M/T: Can Cadillac and Lincoln reclaim former glory?

[kevm14]

https://www.motortrend.com/news/cadilla ... B74276E0FC

Long article...

But don't count Cadillac out just yet. The brand is building a more aggressive and sporty lineup, veering from its traditional positioning to a more crowded space where German carmakers have a stranglehold. And yes, we've heard Cadillac executives for decades preach of its future as "the American BMW." Perhaps they mean it this time.

Lincoln also sees an opening. As Lexus also takes on BMW and Audi, that allows Lincoln to position itself as the brand for luxury comfort, Kim said: "It is a smart niche for Lincoln. Luxury buyers of all ages want comfort."

This kind of stuff annoys me. Through both of their down times, both Cadillac and Lincoln built comfortable cars, and also affordable cars when compared to what I'd argue were less comfortable European competition. Really. The entire time. It didn't seem to matter. Now apparently people want more expensive comfortable cars?

[kevm14]

This also annoys me.

Both brands adopted new alphanumeric names under past bosses. At Cadillac, de Nysschen renamed the lineup: cars start with CT, crossovers with XT, followed by a number denoting size. Carlisle is keeping it. Shoppers find the numbers helpful, evidently. Ultra-luxe vehicles, priced over $100,000, deserve names. "Special cars should have special names," he said. "Escalade is a good example; we would never consider calling the Escalade an XT11." Historic monikers can be pulled off the shelf, but they have to fit. "What kind of car would I put El Dorado on?" And Cadillac will need a naming strategy for its electric vehicles. "That's a whole new white space."

Lincoln also went alphanumeric for a number of years but has reversed course and is slowly replacing the confusing alphabet soup with real names with a nautical theme: Navigator, Aviator, Nautilus, and Corsair.

XT for crossovers and CT for cars, with the number denoting size or other placement in the lineup hierarchy. Yet, that is MORE confusing than "Navigator, Aviator, Nautilus, and Corsair" ?? I just call BS on that. You can say people like word names of cars, but do NOT try to tell me that word names are "less confusing." That is utter nonsense.

[kevm14]

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/25/cadilla ... -dead.html

- Cadillac expects to achieve its third-consecutive year of record global sales in 2020.
- Leading those sales are expected to be double-digit sales gains in China.
- Not contributing to its U.S. sales much longer will be the Cadillac CT6, which will end production at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant in Michigan at the end of the month.

Cadillac’s global sales last year were up 8.8% to roughly 390,000 vehicles compared to 2018, led by a 10.9% increase for Cadillac in China. That compares to Cadillac’s U.S. sales, which were up only 1% to more than 156,000 in 2019.

China overtook the U.S. as Cadillac’s top sales market in 2017, two years before executives at the time expected.

A direct replacement for the CT6 large sedan, which included a performance variant with a 4.2-liter V-8 engine, is not currently in Cadillac’s plans, according to Carlisle. If the company were to fill that large sedan void, Carlisle alluded to the car being an all-electric model rather than one with an internal combustion engine.

“We’re headed into this intensive electrification cycle,” he said.

Carlisle last month said Cadillac expects a majority, if not all, of its cars and SUVs sold globally to be all-electric vehicles by 2030. He said the brand will phase out current models of internal combustion engines based on market demand.

In January, GM previewed a crossover that is expected to be Cadillac’s first all-electric vehicle on the company’ next-generation all-electric vehicle architecture.

“We’re going to enter that decade as an internal combustion engine brand. That’s where we are. We’ve never been better positioned as an internal combustion brand,” he said during a media event in Detroit. “It’s a decade we’re also going to exit as a battery-electric brand. There’s a lot that’s going to be going on for Cadillac in the ’20s.”

Cadillac, according to Carlisle, will give greater detail about the brand’s EV plans in March.

Guess where the CT6 is NOT being discontinued?

[bill25]

A couple things.

Lincoln and Cadillac may have always made comfortable cars even when they sucked ("Through both of their down times"), but they were hardly considered luxury at that point. More like a joke. So, while the European and Asian companies started getting better, they were getting worse. If they couldn't be considered premium or to have prestige associated, it didn't matter.


Fast forward to now. Everyone is talking autonomous, no steering wheel/pedal cars. Lincoln may be on to something here with the focus on Luxury Comfort (not to be confused with unreliable sofa comfort). When cars are pods where the only thing that matters is reliability and safety, the only other variable will be how nice is the inside of the pod.

GM is mixed. They seem to be pretty focused on the Super Cruise which will be important to get right if car/pods get to this point, but they seem to still want to compete in the way oversaturated Performance Luxury segment, which may become obsolete. Hopefully not.

Also, not sure about the "all in" on battery focus. Is this still the best tech going forward? Maybe, but I am not excited about "all in" decisions. Going to all big SUV's, then gas prices go up... Getting rid of all RWD performance stuff for FWD in the 90's/00's... Not having any performance versions of cars except for the 2 performance cars... Getting rid of all cars for crossovers... Going to all battery fleet... It just doesn't give much flexibility for when people change their minds.

[kevm14]

Evidently Consumer Reports just rated Super Cruise above Tesla Autopilot. I'll post some vids.

[kevm14]

So go read this again.

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a1 ... road-test/

Mid-2004 it seemed that Cadillac should be embarking on a major comeback, toppling Lincoln and going right after the Germans. After all, the V1 articles had been circulating for the past ~year at this point (the CTS itself was doing well, too), and that's a whole thing in and of itself. Same year the SRX also launched to good reviews. The Escalade was in the middle of a huge sales boom.

It was sort of a false start. One major reason? I think the recession and bankruptcy thing really hurt them and they sort of never fully recovered.

Some quotes for fun.

I'd like a little of that snappiness back, please.

Idle quality is excellent, and step-off is gentle and controlled. Gone are the bad old days, when an inch of GM throttle induced a kind of rocket launch.

Steering comments. Bob liked it so mostly they just didn't know that steering feel would get worse over the next 15 years based on a one-two punch of fuel economy and refinement.

The STS's steering is odd. The effort is fairly high, and there's little detail telegraphed--minimal info regarding road surfaces or front-tire side slip, for instance. Yet for any given increment of steering input, the ZF rack (included in the 1SG package) delivers a predictable, repeatable course alteration. In that sense, the steering is accurate but, at the end of the day, not very satisfying. It's lucky that the chassis takes such a firm set in turns and is so conscientious about path control, because this steering is not especially adept at quick one-or-two-degree corrections.

Of course, the upside to such firm tuning is that body motions are marvelously controlled, and there's never a disruptive moment of weight shift, either at turn-in or mid-turn. Fact is, this new STS pulled 0.86 g on the skidpad, only a whisker behind a BMW 745i we recently tested and way, way beyond the old car's 0.79.

This is why the RWD one would be more fun. A little quicker I think.

Disable the traction control, summon some minor brake torque, and you can paint 10 feet of rubber stripes. Sixty mph arrives in six seconds flat, same as what a 745i can manage. Course, the BMW goes on to eat the quarter-mile in 14.6 seconds at 97 mph. Whoa! Same as the STS. What the Cadillac does that the $69,195 BMW doesn't is achieve a top speed of 154 mph. Moreover, Cadillac has calibrated the traction control to allow you to bark the tires at step-off without imposing Big Brother's mechanical hand of moderation. Nice.

Look at these guys rave about the trans! I have to get Ed to read this because what they describe is exactly how he feels about his Roadmaster.

The twin-cam V-8 is abetted in its labors by a five-speed Hydra-Matic 5L50-E that may be the best transmission GM has ever produced. Why do we say that? Because you're almost never aware that it's doing anything. This is especially true during kickdowns, even two-gear kickdowns, which are as fast as they are unobtrusive. You know that embarrassed feeling you get when you're about to pass a guy on a two-lane road, and you nail the throttle and get a huge neck-snapping kickdown, only to abandon the maneuver when you discover a car in the oncoming lane? In the STS, all that happens is a nearly instantaneous increase in engine revs. No jolt. No roar. Passengers don't have to suffer for the driver's bad timing.

Someone is going to have to explain the Dutch hem thing. I don't fully understand it. The way the doors meet the roof looks mostly like my Roadmaster. Is that a big deal on a unibody car or something? The SRX seems similar but the CTS is totally different, FWIW.

For decades, Cadillac seemed content to stay a step ahead of Lincoln. Now, with the STS--and the SRX before it--you really do get the feeling the division is serious about competing with foreign luxury brands. When our test car arrived, chief engineer Jim Federico--no longer responding to Seville-engineering jokes--pointed proudly at panel gaps that have been narrowed to three millimeters from the old car's five. Then he pointed to the top of the door frames, which blend almost invisibly into the roof in a costly "Dutch hem" design. "Let's see Mercedes match that," he said.
When's the last time you heard a Lincoln guy say that?

Then all three of these bonus opinions are positive.

STEVE SPENCE
Here, finally, is something I thought I'd never see: a Cadillac that wants to get into the ring with the big cars from BMW and Mercedes. Those "postmodern" Caddys of the '90s made gestures in that direction, but they always carried the burdensome trappings of the big sprawling American car: sleepy suspensions, big for bigness's sake, styling that seemed behind the times. This new car has a sport ride as hard as any BMW's, a very strong V-8, a sporty manual-style shifting function, and a rock-solid feel much like an ... E-class Mercedes. The STS's price undercuts that of the S-class and 7-series, but the real problem is this: Will buyers accept the idea of a $62,000 Cadillac?

CSABA CSERE
Cadillac has finally endowed one of its new-generation four-doors with an interior that needs no excuses. The cabin of this STS not only looks and feels sumptuous but is also largely devoid of the visual and electronic overkill that infests many of its competitors. As we've come to expect from the Sigma-platform cars, the STS drives beautifully with quick reflexes, excellent grip, and the kind of honest responses that let you drive it perfectly smoothly without brain-straining concentration. The ride could be more absorbent on rough city streets, and such a large car deserves more rear-seat and trunk space, but this STS is unquestionably the best Cadillac I've ever driven.

BARRY WINFIELD
The Cadillac team is utterly upbeat about this car. If American luxury-sports-sedan buyers have been jumping ship to European cars and their peculiar set of sensibilities for a concrete reason (and we think they have), then the people at Cadillac have seen the light. Hallelujah! Here's a Caddy that drives like BMWs did before that company's infatuation with technology began injecting Novocain between driver and machine. Damn, this STS unwinds a chunk of California's coastline like no Cadillac ever has, and that's in the cushy-riding model without the 1SG package that I drove on the Left Coast. Thanks, Cadillac.

So what happened after they wrote this? The public largely agreed with C&D but then this happened:

Calendar Year Total sales
2004 9,484
2005 33,497
2006 25,676
2007 20,873
2008 14,790
2009 6,037
2010 4,473
2011 3,338
2012 164