The Cadillac Cimarron is one of those cars people love to hate: an unconvincingly dolled-up version of a low-buck compact sedan, which debuted with an underpowered four-cylinder engine and a near-total lack of credibility. By the end of its seven-and-a-half-year life, the Cimarron was much improved, but how many of its early shortcomings had it really overcome? I found what might be the cleanest remaining 1988 Cimarron — a rare car, since Cadillac built only 6,454 of them in this model’s final year — and took a closer look.
Almost every manufacturer has a few duds, but some of those failures achieve lasting infamy: notorious pratfalls of misguided concept and/or inept execution that leave a permanent stain. For Cadillac, probably the worst example is the 1982–1988 Cimarron, a subcompact Cadillac obviously based on the much cheaper Chevrolet Cavalier.
The Cimarron came about for a couple of logical reasons. Cadillac was still looking for ways to bolster its overall fuel economy, which was still a problem for the division’s bigger cars. Division management had also realized, with growing alarm, that Cadillac had no traction at all with the affluent younger buyers who were snapping up imported subcompacts like the BMW 3-Series.
When Cadillac had gotten nervous about the popularity of smaller imported luxury cars in the ’70s, they had transformed the compact Chevrolet Nova into a compact Cadillac called Seville. As an import-fighter, the Seville left a lot to be desired, but it was an appealing smaller Cadillac, and it looked and felt different enough from its cheaper Chevrolet cousin that nobody was really bothered by their relationship except car magazine editors (who weren’t the target market anyway).
Since this had worked so well once, Cadillac management tried to pull the same trick again by dressing up the new J-body Cavalier, the latest GM FWD subcompact. This time, Cadillac got overconfident and didn’t bother to clearly differentiate their version from the cheaper equivalents sold by other GM divisions, save for a few token cosmetic touches and some extra standard equipment. This wasn’t enough, especially since Cimarron prices started at more than $12,000 (a relative worth of over $55,000 in 2025 dollars). After some cautious early praise from the automotive press, the Cimarron jokes began, and they’ve never really stopped.
Cadillac might have grinned and borne it if the Cimarron had sold well, but it didn’t. So, they began sprucing it up here and there, adding more power, more features, and some additional styling tweaks. Cadillac stretched the nose almost 5 inches for 1985 to make room for an optional V-6 engine and phased in a new front end with integrated composite headlights rather than sealed beams. A Delco-Bilstein suspension package with gas shocks was offered to improve ride and handling. The weak four-cylinder engines and rarely ordered 4-speed manual transmission were dropped after 1986, the Delco-Bilstein package became standard, and an electronic instrument cluster became optional.
This brings us to the 1988 Cimarron pictured here. It now came with standard 14-inch rather than 13-inch alloy wheels (although they still look dinky to modern eyes) and the ribbed lower body side accent moldings that had been a $450 option in 1987. Standard equipment was more lavish than ever, including air conditioning, power windows and mirrors, cruise control, a power driver’s seat, and leather upholstery. Unfortunately, this further escalated the list price, which now started at $16,071 (a relative worth of around $48,000 in 2025). Selecting all the available options would push the MSRP over $19,000 (a relative worth of almost $56,000), although Cimarron sales were so weak that attractive discounts were probably not hard to come by — 1987 Cimarron production had totaled only 14,561, down more than 40 percent from 1986.
There’s always been a small contingent of Cimarron defenders who insist the final 1988 car is what the Cimarron should have been from the start. To assess it properly, I wanted to find a really nice example — with cars as widely disdained as this, showing beat-up, weathered survivors tends to inspire extra vitriol. This red ’88 had about 61,000 miles when it went up for sale in mid-2025, but it’s as close to pristine as you’re likely to find, aided what I assume was a very thorough detailing.
The fundamental problem with the Cimarron was still the same as it had always been: It looked like a four-door Cavalier to an extent that made it hard to take seriously. This was not helped by the fact that by 1984, Chevrolet had made the Cavalier look more Cimarron-like, with dual rectangular headlights and an eggcrate grille. The U.S. J-car wasn’t a terribly inspired product even when it was fresh out of the box, and within a few years, GM was leaning heavily on cut-rate pricing to keep it competitive with more polished Japanese rivals. These were not good associations for a Cadillac intended to compete with upscale European luxury cars.
Even if we set aside the Cavalier issue for the moment, looking at the Cimarron in profile reveals a variety of design shortcomings. While Cadillac had stretched the nose for 1985, the rear end hadn’t gotten the same treatment, and the downward slope of the rear deck made it look even more bob-tailed than it actually was. Also, while there’s nothing wrong with some tasteful chrome accents, combining the bright drip molding with the bright window reveals, the bright door handle trim, and the execrable decklid luggage rack/spoiler looks awfully tacky, like cheap aftermarket dress-up.
With the composite headlights and power-bulge grille, the nose of the later-production Cimarron looked a lot like the contemporary Cadillac De Ville. While this added “brand identity,” the Cimarron was over 6 inches narrower than the De Ville, so the front-end treatment looked out of proportion to the rest of the car.
Like the Cavalier, the Cimarron was quite narrow: Overall width was only 65 inches, narrower than some Japanese sedans that were constrained by JDM tax classifications. It was tall, too. Although the 1988 Cimarron specs list an overall height of 52.1 inches, that was with passengers and cargo, an old trick — unladen height was 55 inches. The BMW E30 3-Series (one of the Cimarron’s intended rivals) was almost as tall and a bit narrower still, but the Cimarron looked like a bigger car that had been sectioned through the middle.
This car’s two-tone treatment doesn’t help: The Autumn Red paint is attractive, but the darker red over the silver lower body makes the body seem taller, as if the car were standing on tiptoes.
Inside, we have what’s clearly a Cavalier sedan dashboard, with a different steering wheel, a grid-pattern instrument panel trim plate, some dash pad stitching, and a really eye-popping color treatment.
I’m developing an inexplicable soft spot for these lurid reds, I think because the oversaturated color coordination reminds me of the Italian horror-thrillers of the ’70s. This is to say that I like looking at it; I’m not sure I’d want to live with it; and I certainly don’t blame you if you recoil from the sight of it.
Equally vivid is the electronic instrument cluster, a $238 option. I give Cadillac some credit for including full instrumentation (although you got that with the standard analog instrument panel as well), but the horizontal bar graph tachometer seems useless. Also, the fancier instrument panel trim plate doesn’t save you from seeing the same number of exposed screws as on a Cavalier VL costing half as much.
An area where I think the Cimarron took a step down from its sibling was replacing the climate control sliders with an array of tiny Chiclet buttons. At least the stereo still had knobs for volume control and the radio tuner.
If you weren’t into leather, you could substitute Caspian cloth inserts for a $100 credit. I don’t think there was any option to tone down the color saturation.
Rear seat room was a shortcoming of this platform, literally. Cadillac might just as well have skipped the seat-back map pockets, since putting anything in them just cut into occupants’ already-limited knee room. The fold-down rear armrest also seems much too narrow for two rear-seat passengers to use it at the same time. I’d hate to put a couple of kids back there and listen to them fight over the armrest.
Trunk space wasn’t generous either: Cadillac claimed a modest 12.0 cubic feet of usable luggage volume.
A 5-speed manual transmission was theoretically standard on the Cimarron in 1988, but according to Automotive News, only 145 cars were actually built with it. The 5-speed had better performance and highway fuel economy than the 3-speed automatic, which had a taller axle ratio to compensate for its lack of an overdrive top gear.
I did find one surviving 5-speed 1988 Cimarron, although the only pictures of it were rather small, and it doesn’t appear to be in nearly as nice shape overall as the well-scrubbed red car.
The sole engine in the 1987–1988 Cimarron was the “Generation II” Chevrolet 2.8-liter V-6, with electronic multiport fuel injection. Even at the time, its modest 125 hp was no great shakes, but it had 160 lb-ft of torque, which gave the 2,800 lb Cimarron decent acceleration. The (adjusted) EPA combined ratings suggested overall gas mileage of around 20 mpg with automatic. (The 5-speed was good for an extra 2 mpg on the highway.)
Even with the now-standard Delco-Bilstein gas shocks, the Cimarron still handled like a Cavalier, and it got unsettled on rough pavement. Chassis composure had always been an area where the J-car fell well short of rivals like the Honda Accord, and the Cimarron still hadn’t caught up. Then again, that kind of refinement had never been a priority for Cadillac, whose chassis engineers seemed to believe that only poor people drove on anything other than smooth asphalt. Pontiac in this era was busily cultivating a bargain-store-BMW image with cars like the Grand Am and 6000, but Cimarron was no longer even trying to do that, and the thought that Cadillac had ever expected this car to compete with the 3-Series already seemed absurd.
So, who was the audience for this car? Probably older Cadillac buyers — retired single people or empty-nesters who liked traditional Cadillac luxury, but who wanted an easy-to-park second car for in-town errands or thought the downsized De Ville was just too big. Judging by the trajectory of Cimarron sales, that wasn’t a big market. 1988 production fell to 6,454, and Cadillac finally gave up after this year.
At the risk of antagonizing Mercedes-Benz fans, I can’t help comparing the Cimarron to the contemporary Mercedes W201 190E sedan. The W201 was about the same size as the Cimarron and even more deficient in interior space; I always found the 190E borderline cramped, and I’m not that tall. The cheaper four-cylinder 190E 2.3 and 190D models weren’t terribly quick, and U.S. prices grew increasingly outrageous by the late ’80s: A 1988 190E 2.6 cost about twice as much as a Cimarron, which wasn’t a bargain. The W201 had plenty of virtues — it had that old-school Mercedes carved-from-a-solid-billet solidity, and a vastly more sophisticated chassis than the clunky GM J-car — but a lot of Americans bought it for the badge more than anything else.
The Cadillac brand didn’t have that kind of cachet anymore, and it had practically none at all with the kind of buyers Cadillac hoped to reach with the Cimarron. Cadillac could have tried harder — taking the time and spending the money to better differentiate the Cimarron from its platform-mates, offering the V-6 from the start, maybe starting with the bigger A-platform instead of the J-car — but the results probably wouldn’t have been all that different from this 1988 car. The demographic Cadillac wanted wasn’t one whose tastes and priorities they understood, so all they ended up attracting was a tiny subset of their existing customer base.
In the end, the Cimarron strikes me as desperate and a little sad, the flailing of a once-great automaker that was falling out of fashion in ways that they had no idea how to fix. It’s still embarrassing, I guess, but somehow, I no longer feel like laughing.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: Cimarron by Cadillac – GM’s Deadly Sin #10 by Cadillac (by Paul N)
Vintage Reviews: Cadillac Cimarron 1982-1985 – Clippings From The Mediocrity Files
Vintage R&T Review: 1983 Cadillac Cimarron – An Improved Upscale J-Car (by Rich Baron)
Curbside Classic: 1984 Cadillac Cimarron – Poor Execution Meets Bad Timing (by Eric703)
eBay Find: 1986 Cadillac Cimarron – D’ Oh No. (by Gerardo Solis)
Curbside Capsule: 1988 Cadillac Cimarron – Flagship Of Mediocrity (by Jon Stephenson)
Cohort Classic: 1987-88 Cadillac Cimarron – Could This Be The Nicest One Left? (by Tom Klockau)
I’m not sure I agree that the horizontal digital tachometer is useless. Honda gave me one in my 2020 Odyssey, and it provides helpful information that I can quickly process. It’s not as though a Cimarron driver was routinely trying to manually shift his 3-speed automatic right before redline (even assuming GM let him do such a thing.) I guess a lot would depend on how responsive the unit was – that is, how close to “real time” the little bars were – and that’s more a function of 1988 tech than the horizontal configuration.
Perhaps the Cimarron was the most honest car GM ever built. Because it exposed the whole Sloan Ladder thing for what it was: Nothing but a game that preyed on consumers’ illusions and vanities.
This car helped even the most oblivious person see through the charade.
The most oblivious ones were buying the Cimarron.
The Sloan ladder had essentially collapsed a long time earlier. A 1955 Chevy Nomad wagon was more expensive than a ’55 Buick Century hardtop. Cadillac still enjoyed a certain prestige image, but everyone knew you could buy a Buick Electra 225 or Olds 98 LS that was essentially the same but at a significant discount. But the Cadillac sold because of the prestige still associated with the name.
For what it’s worth the seats look quite inviting!
None of the improvements Cadillac made to the Cimarron – mainly the V6 and rarely-ordered 5 speed – helped sales because the competition was moving much faster. By the time Cadillac stuffed the Chevy V6 under the hood in 1985, you could instead buy a newly-redesigned Nissan Maxima with a 3L OHC V6 and four-speed automatic (something the Cimarron never got), along with a more upscale interior ambiance and several features the Cadillac didn’t have (power passenger seat, fold-down rear seatbacks, cornering lights, pushbutton keyless entry). Or you could get a Toyota Cressida which was also a nicer all-around package. By 1988, several ostensibly downmarket cars compared favorably to a Cimarron – Accord, Camry (now with available V6), Mazda 626 Turbo, to pick a few, before you even get to European imports. The styling changes made over the years failed to disguise the Cavalier connection either inside or out, and most of the changes they did make just made it uglier.
The Cressida is the pick of the bunch: brilliant quality, smooth ride and red velour.
Richard: That’s interesting because I’m not a Toyota fan. However, I would love to pick up a nice old Cressida. To me, it’s the Toyota version of the Cimarron.
“To me, it’s the Toyota version of the Cimarron”
To you and no one else. What similarities are you seeing between the Chevy Cavalier and the full size RWD inline-6 Cressida? Do you think the Cressida was a dolled up Corolla?
Holy cow Petrichor. Don’t get all bent out of shape on this. Your leanings are obvious here.
What I was saying and yes, to me, the two cars are similar in size. Both are “fancier” versions from their respective companies (GM and Toyota). Both had nicer seats and more features. Both came with 6 cyl engines (latter part of Cimarron). So yes. I see a lot of similarities.
It’s MY opinion. Don’t get all bent on that.
Dan, did you read your comment below accusing others of “the same tired old BS”? Or forget that you have a habit of getting bent out of shape with lengthy comments whenever a negative article on GM appears here?
I don’t think my comment was an insult or overreaction. More of a bluntly stated hypothesis, really–you very may well be the only person who sees a similarity between a Cavalier and a Cressida.
“There’s always been a small contingent of Cimarron defenders who insist the final 1988 car is what the Cimarron should have been from the start.”
Lots of GM (Corvair, Fiero, etc.), yes.
This? Surely you jest. Especially with the Cavalier dashboard.
A retired acquaintance always drove Cadillacs, usually a pair of matching Sedan deVilles. He bought his wife one of these in the same red over silver. She absolutely loved it, mostly because it was smaller than all of her previous cars. Like the Cavalier, it performed adequately for an around town errand car.
On a Corporate profit level, the Cimarron was a success
To be fair, all of the differences did not cost GM much.
No more than any high-trim version of any Chevy or Olds, but even when strongly discounted they generated 2x the revenue as the typical Cavalier.
If they did not make the Cimarron, either the production capacity would not have been used, or they would have been making extra Cavaliers and have to lower the prices of all Cavaliers in order to sell a larger quantity.
Then GM did trim/electronics/styling in-house so development expenses were already paid for out of the GM operations.
Also power motors, electronic switches and leather were just parts made for other cars with excess production capacity.
Annual upgrades like the V6 engine were being done for other cars like the Z24 and high-zoot Sunfire, so no cost to apply them to the Cimarron.
Sales of 20,000 (in most years) were strong for low volume luxury cars. Over last decade or so the Lexus IS, BMW 2, Audi 3, MB 200 typically do much less.
The extra 20,000 cars were the marginal difference for some dealers providing extra revenue to keep some good salesmen on board, keep some skilled mechanics employed, and even prevent them from giving up the franchise.
> Cadillac stretched the nose almost 5 inches for 1985 to make room for an optional V-6 engine
This doesn’t seem right – the same V6 became optional in the Cavalier Z24 and wagon in 1985 and they only got two inches longer at most that year. And the Olds Firenza GT gained a V6 that year and didn’t grow at all; indeed it was shorter than the 1982 Cimarron with a 1.8L four. Looks to me like Cadillac just wanted the front end to look longer.
I was the fleet manager at Fanning Cadillac-Buick in Chicago then.
The V6 and 5 speed became standard in ’87.
The V6 was optional in ’86 but only with the 4 speed.
The 5 speed initially came only with the 4 cylinder in ’86.
The odd pairings could not be answered by our Cadillac zone rep.
In ’87 I ordered more than a few of the V6/5 speed Cimarrons.
They became trade bait for other dealers who couldn’t order them because they had stodgy, old owners who did not believe Cadillacs should have manual transmissions.
Whenever we needed a specific car that we didn’t have in stock, the other dealers would ask for a 5 speed Cimarron in return. Some we later got back in other dealer trades.
They were zippy little cars, but I constantly had to justify having them in stock by even our own sales managers, until they realized the potential. But I had seniority at only 27 years old.
We did well with Cimarrons despite what some other dealers said.
Cadillac builds a Lincoln Versailles, only smaller.
Chevrolet had a fetish around that time for little panels on the dash attached by visible screws. I think they may have been been going for an aircraft vibe, but whatever. That Cadillac couldn’t (or wouldn’t) spring for a more refined dash panel that eliminated the Chevy screws shows me what a wreck Cadillac Division was by then.
That overall dashboard was IMO the most baffling, cynically cost-cutting decision for these cars. They clearly sprung for a molding unique to the Cimarron, adding faux-stitching along the edges, an embossed panel between the vents above the glovebox, and (possibly?) even a nicer grain to the surface texture, yet they still chose to base it on the shape and structure of the downmarket and higher-volume Chevy and Pontiac J-cars.
The Olds and Buick J-cars had a completely different dash variant, at least somewhat classier and less common, with more of a horizontal theme closer to other Caddy dashes around the era, so why didn’t they derive the Cimarron dash from that?
Or perhaps better yet, the Opel J-car (Ascona C) had a completely different dash not shared with any American variant, with a more Saab/BMW-esque, driver-oriented, Euro-rational style more befitting the supposed target buyer for the Cimarron, and its development was already a sunk cost, so why not use or derive the Cimarron dash from that?
Here’s an early Ascona C brown interior where I tinkered with the hue and saturation to make it burgundy, and a later interior I found customized (albeit a bit clumsily and overdone) with a faux-woodgrain appearance, to give some impressions of what Cadillac could’ve done with that:
….since the theme is ‘red’:
I was in highschool in the late 80s and my English teacher had a new 88 just like the red one shown. I viewed it as an uplevel Z24 sedan, with the V6 and tighter suspension and also stuff not available in the Chevy like leather and power seats. I had an STE at the time and liked the lil Caddy – honestly the deVille was so small at the time, basing the Cimmaron on the A body probably would’ve put it too close in size (although easy enough to position as a lesser car with only a V6).
I later had 2 Z24s, a 2.8 auto and a 3.1 stick, one with digital dash that I loved, and always found them to be very sprightly performers. Really they scooted around feeling much better than their 130-140 hp ratings would suggest. And as we see with Fiero GTs (had 3 of those) they could have a really nice snarl to them.
I was a valet at a tony East Coast country club when these came out. I saw quite a few of them. The “market”, from my perspective, was the wives of fat cat Cadillac men. He wanted her to drive a Cadillac. He had a solid relationship with a Cadillac salesman from whom he purchased a new de Ville or Fleetwood every couple years. She didn’t want a big car. So this is where she wound up.
Personally, I thought the 1997 to 2001 Cadillac Catera (“the Caddy that zigs”) was even more of an embarrassment for the Cadillac Motor Division. It may have been a better car (based on the Opel Omega from Germany), but the advertising campaign was ridiculous and definitely low class for the former “Standard of the World.” I never owned one, so I have no experience with it, I did own a nice new black 1986 Pontiac STE, which turned out to be one of my favorite cars. I kept it for 14 years, by which time it was showing its wear, but I never had a major mechanical problem with it. The most annoying was a squeaky heating and air circulation fan motor which had to be replaced by literally removing the entire instrument panel at a cost of over $1200 in the late 90s. It had over 200,000 miles when I sold it.
John Manoogian III, career GM stylist at GM and lead on the Cimarron project, talked about the extreme pressure that Cadillac dealerships threw at the brand to get a small car into showrooms, constraining what exactly the design team could and couldn’t alter to the basic J Car recipe. It wasn’t much, and the pressure doomed the end result. The subsequent lack of commitment to the brand utterly torpedoed Cadillac and nearly GM. Later elements like the double ring of chrome around side windows telegraphed a cynicism that suggested customers knew nothing about design — and these were theoretically the brand’s most astute buyers? Elements like the double chrome door/window trim that were ghastly from ten feet away, were abhorrent at two feet — and customers could walk away smelling the fear emanating from Detroit. Sad indeed. All of this, of course, makes a current example an irresistible collectable.
Cadillac’s utterly cluelessness can be condensed into one single element in this Cimarron: its steering wheel. Its design is atrocious, chintzy, provincial, tasteless and reflects a willful ignorance of what more sophisticated buyers expected in their European cars: contemporary international style, right down to the steering wheel, never mind the dash and the whole rest of the interior. This is what you got in a BMW 3 series:
I think in the end it comes down to a basic pholisophy. BMWs (and other cars of its ilk, often from Europe but occasionally from elsewhere) are/were for driving, i.e. enjoying a well engineered machine that works as a piece/package, mastering the art of driving, and lastly, enjoying the journey itself where one can enjoy every aspect of getting to wherever one is going as much or even more than actually arriving there. Cadillacs (and many other traditional American “luxury” cars) are for getting from one place to another while feeling the minimum of external inputs and generally trying to be as insulated from those externalities as possible, i.e. the feeling of literally remaining at home on the couch or recliner; the only improvement on the task would be actual teleportation, i.e. beam me somewhere, Scotty.
Maybe 10% of all cars fall in the BMW camp, another 10% in the Cadillac camp, and the remaining 80% are consumer appliances (or tools) that for one reason or another mainly fall in the spectrum of simply getting the task of transportation done (which is fine, nothing wrong with that at all). People buy (or used to, anyway) a BMW to actually drive it, that was the highlight, everything was there or designed for a purpose to further that. People buy (or used to, anyway) a Cadillac to be looked at inside it and display their relative wealth, real or imagined, that’s what the excessive ornamentation/size/gadgetry/etc is for. Actually driving it was a way to avoid the odious task of “driving” as much as possible. Everyone else in the overall market for a car mostly just wants to get somewhere without waiting for the bus.
Where automakers trip up is on occasion (such as here with Cadillac, which they repeated again with the Catera, didn’t really improve with the CTS and are now an unqualified also-ran in the “sports sedan” market) trying to fit their square peg into the other’s round hole, ending up with something that is neither fish nor fowl, but often just…foul. The notable thing is that really BMW have had FAR more success over the last few decades in poaching members of the Cadillac potential market (i.e. anyone that was on the Sloan ladder at one point or another) than Cadillac has in poaching BMW owners/target market, but for the most part that has also resulted in BMW not being as focused on the “driving” aspect as of late.
I think you’re missing my point. Yes, there’s the driving dynamics and all of that, which, yes, wasn’t really important to a lot of American car buyers. I’m talking strictly about visual design. The Europeans, especially the Germans, had long embraced the contemporary design trends that were prevalent at the time, which was heavily influenced by Scandinavian design as well as the functional aspects that rightfully should be present in a car meant to be driven, such as a very legible instrument panel and controls (including the steering wheel) that were also both highly functional with heavy influence from sports/racing cars.
The BMW steering wheel alone clearly represents that: it is highly functional and reflects the influence of classic racing steering wheels like Nardi: three spokes, a comfortable rim (wood or leather wrapped) and a clean look. I could apply the same influences to the rest of the BMW interior: its dash, its seats, the whole thing.
European automotive interior design had been evolving since…almost forever and was always heavily influenced by both functionality and by design trends there generally.
Cadillac (and GM) were still utterly stuck on a grossly provincial interior design ethos that was a weird hybrid of brougham and hi-tech influences. GM still thought they were able to create a uniquely American interior design language, but it was pathetically out of touch with international trends. And these trends had been very apparent for a long time already.
Ironically, in the mid-60s GM did a much better job of following these European interior design trends. Look at the clean dash and wood(look) steering wheel of a 1964-1965 Pontiac GTO and others of the era. They got it then. But then GM utterly lost the way again, under the horrendous leadership if Irv Rybicki and the tail end of Bill Mitchell, who lost his way towards the end of his era.
Within a few years, GM got it, thanks to Chuck Jordan replacing the utterly clueless Rybicki. The ’92 Seville dash, wheel and interior were very much in the vein of the Mercedes W124.
The gist of my point is that while GM Design was once of a global caliber despite being very “American” in its expression, but one that Europeans could (and did) admire for what it was, by this time it had fallen into a cesspool of of provincial tastelessness. Grosse Pointe Myopia at its worst.
1964 GTO dash and steering wheel below:
No, I understood your point, mine was (I think) similar and basically that form and function are intertwined. Yes the design of the BMW wheel is very good, and also causes it to function far better for “driving” the car (in regard to hand placement) than the thing they stuck on the Cadillac which functions to merely turn the front wheels. The low-lustre black dashboard looks good and works well by not causing random reflections and having necessary features right at the driver’s hand. The seats are minimalistic yet manage to be very comfortable over long distances without the padding of a La-Z-Boy while actually supporting the driver. And so on. The Cadillac would not have sold better or be thought of in glowing terms if GM had simply sourced a BMW 325i steering wheel and stuck the crest in the middle.
At 19:30 In the following video of RCC & AH, we can see what the Cimarron would have been like if a second-generation would have followed. These proposals would have been more distinctive, but many would have said it looks like a Chevy Beretta. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6nelHzaUSM
WOW!! What a surprise to click on this site and start scrolling down only to find this article with the picture of MY car!! Yes, this was my car that I had West Coast Classics sell for me earlier this year. So I read this article with great care and interest. I then read all the comments with great interest and of course expected the same tired old BS. I also expected the same tired comparisons to a BMW. Sorry guys, but I’d take this Cimarron over nearly any BMW from that same era. Personal taste I guess.
Couple points to make since this was my car. First, it came out of Colorado where it was originally sold new. The car had a full re-paint, but I have no idea when and it was a really good paint job. Zero rust anywhere on the car including the entire bottom. The miles were true and it had around 58K when I purchased it in early 2021. The car was so solid and handled well but also road well. The only thing not working was the antenna which I never did fix because I couldn’t find the exact replacement for it and chose to leave it factory original rather than an after-market that didn’t look correct. This car was so nice. And it looked amazing sitting next to my even cleaner 1986 Seville when I owned that too. However, by early 2025, I had decided that EV was what I wanted to drive and I sold the Seville at that same West Coast Classics. They did such a nice job, that after the Seville was gone, I reluctantly decided to have them sell my Cimarron.
This stunning car now resides with a collector in TN and I have been in contact with him several times. In fact, when I’m done with this post, I’m texting him about it. I’m sure some of the incorrect info in the article and many of the negative comments with be frustrating for him as well, but it is what it is. Haters will be haters.
A couple of points to clear up. First, the front end (contrary to what is always said) was not made longer just for the V6. The 1986 Chevy Z24 had the shorter front like the 1982 to 1984 Cimarron and that had the same V6. Cadillac did the front end extension to make it more different from the other J-cars. Second, the sales of the Cimarron were not at all bad compared to similar brands and models. It actually sold well for Cadillac considering how many dealers avoided it like the plague. Had dealers accepted it more and understood it’s role, the car would have sold better yet. But in the end, too many mistakes had taken place and history was writing it’s next chapter. And of course, it didn’t help that you had all the car magazine snobs who looked down on anything that wasn’t imported from Europe or Japan. Too bad. Due to them, a lot of people never got (or took) the chance to see what this car actually was.
Knowing what an embarrassment and brand liability this Cimmaron was, I can’t believe GM let it live for so many years. Baffling.
Ok. Let’s try this again. I don’t understand why this site is so difficult to post a comment on. Anyhow, just in case my first post shows up suddenly and in essence of time, I’ll make this one way shorter.
This was MY car!! Earlier this year, I decided to sell it (with West Coast Classics) after they also sold my 1986 Seville.
This Cimarron was originally out of Colorado. Zero rust anywhere. It did have a full repaint, but I have no idea when as it was done well before I got it in early 2021. It was (is) an amazing car, contrary to what all the hater seem to say. It now resides with a collector in TN and I will be texting him next letting him know his car is feature on here.
I won’t go into the parts of the article that are not correct. Nor will I address all the silly hate the Cimarron gets. Hopefully my first comment will somehow make in on here.
Anyhow, thanks for making my day and using my old Cimarron for the article.
Some comments end up in the trash folder by our third-party anti-spam software. But we check that regularly and they will be approved soon enough. Patience, please.
Thanks Paul. I see it just showed, so now I have two!! haha. Appreciate it.
I always have had a soft spot for both the Cimarron and the equally maligned Lincoln Versailles. Both mocked, yet both highly profitable vehicles. Regarding the Cimarron specifically, of course it should’ve been built on GM’s X-body, but c’est la vie. Yes, it was no Cadillac. Yes, it was overpriced. But like many have said, if the standard V6 with the revised front clip had come out in 1982 instead of the one that did, and if the price had been lowered somewhat, it might not have been as ridiculed as it was. Also, GM/Cadillac might’ve done better to market it as an alternative to Japanese luxury cars (Cressida, Maxima, 929, Galant Sigma, even the Subaru RX turbo sedan) as opposed to the Europeans. But hindsight is 20/20. It is an interesting story in automotive history nonetheless.
Once during my valet-perking tenure I ran across a Cimarron parked next to an BMW E30 sedan and while the rear quarter views were more similar than you’d want to believe, the execution couldn’t be further apart.
I’ll frequently devil’s advocate “what if you ran Cadillac and GM’s predictions about fuel prices had been right?” or “You found out in 1983 the predictions weren’t right, what do you do differently?”, or I’ll simply cut them a little slack knowing this was the headspace they were in; but in no scenario have I supported this plan of fast-tracking a Cadillac version of the J-car (it IS documented that they got this genius idea at the 11th hour).
My answer would’ve been to delay the Cimarron for when the N-bodies were ready, use that time to work on an interior that wasn’t simply “slap a Cadillac name on what was already designed” and you maybe prepare the market for the E-body Seville about to arrive (what because the C-platform Coupe DeVille would’ve been my Eldorado).
It still would’ve fallen short of the C-class / 3-series bogey – but not by nearly as much.
The Versailles and Cimarron may have, on some level, been ‘highly’ profitable, but step back and realize they were marching their respective mother companies off a cliff, Thelma- and Louise-style, and one’s definition of ‘profitable’ might seem more accurately myopic, and fatal.
Even if one could accept the mediocre driving dynamics and mechanicals, these were so out of step and even destructive to the notion of improving appeal with the desirable demographics, which was apparently the goal, that one wonders how the honchos at Cadillac could have been so clueless. Execrable is indeed the right term.
It’s oddly appealing to me.I would have never said that when they were still new in the showroom. It looks far better looking than any CRV/Rogue/RAV4/Angry pick-up or SUV/Tesla/Audi/Kia, et al, to my reader glasses needing eyes. Kinda feel almost confused about it, because I like it- a lot.
I kinda like it too, in the same way I kinda like late-80s Cutlass Supremes. There’s a playful nostalgia here because it is very much of a certain time and there’s nothing like it anymore.
But as a new car buyer in 1988 comparing this to a 325i? I’d be laughing alongside the magazines.
They are good looking cars, no doubt, but at the time I always thought who in their right mind would spend so much more money for nearly the same thing with a Pontiac, Buick, Chevy or an Olds badge? Nearly 40 years later I understand what disposable income and perceived status really mean.
Whoever’s idea it was to facelift the 84 Cavalier to look almost exactly the original Cimmaron should have been fired. Whatever blinders a buyer of an early one could put up to ignore the obvious badge job it was must have had a rude awakening once the 84+ Cavs became thick on the ground.
I’ll give it one defense, a BMW E21/E30 really does look basically like a J body from the side view, and I can see the logic of making a Cadillac variant to compete. With meaningful exclusive tweaks beyond styling (including a new interior/dashboard) it could have worked, and once again better had Chevy’s quad headlight restyle not watered down what is actually a decent looking front end, I much prefer it to the flush headlight nose, which somehow looks even cheaper and more dishonest.
In Dan Berning Final Spec with the revised front end, torquey v6, and unapologetic Flaming Bordello interior, this looks like a nice enough little lux car for the time. But as a Cadillac? Or a 3-series competitor? I still say it’s the wrong platform; a stubbly little front-wheel drive economy car can’t be dressed up that much.
GM was trying to go European to some success with the Celebrity Eurosport and I wonder if they had Cimarron-ed that instead of the Cavalier if it would have gone better. With the longer proportions it certainly would have had an easier time passing itself off as a premium car.
Aaron – do you take article requests?
My grandmother had a 1988 Cimmaron V6. She grew up in the depression so price was her number one priority in any purchase. She only ever drove V6’s and would never buy a new car, but a one or two year old one that still had some warranty left on it. She previously had a 70’s Chevelle Malibu, a 81 Citation and then the 88 Cimmaron. She lived in rural Manitoba and when she went to trade in the Citation in 1989 her plan was to buy a Celeberty but there was a one year old fully loaded Cimmaron on the lot and the salesman talked her into taking it for a test drive and she liked the way it drove and so she bought it. She did get a good price on it and she liked telling people she got a Chevy dressed as a Cadillac. She kept that car until she stopped driving in 2005.