matrix would be great because……it was a Toyota. Same for the Corolla/Prizm twins.
Honestly you have to be pretty uninformed/disinterested in cars to buy into the “German/Japanese Engineering” BS.
That said, I do agree that the Cimarron was a terrible, terrible idea. And no, I have not locked myself down to one automanufacturer/a “fanboy”.
General Motors long slide from market dominance to bankruptcy is well documented at this site, and elsewhere. General Motors is oftened cited as a text book example of how to turn a large corporation with an abundance of customer goodwill in the 1950s and 1960s, into a company often referenced as everything that was wrong with corporate America.
The onus is on you to do your research. Otherwise, you appear uninformed.
GM’s main problem was UAW and a bad leadership. The UAW negotiated GM and their workers into some incredible deals, like the “bank job”.
In the 2000s every worker at GM had to work to pay for 6 retired workers. The japanese industry in the US never had a UAW.
It wasnæt the cars mainly, but other things that led GM into bankrupcy, and Rick Wagoneer had a major part of it, because under his leadership GM made som very bad choices.
It WAS the cars. GM cars from roughly 1980-2005 were absolute junk. There were exceptions such as the B Body and the pick ups, but the FWD stuff was crap. GM never had its heart in FWD cars, and certainly didn’t in 1981. The development team of the J Car didn’t even have an Accord to benchmark, and nobody had ever driven one. GM lost market share in quantity in this era, which led to a reduction in work force, meaning fewer workers to support the retired ones. Added to that, with the boomers aging, health costs were waaaaaay up-and America is the only developed nation that doesn’t have social medical care, making it a huge cost for businesses that operate in the USA.
GM’s problem, and this comes from someone who worked for them, is that nobody ever gave a damn about the customer. The really thought that customers would flock to pricey Cavilers with a coffee grinder push-rod iron wonder. They didn’t even remotely start to change until recently, and now they have finally given up on cars and focused on what they do best, trucks.
GM has too much to worry about, so the priority of customers slides.
Aw geez, you can hardly fault the UAW for negotiating a deal that benefited their members. The last time I looked, it took two to sign a contract.
I think UAW works ( even though it should work out more effectively and timely ) but it didn’t work well to the other companies. And there is always a threat of strike to keep GM in discipline, but there isn’t such a thing to keep Toyota in discipline ( I am afraid the structure of workers go back to a century ago for them ) and that’s something needs to keep an alarm of to the general public.
Canucklehead.
No, the cars was cheapened out because of the fact that a lot of the cars price was to pay is medical, retired and non-working staff (at jobs bank). When they charge 20000$ for a car, and 5000$ is to pay workers that don’t work or other costs not related to build the car you will have a problem. You have to cheapen out the cars.
But, in many respects, GM did have a lot of good cars even in the 80s and 90s. B/D body, H/C body FWD, The trucks was pretty good and the Cadillac Seville fram 1992 was stunning. In Europe, if you want to have an car equiped like a Caprice Classic you’ve to buy an expensive Mercedes or Jaguar in the 80s. And Caprices was not the best equiped GM car.
The UAW did like the union did in England, it got the car industri down and to bankrupcy. Yes, a part of it was bad leadership. But “Generous Motors” dug their own grave with thes veru generous agreements for it’s workers. 30 and out another one. The banks job and so on. Yeah the UAW will work for better deals for it’s members, but then when the members don’t have a place to do it’s work they are a kind of responsible too, combined with exceptional weak leadership of GM.
I doubt that the GM engineers developing the J-Car had never driven an Accord. I remember reading that, when the first-generation Accord debuted, Honda dealers joked about limiting purchases of the car by the Big Three, as they were buying so many for evaluation purposes.
Whether they learned the right lessons – or more accurately, whether the bean counters ever learned the right lessons – from driving an Accord is another question.
No, it’s different because this site absolutely seems to hate GM.
Actually, it is different. People who don’t seem to understand this really irritate me, because it’s a lazy way to make a weak argument.
The Lexus ES has never been just a Camry with a different front clip, hood, and leather seats. The ES always had unique sheet metal. They have always had unique greenhouses. Doors do not interchange. They have never shared the same interior layout.
A proper analogy of the Camry/ES relationship would be equivalent to the current Chevrolet Impala and Buick LaCrosse. I think it’s fairly obvious to even the most casual observers GM put much more effort into differentiating those two platform mates than they did with any two J-cars.
Not to fuel any flames, but one could take the perspective that making the Lexus sheet metal unique is even more opportunistic. It doesn’t make the car any better functionally than a Camry, and at least in it’s last two generations, the Camry’s a pretty decent looking car IMO. But because the ES (or RX or other US-market Lexus that’s got a Toyota-badged sibling) looks so different, people will spend even more money. Sharing platforms and parts is fine, but if, for example, Pontiac and Chevy offered only 4 cylinder J-cars, and Olds/Buick/Cadillac offered only V6’s, I thing they could have done a lot better. But that I think that GM’s brand identity confusion started with the Caprice in ’65 (’66?) or perhaps even earlier.
There is an eternal and probably unresolvable debate about whether platform sharing is an intrinsically bad thing. My take is that where it becomes suspect is when automakers start shortchanging the cheaper version to create segmentation — particularly where they try to create three or four or six variants of the same package with hairsplitting differences between them.
If you have a decent basic product, I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong with offering a fancier deluxe-y version of it. It’s like with books: Even after something is available in cheaper paperback, some people will still buy the hardcover or even the super-fancy gilt-edged edition because they like the heft of it, or it looks better on their shelf, or the fancy edition has some extra bonus material, despite the fact that it’s functionally the same book you can buy in mass-market paperback for $8. On the other hand, if the only way you can get the last three chapters is to buy the hardcover, well…
The ES has an enormously better interior that any Camry ever had. That doesn’t make it more “functional,” but it sure as heck makes it a lot more comfortable. That alone makes the car worth the extra money for a lot of buyers. Nice interiors start at $35k. A loaded out Camry XLE runs about C$36k and an ES350 about C$42k. The $7000 extra is worth it; the ES has a much nicer interior, fit, finish and a better driving experience. It’s a 20% premium.
On the other hand, the Cimarron was practically identical to the Cav and cost double.
But the Cimarron wasn’t just a rebadged Cavalier. I mean, it was, but it also had all sorts of options that were unavailable in the lesser Js. You can’t just look a the base prices of each and say the Cimarron was 2x as expensive because they were equipped much differently.
It was a still a bad idea, I won’t dispute that. It was so bad Cadillac didn’t even put Cadillac badging on it until 1983. It was “Cimarron, by Cadillac”, not a Cadillac Cimarron.
This site has a long history of always pointing out failures in car companies; It should. Look at the AMC, Ford, Chrysler, British, French, etc. Heck, Paul hates a car I actually owned and loved, a 1972 Ford Gran Torino sedan. Lets face it, people of my generation knew GM was failing for a while. I was born in 1974, and I know only a few people that actually wanted GM cars. Yes, they had a few sporty cars that kids lusted after, but the bread and butter cars were throw away specials. After driving my wife’s Pontiac Torrent (suv, think Equinox) I can honestly say that if I knew her before she bought it, I would have steered her towards something reliable.
Agreed. Seems like every third day is world “Bash GM Day”
Yes, I worked at Holden dealership. Yes there are many Holdens in my past. Yes, there is a Commodore and a Buick in my garage.
But I’m over the constant GM bashing here. They were most successfull car company in the world for what, 75 years?
They were doing a lot right, for a lot of people,for a lot of years.
And where are the Chrysler ****ups, Datsun Disasters, Ford ****ups,etc?
Example :The Powerglide is no more a deadly sin than the Ford flathead V8.
This is Paul’s site, so he can run it how he chooses. Its the selective memory & bias that annoys me. And, yes nobody makes me come here.
The Cimarron would have made the perfect high-end Buick small car – priced much lower, of course.
As little more than a trim variation of the J-Body, this had no business in Cadillac dealerships.
Buick Cimarron. Say it a few times and it kind of grows on you.
They already had the Skyhawk.
Which missed target by about 350,000 miles. I do agree that the Cimarron would’ve worked a lot better as a Buick or an Oldsmobile. It would’ve at least not become a punchline
At least the Skyhawk & Frienza were allocated unique front clips and dashboards – the poor Cimmaron had to make do with Cavalier stampings.
I know. Offering a premium Buick version of the J would have at least differentiated Buick’s take on the J a bit more from Chevy, Pontiac and Olds.
Agreed on the Buick/Olds thing – look at how many K-car LeBarons Chrysler sold.
Cadillac would have been very well served with a small car dating back to the 1960s. But it needed to be more than a tarted up Cavalier. It needed to exude quality.
I remember the first Cimarron I saw had MANUAL windows. That isn’t Cadillac at all.
I say “nay”.
As a guy whose owned some REAL Cadillacs… 1959 Eldorado Biarritz Convertible, 1973 Coupe de Ville, 1976 Coupe de Ville, and a 1975 Sedan de Ville…. I don’t think the Cimmaron was that bad.
It wasn’t all great… But trying to charge BMW money, for a Cavalier with a Caddy emblem is pure lunacy.
The two-tone black/grey cladding 86 D’oro was a nice looking car… But I would only use one as a more comfortable alternative to a regular Cavalier or Escort… If I needed a small domestic car to commute with.
And to think that Packard was blamed for cheaping out when they introduced the 120.
There was a person on another forum who said that the customers at her Cadillac dealership initially loved the Cimarron, but all the bad press ruined their ownership experiences. As far as she was concerned, the product was fine. It was just the import car bias of the enthusiast press that convinced people that the Cimarron wasn’t a legitimate alternative to an Audi, BMW, Peugeot, Saab, or Volvo; which were the cars that Cadillac compared it to in advertisements. There are other people who seem to believe this.
I actually think this theory makes perfect sense. It’s true that the Cimmaron and its J-body brethren were inexcusably lackluster products, but much of the satisfaction a consumer derives from a purchase is based upon how the purchase is perceived by others, not so much how the physical product makes the buyer feel.
And despite the Cimmaron’s litany of shortcomings – I’m sure there were many buyers who were quite happy with the car – until they began to face ridicule from others for buying a Cavalier at 200% mark-up.
It all depends what you actually buy a car for. If it’s just freeway cruising to work, something like the V6 Cimarron would be fine. You don’t need a BMW for that. In fact, the Cimarron would possibly be more comfy (I’m guessing here). But if you’re seriously into corner carving and maxing out your entry and exit speeds, a Cimarron just wouldn’t do. Horses for courses, as we used to say.
Trouble was, the world was changing, and GM/Caddy management just didn’t seem to get it. For a premium price, a car had to be absolutely the best all-rounder it could be. Never mind whether you actually used all the car’s potential, in the mind of the buyer that potential had to be there to justify the premium price. With the J-car, it wasn’t. Other brands could deliver.
As a young professional at the time, I thought the Cimarron concept was ridiculous. Its origins were way too obvious, with no substantive changes from the Chevy having been made. Aiming this at BMWs made Cadillac look stupid – as though they just didn’t understand what the competition had to offer, or (at worst) incompetent in engineering. Or was it just the finance guys milking the Cadillac name for all it was worth and then some? Time would tell.
A great used buy though!
For a daily driver, a base model Cavalier would do the job just fine. At one time I would have wanted the manual shift, now I would have to have the automatic and cruise control, and being in AZ, air conditioning. All I see in the Cimarron is a Cavalier with a prestigious nameplate.
My 1983 Buick Skyhawk at least had automatic climate control. If my Skyhawk was typical of the J-cars, then I would have to say that the Cimarron was not what one should expect from Cadillac (or even Buick).
I find this Cimarron project rather interesting. It reminds me of Alfa Romeo´s “Alfa Arna” disaster in the 80s.
As per Wikipedia some 26.000 people bought the Cimarron in it´s first year.
I am just wondering, what exactly those 26.000 people thought they were getting when they purchased the Cimarron?
They can’t all have been fooled into buying one, can they?
Maybe it was in fact a simple “what you get is what you see” situation !?
Some of the buyers probably weren’t very aware of the rest of the J’s and were just happy to get what they thought of as an affordable Cadillac. That buyer pool grew smaller as the Cimarron became the butt of jokes.
yeah…its probably not very enchanting to spent that type of money and then being questioned all the time what made you buy this alleged POS in the first place.
Especially when Buick and Olds offered similar cars that were both cheaper AND easier to tell from a lowly Chevy!
Total sales of the Cimarron was about 130,000. So almost certainly a profitable car for Cadillac.
The answer to that one is easy. While the Cimarron was, in reality, a real expensive Cavalier, it was also the least expensive Cadillac. So, many of those early-adopter schlubs surely thought they were getting the bargain of a lifetime, being able to snag ‘The Standard of the World’ for thousands less than any other Cadillac or Lincoln.
That is, until they got their grand new ride home and their neighbors started laughing at them for being so stupid to buy a really expensive Cavalier. That kind of deception and ridicule likely went a long way to keep those people from ever buying another GM product for a long time.
Oh…speaking of dolled up lesser cars.
What do you guys think about the 80s Maserati Biturbos ?
Hardly the epitome of Maserati legacy, breeding and elegance.
They had a horrible reputation yet they easily outsold any Maserati up until then and are considered classics nowadays.
Go to a rough bar and give the biggest meanest guy in the place $3000 and ask him to kick you in the balls as hard as he can.
It’ll hurt less and won’t cost as much as a Maserati Biturbo
nice advice. keep it. the advice AND the biturbo! 😉
Good Thoughts !!
Gem, you win this thread!
Use the search bar. Looks like there have been 3 Maserati Birturbos featured. One looks like it was even drivable!
I was just thinking of how you could’ve done worse shopping for an upscale compact in the ’80s, and that at least a Cimarron would be more reliable and cheaper to fix when it did break down than a Miserati.
I see more Vauxhall Cavalier than Cadillac in this car.The Vauxhall Cavalier was a popular and well liked car in the UK but Vauxhall didn’t have the cheek to ask Cadillac money for it.
“Explodium”,I love that,no doubt replacement parts will be made from Unobtanium
It’s easy to be a car or rail fan, since one isn’t held responsible for business performance.
What customers are willing to pay is all that really matters in business; the rest is secondary. If your job depended on this (say as a dealer or executive), you’d be a lot less sensitive to charges of badge-engineering, so long as the goods shipped.
In the 50s few people were convinced by the “Packardbaker” and most saw it for what it was.The Cimarron appears to have pulled off what Packard wanted to do.
Monzaman, there’s a big difference between the Cadillac Cimmaron and Maserati Biturbo… The Biturbo was it’s OWN car and not a lesser economy car tarted up to be a premium corporate sibling.
For example, like some guys I know, thought Porsche in the 70’s, was doing by using a VW chassis and some mechanicals… To create the Porsche 914.
The 914 was more akin to, say, a Karmann Ghia than a 911.
Even throwing in a 6cyl and changing the moniker to 916, didn’t make it anymore a true Porsche.
Sarcasmo, I agree with you and I was aware of the fact that the Biturbo was not exactly a Fiat 124 in Maserati guise 😉
It just sprang to my mind as the Biturbo seemed so out of line with anything the Maserati brand stood for when it was launched in the early 80s.
We’re getting way of the Cimarron topic now, but the mid-engined 914 had some VW engineering and business investment, and a VW motor, but had no other VW heritage. Whereas the Karmann-Ghia was basically a rebodied Beetle. In fact, one could argue that as the first mid-engineed Porsche street car, the 914 was in fact very significant, as it pre-dated the Boxster by 30 years. Hard to make the same claims for the Cimarron, though one can now buy a 4 cylinder Cadillac again.
Is it really wrong for me to say that I’m kinda diggin’ that Cimarron? Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen one in such a long time, and that is a very nice example of the breed.
not wrong at all.
I like it for all its weirdness too ! 😉
Cant get over the visible screws in the dashboard though…
I’d be surprised if those are real screws since they would take longer for workers to install than plastic fasteners or adhesive. Every second counts in manufacturing engineering; this began in earnest with Frederick Winslow Taylor, the original Efficiency Expert whose Time & Motion studies were respected by everyone from Henry Ford to Lenin & Stalin.
You’d think history teachers might point out a man with such influence. Another was Edward Bernays.
you mean they are fake? to make it look more “genuinely technocratic” ? 😉
Not certain since I haven’t seen a J-car up-close for awhile, but I’d be very surprised if they were. This is GM, you know, not MG (which used labor-intensive but convenient screws all over the place, facilitating DIY maintenance).
Besides, auto journalists rag on cars with exposed screws, as if it’s an asthetic faux pas or something.
Well it does sorta look more upmarket if you don’t see the fasteners. Still, this was the eighties, and the high-tech look was very much the in thing. I’d accept the screw-heads as a period touch.
GM….not MG….lol…good one! 😉
Yep, my ’84 Mustang GT dash was full of fake screws. There must have been 30+.
Per jerseyfred below though it appears these were real.
I had several J cars of that era…they are real screws.
Wow, how did that make past design review?? Shocking, but thanks for clarifying.
Maybe in the late ’60s or early ’70s, my childhood friend went on a field trip to GM’s Van Nuys plant, and recalled being dismayed at how the cars appeared to be “slapped together.”
Oh I don’t know Neil. I’d much rather have exposed screws than the cheap plastic clips they use on everything today.
I don’t disagree, but production economies trump owner convenience.
If it were up to me & cost was no object, auto dashboards would resemble aircraft cockpits, with replaceable Smiths instruments and a standard-width equipment rack so you can plug in aftermarket audio (or any other commodity peripheral), but it ain’t gonna happen.
My instrument panel is electronic and reconfigurable. Most modern big planes use electronic panels I think.
Yes, if glass cockpit displays were standardized for cars, as for planes, I’d have less problem with that.
Every so often I’ll see an older Cimmaron, white with a tan interior. It’s a shame it looks so much like a Cavalier. (I just noticed both names have 8 letters in them.) I think a small Cadillac is/was a good idea….typical GM though, lousy execution.
My J2000 had a blue interior, and like this car: that 1 shade of blue soon turned into 3 or 4 different shades of blue/teal/grey/off-white.
Very typical of GM interiors at the time. I haven’t been in it to count in some time, but there are probably at least 6 different shades of tan (some of them more pink, really) in my ’79 Malibu. I don’t know what they did to get such a fade-rainbow…it’s actually kind of impressive!
Monzaman, I hear ya on that one… The Biturbo was supposed to be the “mainstream Maserati” to be sold to average consumers who wanted an exotic Italian nameplate but, wanted to spend BMW 3/5series or Mercedes 190/300e money… Enter Maserati’s answer, the Biturbo.
When, I think Maserati, I think Ghibli, Bora or Merak… The Biturbo isn’t even on the radar. :p
To me the Biturbo, looked like a Micro Machine or keychain version of the much larger, and more powerful, Quattroporte.
that was exactly my thought.
But I also believe that it was the Biturbos that helped Maserati make it through the 80s into the 90s and then further on into the future.
Today, Maserati is doing stronger than ever thanks to the Quattroporte sales (which in the 80s were a joke compared to today´s).
Yes, I agree with you, Monza… But those 80’s Quattroportes(along with the W126 AMG Hammer) looked so sinister and badass as drug villain cars, on the 80’s TV hit, Miami Vice… but, I digress. 😉
you mean this one here?
I always thought that there was something slightly off regarding its stance.
The rear wheels seemed located too much inwards (is that correct English? Doubt so…)
Some Smith-era-QC copy editing here…maybe give the graf that begins “To make it worse…” another read. 🙂
It’s probably not that bad as you may think. In rust belt, a mint low mileage ’92 Chevrolet cavalier wagon with black bumpers and AC, AM-FM radio has a price tag of $2995 in a ford dealership ( I think it’s worth the condition though. It will catch a lot of attention in car show years later ) and this Cadillac isn’t an unrealistic stretch.
If I ever DID want to own a Cimarron, this WOULD be the car. I love the color combination and the cladding of the later models worked pretty nicely. That said though, all the cladding and leather in the world couldn’t hide its Cavalier roots. Maybe if they had done an outstanding job with the interior (wood trim, unique instrument panel, nicer looking door panels) it would’ve helped this car a bit. The fact was, however, exterior-wise it just didn’t look different enough from the Cavalier or any of the many other J-cars.
I’ve long wondered if something could have been done to the styling of the Cimarron at minimal expense to give it Caddy presence. I’ve always liked the styling of the original Seville, which to me had Caddy presence without mimicking its larger brethren. So I gave some Seville cues to the Cimarron…larger wheels, Seville-style marker/turn signals, and formal roofline. The roofline extension could be hidden under a vinyl roof, and the tail extension could be executed in plastic. So the only serious tooling expense would be the rear door, which I altered slightly at the top trailing edge. However, with a bit more study, the rear door could perhaps stay the same.
The interesting thing to me is that despite using Seville styling cues, it looks at least as much like a mini Fleetwood. Would more shoppers have paid twice the price of a Cavalier for it? I suspect so, and I suspect Cadillac would have made more money on it.
I like the mini-Seville look at lot. This is definitely what Caddy should have introduced in 1982. It’s all about differentiation; if you’re going to charge a fortune for it , it’s gotta look a lot ritzier and more expensive than the plebian donor car it really is. GM learned nothing from Lincoln’s disastrous experience with the Versailles. Funny that.
Only change I’d make to what you’ve done is that thinner C-pillars would both tie in to the direction Cadillac was heading for the mid/late ’80s, and enable the use of wagon rear door frames.
The sedans all had thick C-pillars in the late 80s, didn’t they?
I hadn’t thought to use the wagon rear door frame, which I think has the longer top edge I would need. Interesting idea. However, I suspect it would result in a taller rear roofline than would look right.
Here’s the “Sevilleron” with the original Cavalier roofline maintained. Some might find it a bit Oldsmobeely, but I think it looks great…much more athletic and European looking than my original formal roofed version. To boot, you just saved us $500 per car.
[Edit: my notation in the image says “Seville roofline” but it’s the original Cavalier roofline.]
Surprising how much of a difference changing just the lights and rear deck profile makes! Those changes plus a more “Cadillac-y” interior – and the V-6 from day one – wouldn’t have made the Cimarron a BMW fighter but it would’ve made it way more believable as a Cadillac.
It works this way, but I like your other rendition better. And besides, what 80’s Cadillac had this rakish of a C-pillar angle other than the bustleback Seville? Sure, they were thinner, but they were always near-upright; just look at the downsized Seville and Eldorado.
The front end cues echoing the treatment on the Seville and Deville work markedly better.
I like it this way, it looks as though the “Seville-ized” tail panel follows the same angle as the standard J roof pillar. It also makes it look longer than both the formal roof and the production car.
No, still too much like the Cavalier. The more formal rendition was better.
Agree.
Perhaps, but only because we know what a Cavalier looks like.
that would’ve certainly been more palatable. Thanks for sharing.
Nice photoshops. I think this first one could have gone a long way in hiding its Cavalier roots.
Wow what a dramatic difference that roofline (with vinyl top) makes. Much more elegant. Still not a Cadillac though.
Looks more like an 80-85 Buick Skylark or Olds Omega X-car, than a Caddy.(Talking about the 1st formal roof iteration)
If GM, used a base, like the plusher Buick/Olds X-car offerings, instead of the second lowest budget GM chassis at the time(lowest being the Chevy Chevette/Pontiac T1000), the J platform… Then the Cimarron probably(wishful thinking) would’ve been more acceptable.
OMG! I love your concept design here (the one with the formal Seville roof)! This is the look that GM should have developed for their compact: focus on the luxury look, rather than trying to be a German sports sedan. In other words, they practice what they knew best, given the VERY short development time. When they had more time, THEN try to create a sporting sedan. Very nice digital creation here!
A great looking time capsule. Somebody will buy it and probably continue to pamper it.
My Aunt had a 1986 Cimarron that she bought brand new off the showroom floor in January, 1987. Granted she only drove about 5k miles per year, but she truly loved that car. She always had Caddies, and had taken her 1976 Seville in for service. It had about 60k miles on it and was ready for some expensive repairs – so when she saw the light blue Cimarron on the showroom floor, she decided to trade the Seville in for it. I never drove it, but rode in it a couple of times on short trips. It always felt like a very nice car to me, with a great ride for such a small car. It seemed to be screwed together really well, too. I think GM made sure the quality control was top notch considering the price point of the little car. My Aunt bragged about that car all the time, often referring to it as her “Little Caddy” and how great on gas it was and easy for her to drive. In fact she drove it right up until she passed away at 82 years old. I don’t know what happened to that car. I think it had maybe 35,000 miles on it when she died, and her family probably sold it to someone that destroyed it in a matter of months.
I would like to know what all differences there were and how this would actually compare to a Cavalier. Sure, they were built on the same line, but we know you couldn’t get any other J-body with all the options this had. Not that it could ever justify this thing, but I’m thinking there may have more to it than what people assume.
Exactly, Phil….the seats were plusher, the sound deadening used was extensive and overall the fit and finish were very good. It is just knowing that the car is based on the Cavalier that damaged the reputation of the Cimarron. If it had been a single model made for Cadillac alone like the Seville of the 70’s, it may have been a huge success.
Cadillac tried something different back in the day. I like the cimarron with a v6 engine. Now cadillac has the ats and cts and xts and soon the ct6 cadillac is coming on the top again.
Even 29 years later, I would have difficulty living with this car. For me it represents one of the ultimate examples of General Motors cynicism towards buyers, that seemed to peak around this time.
another gm bash article ok gm isn’t perfect not much was in those days
Not many companies go from the market domination, and a huge part of the fabric of American culture, to bankruptcy in such a long and painful fashion. This car stands out as a big reason along the way.
GM’s market share was due more to Chrysler’s failure to build quality cars and Ford’s failure to be competitive in the mid-priced range (Mercury). Also GM’s foolishness in not establishing a fund for retirement benefits after agreeing to the benefits after WWII. This fund should not have been managed by GM. The only way for GM to maintain market share (and thereby making the retirement benefits affordable) would have been for Chrysler to always make poor quality cars, Ford to never get their mid to upper range competitive, and for Congress to keep imports out.
The turnover from Plymouth Volare to Chrysler Fifth Avenue is interesting though, as the previous one left market to GM and Ford, but the latter one grabbed the market from GM, especially from the Cadillac.
Excellent take on the GM decline and eventual belly-upism. In the period of 1945-1965, Detroit basically had no competition whatsoever. However, by 1965, this was changing. Cadillac, for example, was losing its country club buyers to the S Class Benz. Detroit’s answer was, well, to whistle in the wind.
In 1965, were I in the market for a new car, it probably would have been a Beaumont with 283 and Powerglide.
“…as the Cimarron became the butt of jokes”
To average folks, they didn’t know about any J platform, etc. More likely the car was just too noisy, rattly, and unrefined for a Caddy. But also, cheap gas in the mid 80’s killed sales. There were no $5 gallon pumps in 1984 as thought, about 15 buck now.
The products that truly hurt Cad’s image were the cars with bad motors, like 4100. If told that ‘you need a new motor’ on a 2 year old car, that alone makes someone run from a brand. Average buyers don’t remember the J car, only the Caddys that ‘died on them’.
I think average folks DID know about the Cavalier roots. The problem was that Cavaliers were very common at the time. You would pull up behind a Cavalier at a traffic signal and notice something different about the tail lights -they had little trim strips on them. Other than that (and the relatively discrete Cadillac nameplate) the Cimmaron were identical looking to the Cavalier. So, you would see a Cavalier and then be shocked to find out it was supposed to be. Caddy.
Another part of the shock was that Caddys had never been small cars till then. So your average Joe would look at the Cimmaron and say “that thing is claiming to be a Cadillac? How dumb do they think I am?”
It may have been an absolutely fine car on its own merits, but don’t put earrings on Shirley Temple and try to pass her off as Marilyn Monroe.
What is the point of a small car with a v6 – it won’t achieve great economy…
That aside, a version of this car was sold in Australia as the Holden Camira. As I recall they had a pretty poor reputation and had several major reliability issues. I have not seen one for a decade – no one seems interested enough in these to keep over running. It is probably the only Holden model ever made ford which there appear to be no enthusiasts whatsoever. I really cannot believe that they made a Cadillac version of this thing!
you couldn’t be more wrong about compact V6 cars and fuel economy. I used to own a 94 Cutlass ciera with a 3.1L 6. I averaged around 25mpg city with it and around 31 hwy in the 6 months I owned it. It also happened to have the coldest AC of any car I had owned up until the Electra. It was an ugly grandmas car to be sure but it was very comfortable, quiet and thanks to its lightweight that 3.1 was able to move it around just fine.
I kinda miss that car a little bit lol
That exemplifies how American cars of that size back then needed a 6 for acceptable performance, as opposed to Hondas & Toyotas with their more highly-developed fours that had to be world-class. For example, by the late ’80s, the V20 Camry had as std. the twincam 3S-FE.
The fours in American cars at the time ranged from bad to awful…compare a 2.0 in one of these to the 2.8, more power and comparable on fuel.
Or the Iron Duke compared to a 3300 in a Ciera
or, say, even a 2.5 compared to a 3 liter in a spirit. Much more pleasant to drive. things did get better though…
Amazing! Those go figure ps are better – much better – than the 1.8 4 cyl model managed here, with less anti smog gear even.
Receent Mileage of my 2001 6 cylinder Mercedes E240 (2.6 liter / 170 PS) on a trip through the Netherlands 😉
Not bad at all, huh?
I figure that’s 36 MPG (Statute Miles per US Gal). Pretty good all right, doesn’t hurt that Nederland isn’t hilly. I surmise you weren’t driving all that fast either, maybe 100km/h? Low speed is better.
However, I don’t trust mileage estimates from instruments; our Sienna’s variance is ±2 MPG vs. tank mileage. I think a fuel-flow meter instead of a vacuum sensor would work best. Even so, it did pretty well.
yes, it sure did help that it was a nice day in flat Holland ! 😉
And yes, the displays shows the average speed of 100 kilometers per hour.
the average MPG is around 9 liters per 100 km.
which equals around 26 MPG in your terminology.
Oops, I mistakenly used the Imperial ratio, not US, so I should’ve computed 30 MPG, still good but more in line with my expectations. BTW, why does an E240 have a 2.6L engine? I thought MB named their models using engine displacement.
Metric/US gas mileage & €/$ pump prices would make good nontrivial unit-conversion exercises for students.
Getting your fuel tank full to the same level is quite unlikely even if you fill at the same fuel pump. The can be a variation of half a gallon from fill up to fill up or more. Topping off a tank does not work either, as fuel can (and will) flow into the evaporation containment system and then gets recycled into the intake manifold, by passing the fuel injection system (but not the oxygen sensors).
I have no idea why for the W210 they chose the 240 number for a 2.6 liter engine…especially since there used to be an E260 in the W124 predecessor E-Class. That was in inline 6 with 160 PS though whereas the E260 is a V6 with 170 PS.
My ’01 Malibu is a small car with a V6, and gets 30+ mpg on the highway (a straight and level highway where it never downshifts) It barely has enough power to climb a mountain with 4 people in it. The 4 cylinder 1997-1993 Malibu (and 1994-1995 “Classic” ) did well to get out of it’s own way even on a flat surface. But the thing is, they didn’t get any better gas mileage in the real world than the V6.
The best I have ever seen on my Acura, with 3.2 litre V-6, was 7.2 L/100 km, or about 32 mpg. That as a mild day (no a/c, windows closed) on cruise control at a steady 110 km/h.
The technology of automobile was capable of 26-28 MPG at lower than average cruising speed on a not too big V8 in the early ’90s already, as long as fitted with low-drag bodies with OD on.
how much horse power does it have?
Does anyone know if it’s possible to connect a Cimmaron gauge cluster to a 1990 Cavalier VL? I’ve only got a speedometer and a gas gauge, and I’d like to know what’s going on with my engine. The trim has the same cutouts on both cars.
As an automotive novelty and a conversation piece, the Cimarron excels. As a downsized luxury car, it’s okay. Marketed and priced as a premium luxury ride, it was an epic fail.
If I were in the market for a small premium car around the time this was introduced, I would have just ponied up the extra dough for a Mercedes 190.
I remember back in the day when the Cimarron came out. I used to ride my bicycle to the local Caddy dealership and check them out in the lot. The first one I saw had no power windows, no automatic transmission. NOTHING! But, I have to say, the interior was very nice compared to the other J cars. Even though it shared the dash with the Cavalier, it just looked better in the Caddy.
I actually thought these cars had a nice, clean look about them. Yes, they were essentially a Cavalier, but they looked like they were made better and had thicker sheet metal. I do, though, prefer the look of the first generation cause I’m not a fan of plastic body cladding and I thought the new headlight/grill/hood design did absolutely nothing for the look of the car.
I did hate when the dealers installed the faux convertible roofs on them, the gold tone emblems, the vogue tires, etc. That made them look absolutely hideous.
I wonder, if the buying public thought that it was weird that ads and commercials said it was made “by Cadillac”.
Did they realize that Cadillac were trying to keep a distance there?
The Cimarron was perhaps the ultimate GM fail. The Cavalier was already a bottom of the barrel economy car one step above the Chevette. It did serve a purpose as an economical little runabout. It’s styling (or lack thereof) was average econobox for the time. As far as a GM product, it was at the complete opposite end from anything that said Cadillac on it. The concept was about as dumb as it gets. Take your bottom of the line car, and badge it like your top of the line car. It was also a slap in the face to those who bought real Cadillacs, and had to deal with these things. I’m sure they devalued the Cadillac brand
While this is the absolute worst example of such foolishness, it is not the only one. The Nova based Seville and Granda based Versailles had the same stupid concept. I actually liked the looks of the Versailles, but could never bring myself to drive a fake Lincoln. The only Seville I liked the looks of was the second generation ’80-’85, with the fake convertible roof. Except for the lack of opera windows, this car had a ’70s look about it that I found very attractive.
Opinions, just like you gas mileage, may vary.
I found the ’76 Seville a most satisfying car to look at AND drive.
One of the many cars I WISH I would had bought when only a few years old.
There’s validity to the argument that the Cimarron was the biggest GM fail. Some might say that other GM cars were worse, such as the Vega or Citation. While they were unquestionably bad, the real problem lies with the profit margin. The Vega and Citation were low-profit, high-volume cars, where Cadillac was GM’s most prestigious division, the one where profit was high and volume was low. To put it into perspective, there was a comment that Cadillac sold a total of 130,000 Cimarrons over its lifetime. In order to make the same profit, it’s quite likely that ‘at least’ twice (maybe three times) as many Cavaliers would have to be sold.
It hurts GM’s bottom line when a cheap car fails, but it ‘really’ hurts when their highest profit division takes the hit because it has a residual effect on sales across the entire line.
A back in 1986, a friend called me all excited that his father had bought a new Cadillac. Then said “Guess which model” Deville? No; Eldorado? No; Seville? No;….awkward silence as I couldn’t think of another model….he blurts out “Cimarron!” I finally composed myself, congratulated him….after all, he was excited they had a new Cadillac… In its defense, it was an extremely nice Cavalier, but it was no Cadillac….
Good story.
same could be said to the best optioned Ford Granada.
But the buyers were a lot more comfortable with a nice Chrysler Fifth Avenue with 318 V8 buried in chrome and vinyl. Maybe the roots make a difference.
The Cimarron and Versailles were sold as smaller versions of luxury makes, the difference versus the Chrysler Fifth Avenue was the latter was only an upmarket version of a middle-price make. Cadillacs and Lincolns were perceived as luxury cars only, Chrysler simply a middle-price make with models spread over the price spectrum…..that why dolled-up, wedding-cake white 5th Avenues were the darling of a certain demographic…..near luxury but still acceptable in the church parking lot.
As ALL to typical of General Motors products of this era; the very last year produced was the BEST model made; what should had been the very FIRST year/model produced.
Yes the Cimarron was a failed attempt. I remember reading the introductory article about it in Motor Trend. I thought it looked okay, I really liked the grille, tailights and the seats and dash. It had blackwall tires and a “synchromesh” transmission. That was how some Caddy execs had refered to it. You know Caddy pioneered the fully synchronized transmission back in the old days. The problem was that it wasn’t the real thing, it wasn’t a premium offering. Not only did it look too much like the other Js it really didn’t offer anything special. Couldn’t it have it’s own exclusive engine with a five speed? Couldn’t it have own styling? My brother bought a new BMW 320I in 1980. We were both in our mid twenties then. I bought a three year old 77 Coupe deVille. Despite my love of Caddys I definitely “got” the Beemer. Everything was manual in that car. Steering, shifting, windows,sunroof, no cruise either.Still it was a great running and handling car. Clearly built with quality and simplicity. It was an honest car. I would never have thought of it as a penalty box or a stripper. The BMW cachet was always there saying good things about the owner. As much as I wanted the Cimarron to suceed I knew it had missed the mark.
Pity Bimmers are not still “clearly built with quality and simplicity” with “everything manual in that car”!
The cars that BMW built their legend with in the 1970’s and early 1980’s are “Long Gone”.
🙁
I think BMW has been attracting buyers more interested in prestige than speed, judging by the way many are driven. Same goes for some Corvettes; perhaps you have to be retired by the time you can afford its insurance.
In the late 1990s (1997-2001) Cadillac once again tried to sell an entry-level luxury car to compete with the BMW 3 series, Mercedes C Class and Lexus ES. At that time, it was mostly the AARP crowd that were buying Caddies. The car was a rebadged Opel called the Catera. It was also an epic fail since it was a bit underpowered and heavy compared to its competitors. And it wasn’t the most reliable car in the world.
what is the AARP crowd ?
American Association of Retired Persons, a very large senior citizen’s lobbying group. Dedicated to looking out for the 60+ crowd’s interests, especially in terms of Social Security, Medicare, etc. Has a somewhat liberal (leftist in America) political bias, definitely feels that ‘big government’ is necessary for senior citizens well being.
As you can probably guess from Sarcasmo’s answer, he’s most likely aligned with the political right faction in America. It’s nice to know that he will stick to his principals and not take Social Security money when he turns 65, thus saving a bit more for the rest of us old folks.
True small government conservatives don’t take ANY federal assistance.
thanks Syke.
No…..they paid into it…..so it’s okay……….
Yeah, Syke you got me all figured out, but I guess the author or editor aligns with you… So my humorous entry was deleted, and yours kept. Lighten up, pal.
I’m not right wing OR conservative far from it… Very Independent, and think AARP isn’t ALWAYS about seniors, more like political alliance with the “flavor of the month” candidate.
I also think Bush and Limbaugh are asshats. So much for being conservative, dude. I’ve put more than 25 years into working and putting into Social Security… I’m
Not that old, and still working. So I will collect what I put in… NO one rides for free, buddy.
So do your research before you spew BS… My answer to Monzaman, was sarcasm, nothing more.
Nuff said.
“The Cadillac that zigs”
AKA Vauxhall Omega in the UK.
Junkyard, am I hearing right?
You would actually take a FWD 1980-85 “Dick Tracy nose” turtle back Seville, over a more traditional RWD 1976-79 Seville?
Isn’t that going against your formula of “RWD rules all”? Lol 😉
Yes it is very unfortunate that the second generation was FWD. I have found FWD cars not used in commercial service to be fairly reliable, they are almost impossible to work on without a fully equipped shop, as many otherwise simple procedures require removing the engine. The handling also sucks. But you don’t buy a car like this to work on and tinker with, nor is handling important. I have driven lots of huge ’60s and ’70s cars and found the handling fine. You are not going to be doing any autocrossing with them, but for getting down the road they work ok.
This type of car is bought for one thing. Well, maybe 2, if you count luxury, which has never been that important to me. First and foremost is style, And IMO, the 1980-1985 model had way more style than the first generation. Yep, I’m actually saying that an ’80s car has more style than a ’70s model. Especially when dressed up ‘with all those ’70s style options like a carriage roof and wire spoke wheel covers. The non vinyl roof model reminds me a lot of a Bentley for some reason.
Whether you like this style or not, at least it has style. The first generation seems really bland and boring. And again IMO, the first generation Seville was by no means one of the best ’70s designs, in fact it was one of the worst. In 1976, you could have bought a new Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, or Cordoba. Yes, those are 2 door RWD cars. And this thread is about the Cadillac Seville. So I simply picked the one I like best.
There is a reason why it reminds you of the Bentley (link here) although probably more a Rolls Royce (another link).
When I first saw the 80 Seville I liked it. But with the passage of time I see that the front end does not match the rear (missing the fenders). Also I think vinyl roofs are horrid on these.
You could never make a BMW fighter out of even the nicest, V6 powered J car. Cadillac shouldn’t have even tried and instead stuck to premium large cars.
These cars even road and drove like their Chevrolet twin. An act of desperation and it showed. The beginning of the end for Cadillac.
I think another Cimarron post is like beating a dead horse here, but what the hell. There’s really not that much to say that the car itself doesn’t on it’s own, it’s clearly a tarted up Cavalier, someone at Cadillac thought Ford was on to something with the Versailles, and GM has no clue how to compete with foreign brands.
That latter point is Cadillac’s undoing in my opinion. I disagree on every level about the reasons for the first generation Seville’s deadly sin status – that it would have been better if it were Opel based to be a true S class fighter( think in reality it would get DS status anyway for being the proto-Catera). What I feel is the true sin of the Seville is that it was the Cadillac that for the first time in it’s 70+ year history that clearly tried to play substantial catchup to someone else, and lost. Whether or not Cadillac could have survived the yuppie era with the classic lineup of big Devilles is up for it’s own debate, but I question whether Cadillac would have been so unanimously rejected by baby boomers had Cadillac not created their insipid answers the S class and 3 series through the Seville and Cimarron and stayed true to their image, even if it meant moving the brand upmarket.
As much as I hate to say it, while Cadillac makes some appealing cars now they’re merely competent answers to the Germans at best . A long awaited positive result result to a 30 year struggle, but they are still imitators, mimicking the standard of the world instead of making it.
Those buyers in coast areas were demanding smaller Cadillacs. It’s their ideas about asking for SeVille, and Cadillac was ill-prepared, as Fisher couldn’t make Opels Admirals. But on the other hand, people in coast areas were not willing to buy smaller Oldsmobile or Buick neither, even though they had some well equipped smaller luxury cars with good styling ( Buick Skyhawk )
Lincoln Versailles looks rather nice nowadays, as Ford Granada gets scarce enough. Chrysler Fifth Avenue looks even better as no one ( except few ) drives a Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volaré. But cimarron still shows the root itself is limited.
To many, a ‘smaller’ Olds that was satisfactory was the Cutlass. Which is why name was overused. Maybe if they called their J body the ‘Cutlass Firenza’.
Also, Buick Regal/Century/Skylark sold well.
I also agree with those who like the 76-79 Seville. It was a good first step, then was made silly looking in 1980, and didn’t get a competitive design until ’92. But was always catching up.
The CTS could be called Caddy’s first real competitive “small car”, but some will never accept anything without Benz/Beemer name.
Bill Mitchell’s leftover curse. Maybe it was a good ideal until released to the public.
Buick sold reasonable well, and I think a smaller Skyhawk ( not Skylark ) sharing much with Cavalier but with hidden headlights is a good idea, just not a Cadillac.
The Opel Diplomat B (1969-1977), the top model of the big Opels, was available with the Chevy 327 and Turbo-Hydramatic, so it probably wouldn’t get a DS status due to its powertrain.
Holy cow! First, that’s a beautiful picture, and second, is that the most blatant ’65 Riviera knock-off grille in the world or what? Nice looking car.
I fully agree, Aaron ! But I don’t have any problems with that….
The lesser models (Kapitän and Admiral) had horizontal headlights. These only had straight six 2.8 liter engines with a carb. The Diplomat also had this engine, yet with fuel injection, or the 327 V8
I mentioned.
The Diplomat was considered as a (much) cheaper alternative to a Mercedes S-class W116, certainly when the Opel became also available with a longer wheelbase on the V8, as an option.
Note that these were high-quality cars. Very well built, with excellent fit and finish for that era.
I’ve read that Fisher couldn’t build them that way, as orangechallenger already mentioned above.
I’ve always been a fan of big Opels, as you may have noticed….
My very first ride in a luxury car (after all, a Benz W115 isn’t a luxury car) was in an Opel Admiral B and I was really impressed, till then I only knew the Opel Kadett. Something completely different.
Here’s an Admiral B (B for second gen), as you can see it’s basically the same car as the white Diplomat above. Nice rims ! Also available on the Diplomat, of course.
Orange, I like the Lincoln Versailles, almost bought one.
My uncle would always come from CT as a salesman with Proctor & Gamble, back in the 70’s, and would always pick up me and my 2 brothers in MA, in his 76 Chevy Malibu Classic colonnade coupe…. Then it’s replacement, a 78 Mercury Monarch. Both were his company cars.
Sadly, nowadays, a lot of Versailles/Granada/Monarchs are being bought… Not to restore, but being used and sacrificed for their Ford 9 inch rear ends.
What a waste.
IMHO, the Catera was way uglier than the Cimarron. I recall a skit they did on SNL… It was the family that lived in South Philly and the husband brought home a new Catera… The wife was going crazy over it.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Pontiac GTO share the same body as the Catera (or whatever the car is called in Europe)but minus 2 doors?
I recall the brochure for the Catera. On the front cover, under the name CATERA there were 4 squares, a circle, and then a 5th square. If you looked carefully at each photograph, you would see this weird square/circle combination repeated. . One page showed the car near the Golden Gate Bridge and on the bridge’s support, you would see the squares/circle/square. Another picture showed the car in front of a fancy building with marble floor and in the floor was the square/circle/square. Another picture showed the car near a guy on a bicycle and once again, the square/circle/square was in the frame of the bike.One picture had people holding umbrellas… This time 4 black, 1 red, then 1 black umbrella. Oh yeah, and it also featured that dumb duck (marlette?) and they explained how he escaped from the Caddy emblem… Really weird brochure !!!
Interesting; I wonder what the significance of that square/circle thing was?
The GTO wasn’t the same body as the Catera–it was based on the Holden Monaro whereas the Catera was the Opel Omega. They did share a similar shape though, and probably some other components, given that most Holdens for a while have been Opel-derived.
I just googled the Holden Monaro and the Opel Omega, did a split screen to compare the bodies and to me, they look pretty much the same except for the fact that the Monaro is 2 door. The character lines look exactly the same.
But hey, it doesn’t really matter. The Catera was still a pretty ugly car !!!!
The Pontiac GTO was based on the Holden Monaro, an updated version of the Opel Omega, which is what the Catera was.
I’ve always thought the Escalade was a super sized version of the Cimmaron concept.
Comment of the week!
No, EVERY generation of Escalade made(and is still making) money for Cadillac… Unlike the useless Cimarron, that only lasted one generation, and already wore out it’s welcome.
I think the Escalade saved Cadillac, along with the CTS… from obscurity.
Wow. I can’t believe the size of this thread about such a pathetic car. As a Cavalier it was fine. But a Cadillac it wasn’t. Not even close. One might be worth owning just for the oddity of it, the problem is that 1986 was not one of the best years for GM. I thought about asking the seller that if I flew up there and bought it, would I be able to drive it back to Phoenix without it breaking down.
GM needs to quit sharing other platforms with Cadillac. It devalues the brand. A Cadillac is supposed to be a high end luxury car. not a rebadged Chevy. Another epic fail for GM was trying to use the C5 Corvette platform for the XLR. And the XLR cost more.
And if you really want to open a can of worms, what about the Allante? I never did know what to make of that thing.
I did buy an 83 Skyhawk, primarily because of the electronic fuel injection and automatic climate control. I never considered the Cimarron. I knew about the Cimarron, but did not think it worth looking at. I think a lot of people bought the Cimarron because it was a Cadillac that they could afford.
Cadillac’s ATS and CTS are not shared with other GM brands. The XTS is basically an Impala, although upgraded. The XLR allowed the corvette to be upgraded, and while they were similar, the XLR got a Cadillac engine. I think that the Corvette should have an OHC small V8 as the base engine, rather than the big V8. This engine could be shared with Cadillac making it affordable for both.
The Allante was another misguided Eldorado Brougham, and the XLR was a second go around for the Allante. All three of these were an attempt at a “halo” car for Cadillac, more or less like the 1930’s Series 75 or maybe series 90 cars.
I might drive one for the sheer novelty* and as a conversation piece. People not in the know would see what looks like a sad little 1980’s car with of all things a CADILLAC emblem and ask me what it was all about! I’d have to digest this CC entry and construct a mini-history for those asking.
*or perversity?
Just another nail in Cadillac`s coffin. May it rest in pieces.
One of my best friends in high school had a Cimmaron, white with blue interior. It was actually a nice car. It was an 82 & he got it in 83. The car ride nice, quiet, nice interior, cold cold a/c. My aunt had an 82 Cavy & yes there were lots of similarities, it was not as comfy as the Caddy. Whenever the fellas wanted to ride in one car, we always chose his car. I drove an 88 Cimmaron with the v6 and thought it was a much improved car than the 82. If I find one that been well kept & low miles, I might buy it.
I had another thought or two in the interim. A four? If I recall it had a four cylinder? Who would ever respect a Cadillac with a four? It seems a six would be the minimum anyone would consider, as a more modest version of a proper V8.
Also the name Cimmaron. Pronounced (sim-a-ron or sim-a-rin) it sounds odd, like possibly “simmer”. Simmer? Also the spelling evokes (for me) cinnamon. A spice?
So there’s the thing with the four and then name seems odd two different ways.