Someone joked recently that the administrators of Curbside Classic were doing such a good job that they would receive as part of their generous compensation package a company car, which would be one of CC’s fleet of Cimarrons. Well, that may have been tongue in cheek, but apparently there is at least one real person still driving around in Cadillac’s 1980’s Flagship of Mediocrity.
This is no garage queen hobby car or unused mint survivor, but rather appears to be a genuine daily, or at least weekly, driver. Impressive. Of all the cars one has to choose from in the last 30 or more years of automotive production worldwide, this owner somehow ended up driving a 1988 Cimarron. Maybe it’s the original owner or maybe it was inherited or maybe the price was just really, really good. In any event, here it is still running and with an admirable patina.
As a 1988 model, this car represents the seventh and final edition of the little Caddy. The good thing about GM in the 80’s is that they were diligent about continually improving their cars. Just about every year, they made positive refinements to the Cimarron. The ugly flip side to that, of course, is that it started out with so, so much room for improvement.
If you were one of the only 6,454 people who bought the 1988 version, you were getting a pretty decent little car. That’s providing you didn’t mind paying somewhere around $16,000 (34,800 in 2019 dollars) for a car that wasn’t the least bit fresh or stylish-looking and was still distinguished from the other four versions of the J-car pretty much only by the tasteful front end and well-trimmed seats.
Interiors showed their Cavalier roots just as much as the body panels. Digital dashes were standard by the end, though. Starting in 1987, the 2.8L V6 was standard.
It’s still hard to get one’s mind around the fact that GM and Cadillac thought it a solid idea to sell a Caddy that was so transparently based on a Chevy Cavalier. The internet picture above is so well-taken, though, it almost makes it look attractive. It was to 25,968 buyers in 1982, who laid down about $12,000 ($32,000 in 2019 Dollars) of their hard-earned money to proudly have one of these in their driveways.
*Not known to be the same actual car, but it could be!
Given an automotive lifetime of hard knocks and that pretty little car looked like this. But that lifetime was long and the advantage to being mechanically identical to a Chevrolet is that parts and service are always easy to come by. At least the 1988 example I found is still on the road and providing presumably reliable transportation.
Feel free to comment, but keep your powder dry because tomorrow I will present some contemporary Vintage Reviews on the Cimarron. We’ll try to answer that question of “what were they thinking?” Consider this an appetizer!
photographed September 11, 2018 in Houston, TX – a fittingly tragic anniversary
Of all the General Motors “Deadly Sins” chronicled on this website, it is my personal opinion that the Cimarron was the deadliest.
Hubris is the reason for this car. I would have loved to be a fly on the conference room wall when this idea came up.
Cadillac actually wanted a “small” car sooner than this; they saw the Buick coupe X-proposal while in development and tried hard to have it become theirs. No dice; the J-car was the compromise…
Why is it the concept drawings always look so much better than the end product?
Yes…. I think the origin story of the Cimarron would make a fascinating book, if the story is anything at all like I imagine it to be. (Begin dream sequence)…
The Cavalier is brought up in jest at a Cadillac planning meeting where BMW fighters are the topic: “We need a 3-Series competitor to lure younger buyers”; everyone laughed. But when the minutes are sent up a level the mention is there… and the laughter is omitted. Some literal-minded drone (who has never driven a Cavalier and, living in Detroit, has never even seen a BMW) reads the minutes and reports up a level that the Cavalier was recommended by the staff as being the closest available platform in size and concept to a BMW 318i. This executive’s place is to write the executive summary of the engineer’s recommendations – not to filter them.
His boss, upon reading the recommendation, orders a dimensional and equipment comparison between the two cars. Vehicle dimensions and weight match up; engine cylinder count and displacement match up. There’s only a 12 HP difference (BMW 101; Cavalier 89) which is a mere rounding error difference in Detroit horsepower terms -why you can’t even notice the difference between 340 and 350 horsepower. It is noted in the report that the 318i also has a Spartan – by Detroit standards – interior. Hmmm. Good. The BMW has old-fashioned RWD, but that’s a bug not a feature since everyone in GM has been ordered to believe that FWD is the future.
He forwards this statistically factual report up, along with his analysis noting these similarities, along with a note that the Cavalier’s interior would need an upgrade; See appendix C for cost estimate.. His boss, pleased to have something positive to report to his boss is happy. However he is no fool. He orders a side-by-side comparison; however to make things fair, he orders a mock-up be made with a
custom hand-madeprototype interior, Caddy logos, and a Cadillac egg crate grill. He’s told it will take a month to make the interior but that month is really for his staff (unknown to him) to hand-build the best Cavalier ever made, with a blueprinted engine, reinforced welds, extra sound-proofing, a hand-sprayed paint job and 500 miles of shake-down testing. Oh, and that prototype interior? The upholstery upgrade the leather but only charge for the ordinary leather….cause it’s good business to give more than the customer asked for. Now, it’s important to note that no one really believes they’re committing fraud here because this car is going to be a Cadillac, right? So giving the prototype the very, very best of everything is just what exactly what Cadillac does, of course.Besides there’s is plenty of room in the budget to do all these things – we know that the car will sell for about $16,435…because that’s the base price of a 318i. The very nicest Cavalier goes for about $11,000 so even after we do all these upgrades, there’ll be $2000, or $3,000 profit in every car?
So the comparison is held, and the executives walk around both cars, and then take brief test drives of both on the perfectly smooth city street test loop. Project approved!
It’s turned over to the production design staff, whose prime directive is to control costs. The first thing to go are the unnecessary extra welds, then the soundproofing, then it’s discovered that the fancy dash and instrumentation would add almost $200 per car to build and install! Besides research shows that Cadillac customers don’t like extra gauges. They expect the oil pressure on a Caddy to be just fine all the time.
And so it goes…. Even when it gets to the Car-buff magazines, no one says anything … because every editor remembers the advertising drought that hit Car and Driver after that bad Opel review – and that was just critiquing an economy car!
Anyhow, I’d love to know what -really- happened. Did any Cadillac executive fall on his sword fighting this thing? Did any of them at least decide it was time to retire? Inquiring minds want to know.
Wow, nice speculation!
Nailed it.
If you’ve worked in a large bureaucracy you know how believable this is.
Detroit? Smooth road? Same sentence? Could have been smooth test track?
It’s pretty simple – sales of the big 1980 Caddys were abysmal and they needed a small, economical car, fast.
CC’s personal favorite to dump on.
That would be GM in general.
It’s hard to argue that they don’t deserve it when the last bailout shows that they do. I still don’t trust GM.
The J-car was GM biggest worldwide expression of ‘brand dilution’ ever. All five North American brands, and Opel in Germany, Vauxhall in England and I believe even Holden in Australia wasn’t spared a version of J-body.
Maybe until the GMT 360
Chevy Trailblazer
Chevy SSR
GMC Envoy
Isuzu Ascender
Buick Rainer
Oldsmobile Bravada
Saab 9-7X
In Britain at least, the 1981 J car Vauxhall Cavalier was a huge success. It was a huge leap forward compared to what everyone else was doing. Ford and Vauxhall were the big volume sellers at the time, and when ford launched the unconventional looking aerodynamic Sierra in ‘82, the market decided it didn’t like it and promptly all bought cavaliers. You literally tripped over the damn things all through the 80s, it seemed that every other car on the road was a cavalier. But seeing what was, in England, a fleet car for travelling salesman dressed up as a Cadillac is a bit of a stretch.
Holden got one (Camira), so did Isuzu.
Sourced from the Opel Ascona the J-car was produced in Brazil as the Chevrolet Monza between 1982 and 1996. It was a tremendous success and attained 1st spot in sales from 84 to 86. One should note that it was an upper middle class car but displaced the VW Beetle, the T-model Chevette and the Ford Escort (FWD generation). Also the country suffered from a harsh economic crisis. Engines: OHC 4 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0. Total production: 857,000.
We welcome all points of view, on GM or otherwise. I would be most happy to have you submit a post in praise of the Cimarron, especially the 1981 version with the 1.8 L four. 🙂
And richly deserved. The Cavalier was a second-rate economy car. A Cavalier with a Cadillac badge and leather was brand poison.
I knew a man who bought one use with a four-cylinder engine and manual transmission, As your article suggests, the price was cheap. The interior was gussied up. Imagine that Cadillac in 1953 ceased offering a bell housing that would accommodate a manual transmission and then in 1981 this nonsense was produced. My sister-in-law bought the Buick version as a 1980 model, new. What a bummer to start due to exhaust emission controls that strangled the engine.
Somebody has to a be a friend of this car, so I’ll volunteer. I hold a quiet interest in these ’88 Cimarrons, because — looked at in a vacuum — it wasn’t a bad car. Like your title says, mediocre, which is better than abysmal, like the earlier Cimarrons.
A standard V-6, somewhat unique (and not too bad-looking) styling enhancements, this nice two-tone paint combination, etc… these are things the Cimarron should have had from the beginning if GM wanted the car to get even a grain of respect. Of course by 1988, this was a lost cause. But my interest in overlooked and disrespected cars compels me to actually like this Cimarron.
You’ll like tomorrow’s article!
Virtually every body panel on these was identical to the Cavalier. Even the door skins were shared with the other J cars. I get the economy thing, but the supposed standard of the world phoned this in and somehow on the 14th floor this got a green light. Reprehensible is too kind.
Yeah. Had they brought out THIS car in 1981, and then kept going upward, it might have had a chance.
I agree with you
The Lexus ES is how you badge engineer successfully–start with a decent product in a vehicle size class that can pass off as entry level luxury. Start with a decent product in the cheapskate compact class and you get the Acura ILX. Moderate failure. Start with a crappy product in the cheapskate compact class and you get this here Cimarron. Serious failure.
There was one of these in our neighborhood, in near-hooptie status. Some teenager’s daily, I’d see it coasting down our street. Old, tired soldier. I respected it for the not insignificant feat of still being on the road at all. Sure as hell doesn’t look like a Cadillac.
As a car, the Lexus ES is fine. But as badge engineering it’s not much different than the Cimarron. Though the Lexus LX450 version of the 80 Series Toyota Land Cruiser may have been even lazier. In both cases at least I imagine the Lexus dealer experience was a lot better than Cadillac’s.
Ehh…my argument is that as badge engineering it *is* much different from the Cimarron. Toyota didn’t take a 1998 Corolla, add leather seats, leave the workhorse 1.8 and 3spd auto, stick a Lexus badge on it, and advertise it as a 318i competitor. The ES worked because for most of its existence the Camry was a class-leading car and a good platform to share with. A concept executed well is miles apart from a concept done poorly.
Perspective may help. As a Cadillac, the Cimarron is poor. But as a luxury Cavalier it’s pretty good. The failure was marketing because the car itself wasn’t so bad for the era, especially with the V6, but the failure was one of marketing.
GM cheapened the Cadillac brand throughout the 70’s and 80’s to fill a market niche best served by something else. In the distant past they used the LaSalle brand accordingly. The Cimarron was one chapter in a much larger, ongoing marketing debacle.
As a luxury Cavalier, it should have been an Olds or a Buick. The V6 wasn’t the issue, but you could also get the same engine in the Z24 and Firenza in 1985 as well.
I wonder what it would have looked like if they had used the rear doors from the Cavalier wagon and given it a formal roofline to distinguish it from the other J sedans.
I think your idea would have done wonders in making it more unique, as the rear doors for me are a major Cavalier styling cue. Front doors too. And windshield. And wheelbase. But anything would have helped.
Here is a Cimarron re-do I came up with a couple years ago, and posted on CC at the time. I kept in place the expensive-to-change hard points, and altered only the front and rear caps and the C-pillar, a graft that could be hidden under the vinyl roof. It makes for an elegant mini-Seville.
…And here it is with the Cavalier C-pillar left in place. It hardly looks like the same roofline, but it is. It’s not as Cadillacky as the version with the vinyl roof, but it is a much more lithe shape, for sure.
Are those wheel covers off a 90-ish Chrysler? Cadillac was trying to avoid the Seville/Brougham look though in order to better compete with the BMW 3 Series and the like.
I don’t think they were trying to avoid the Brougham look at all; they tarted them up plenty.
On first glance, with the thin B pillar, Hofmeister kink and wraparound tail lamps, I saw a ’75-’79 Olds Omega.
Neat exercise! I like the Sevillerron. They definitely could have done more to visually distinguish the car, it could have helped. However, as we’ll see in tomorrow’s article, Cadillac’s goal was more premium import fighter than mini-Seville. They also didn’t have enough development time to do it for 1982.
I remember reading years ago that the big problem with the J car platform was its unibody design where there couldn’t be any changes to the roofline to make it look more like a Cadillac so all J cars were stuck with the same profile .
Ford did a similar trick to make the ’79 & ’80 Lincoln Versailles appear more ‘distinguished’ from the Granada/Monarch it was derived from; by giving it an upright, more formal rear door window and roof line.
Of these 6,400…I’d say 5,500 went to Enterprise Rent a Car (captive buyer GM owned at the time), then got sold off a year later at Chevy dealers. “For the same price as a new Cavalier, you can have thisnpre-owned Cadillac version with leather and a sunroof and still have a warranty.”
My Great Aunt had a 1987 Cimmaron she bought as a certified pre-owned or whatever they called that at time. She owned that car until the late 90s when she got too old to drive. I think it was a V6. My Dad sold it maybe a year or 2 before I was old enough to drive.
The V6 was standard in 1987. Too bad, that would have made a great first car.
Enterprise was never owned by General Motors.
Had they been they would likely be out of business.
Enterprise Holdings Co. is also the parent company of Alamo & National Car Rental.
I can’t help but wonder if and how the Cimarron (and Cavalier) might have been perceived differently if the Cadillac was introduced FIRST and then the Cavalier a year later. Would the Cav have been praised as a cut-price Caddy? And the Cadillac as a bold and daring move forward into the smaller car paradigm?
Probably would have helped it’s image at first.
But then when the Cav came along the Caddy would’ve sold even worse, because in addition to it’s mediocrity it would also be yesterday’s news.
That would’ve been similar to the ’76 DeVille suddenly looking a lot less valuable when the ’77 Caprice came along, I think.
And still less valuable when the ’80 Cutlass and Century nearly cloned the look and size of the original Seville
Every car has has its fans. There was an earlier CC article defending what Doug DeMuro called the Worst New Car You Can Buy.
The Cimmaron might fall into the same category, a car so bad its seen as good. Kind of Trabants, Yugos, or cult movies.
I’ll play Devil’s Advocate with the Cimarron.
Firstable, GM had been slathering luxury goop on Chevrolets for years and making them into Cadillacs. The 1972 Caprice doesn’t look a whole lot different than the 1972 Cadillac. Iacocca birthed a Lincoln by slapping a Rolls Royce grille on an LTD. Various Imperials and Newports were Dodges and Plymouths with a heavy dose of vinyl and lighting packages and fancy upholstery and electric toys. Even the contemporary Audi 4000 shared a lot under the skin with the humble Rabbit. The Porsche 914 and 924 were originally supposed to have been Volkswagens. If the concept of dressing up a lesser car as something fancy was a bad idea, it wasn’t a bad idea original to GM. But one of the problems with the Cimarron was that if a Sedan De Ville was a fancy Caprice, the Caprice was a very impressive car in terms of comfort, performance, quiet, space, and durability. The Cavalier wasn’t.
GM correctly predicted that the market overall would be moving towards smaller cars and the original Seville had been a hit. The future of the automobile, luxury segment included, would be smaller, lighter and probably FWD like the Saabs and Audis. There was a market for a Cimarron LIKE car. This was just a little too obviously a wheezy Cavalier.
A grand misconception frequently stated is that THE CIMARRON COST TWICE AS MUCH AS A CAVALIER THOSE SLEAZY RAT BASTARDS AT GM WERE REALLY TRYINA FOOL PEOPLE. Not really. The base Cavalier was really base, no radio, no ac, manual steering and possibly brakes, no right hand mirror, vinyl seats, lots of decor/trim packages missing. If you optioned up a Cavalier like the Cimarron, the Cimarron still carried a price premium over the Cavalier but the gap narrowed considerably.
I saw the contemporary C/D review of the Cimarron and it didn’t seem to do too badly numerically against the competition. 1982 was about the end of the decline in performance and quality and started to see a turnaround but almost everything was a wheezy, tortured, slow, cramped, unreliable car then. Now even though the Cimarron improved slightly between 1982 and 1988- cars had VASTLY improved by 1988. The Taurus was out and setting sales records, the Audi 5000 had come out, horsepower had vastly increased, Acura was setting sales records, Mercedes had come out with the 190 and had switched from 62 hp diesel engines to fast gasoline engines, the 3 series was well established as the yuppie car to beat . . . if the Cimarron wasn’t very competitive at its debut, it was really behind by 1988.
If GM had developed the car a little longer and Seville-ized the A/G body or the FWD A car, they could have had a very good car. The 6000 STE was regularly lauded (although it didn’t sell well) and the FWD A car was about as economical as the J/X and worked out a lot of the bugs. The RWD A/G body had a lot of traditional cadillac features like quiet, room, comfort, ride, performance (for the day) and with a good handling package could be made very sporty.
I don’t know. An V6/5-Speed with the black & gold D’Oro package might make for a nice conversation starter at the local cruise-in.
I just wrote a long post that vanished. That’s annoying. It didn’t even contain any links to other sites….
I’ve learned to copy the longer posts onto the clipboard just in case this happens. Then I can just paste and try again. It’s an extra step, but has saved me mutiple times. And there’s a chance that one of the admins will see it in the spam folder and retrieve it for you, so there’s hope.
Found it! The problem is when they go straight to the trash folder and not the spam folder – they are easier to lose that way.
Thanks for the rescue! I’ll definitely clipboard next time…
Happens to me sometimes as well. And I often don’t get the 15 minute edit window.
Quite cheap really a Holden Camira 1600cc 5 speed was 14k NZ$ in 83 and that was for a pre price rise car that for some reason just didnt sell lots of them did just not that one, my Dad grabbed it at the old price, drove it on dealer plates until January 84 and registered it as a 84 model no build data plates on local assembly cars here.
About the only way GM could have screwed the pooch more than this was if they made a Cadillac version of the Chevette.
Does anyone remember the old commercial for Frosted Mini-Wheats?
The adult in me knows the Cimarron is a mediocre poser.
But the kid in me sees the Ultimate Cavalier. (the later ones, anyway)
I know what you mean…it’s kind of hard to hate.
I respect the need for the ads, but when they aggressively cover the comment box, it feels like I am constantly swatting a fly that keeps landing on my sandwich.
Plus, I can’t help but feel negatively towards the products that just won’t get out of my face. Looking at you, GMC ads.
“Here, Look at a product.”
“No thank you. I’m in the middle of writing.” Click.
“No, we insist. Look at our product.”
“No, thanks.” Click.
“No, we really mean it. We insist you look at our product!”
“No. Go away, please.” Click, click.
“Fine. Then how about this product?”
“Leave me alone! I’ve had to rewrite this sentence three times already!”
“You must look at our product!”
“Well now I’m going to purposely ignore your product because you won’t let me write my sentence!”
—-Just stay out of the comment box!—–
As a Counterpoint, this car might be tied with the Brougham for the most durable Cadillac you could buy during most of its life. It may have been *the* most durable early in its run. Which is not high praise for the Cimarron but high damnation for the rest of the line.
When my kids were in high school there was a family whose kids drove one of these to school every day. I always wondered if it had come from Grandma or if they found it somewhere. You could have done a lot worse for cheap beater wheels.
I will join Eric703 – I would drive one if I could find a really nice one. It was not an intrinsically horrid car (durability wise, anyway) and would have been extremely well appointed. I would drive an early Lincoln Versailles for the same reason. Whether I could stand to keep driving it is a question that only time and experience would answer.
When I first moved to Texas in the late 1980s, I met a fellow who inherited a loaded 1986 Cimarron from his recently deceased grandmother. As I recall, the car had fewer than 10k miles and was in immaculate condition, and my friend couldn’t afford to turn down a free car, as his old Pontiac Sunbird (the first gen one, with the 4-cylinder Vega engine) was on its last legs. He was very hard on cars, spent next to nothing on maintenance, and drove the snot out of that Cimarron, adding nearly 90k miles over the next three or so years. The car took all his abuse without complaint. Amazingly, he got top dollar for it when he traded it for a Chevy S-10 pickup, as the small town Chevy dealer was so impressed that someone would trade in a Caddy for a Chevy truck. Apparently GM executives were not the only ones unable to see that the emperor wore no clothes!
That sounds like a better deal than my mom got trading in a 7 year old Lada on a brand new Chevettte at the end of 1988, when GM dealers were shoving the last of the RWD T-bodies out the door. Dealers gave minimum $1500 trade-in for a brand new Chevette/T1000 as long as it ran, plus huge year-end discounts. As I recall, she drove away in a brand new Chevette for under $5K.
Some future collectors are going to want them. Especially the few that were equipped with manual transmissions!
Basing a Cadillac on a thinly disguised Chevy is crazy. Imagine if Cadillac tried to pass off a dolled up Chevy Suburban as their top of the line model? Uhmm, oh, (Gilda Radner voice) “never mind!”
Friend of mine bought one for his daughter….it was cheap I think because anyone looking in the classifieds for Cadillacs wasn’t interested, and as it WAS a Cadillac in name it couldn’t be listed as a Chevrolet, where people looking for Cavaliers were looking. Guy he bought. It from inherited it from his dad and joked about it being the nicest Cavalier ever made, but the hardest to sell. It worked out ok for the daughter, who just wanted wheels.
Nice, that totally makes sense it would stay under most people’s radar. It would definitively have made sense as an older used car if you just wanted something practical and nice.
Might have worked out better if they offered the car as a 3 door liftback only, perhaps making that body style exclusive to Cadillac. Target a much younger buyer and step them up to more mature Cadillacs as they got older. There was no step up for Grandma, only step off.
This car is identical to one I owned. It was an ’87 model that I bought for $500 in June of l997. It had 95,000 miles on it, and was in somewhat rough condition. I soon discovered that it had a strange problem that no one could diagnose or fix. The car would cut off for no apparent reason while driving,which was very dangerous because when the engine cuts off you lose your power steering & brakes! I almost went into a ditch once when it happened.It would usually start back up, but sometimes I would have to crank it for a few minutes. Needless to say, I got rid of it after only a few months. Other than that issue, it was a very nice car. The 2.8 V-6 was a great engine for that size car. I found out later on that the ’87 models were notorious for having MANY problems, but other years did not. My next car was an ’86 Deville, which was one of the BEST cars I’ve ever owned!
It is interesting to read all the comments here and not chuckle a bit. Most agree that the Cimarron was a bad marketing idea and the GM execs at the time were limo driven everywhere and had no concept of what would make a great “small Cadillac”. Never the less, the cars were built and over 120k were sold during its life cycle. Small numbers for sure but, there were a handful of people out there who liked it enough to put one in their driveway. I am one of those people and, in fact, own two right now. A nicely equipped 1983 Cimarron in blue with 55,850 miles and a fully optioned 1987 Cimarron in dark red over silver with 35,210 miles. These cars are becoming scarce and I will continue to keep them in top condition for as long as I am able. Not as collectables but, for automotive posterity. People enjoy them when I attend local car shows and I enjoy the positive comments I get from them.
I always thought they should have used the other dash in these. I think the Firenza/Skyhawk Dash. Looked a little more upscale to me.