Beautiful.

I think that cadillac can be up at the level of BMW, Lexus, and Mbenz if they get their act together. You dont see very many older caddys that run 210,000 miles with not too many problems. The northstar engine would be the best motor ever produced if all that was required was the maintenance that they said. Thats one thing that i have noticed throughout GM. I have only owned, and my family has only owned GM cars. Theres just a lot of things that are just plain out cheap. I saw a Mbenz 500SEL with 485,000 and it looked like about 80k. That is a lot of miles. Thats over 19 times around the earth. Im sure that person had alot of repairs on it, but even the thought of a 94 seville lasting that long without a few engines is crazy. If cadillac can get their act together and make cars that will LAST, then they will be just as good as anyone else. I know alot of it has to do with how the ower(s) took care of it. Also, some of the components are cheap/cheaply designed. Obviously, BMW doesnt spare expense for quality. Dont get me wrong, i love caddys, but it doesnt seem like you get what you pay for.

The only exception i can see are the 93-96 fleetwoods (or any other car that used the LT1). I have seen those with 250k miles and seem to run great. There are a few other engines that GM makes that are indestructible (like the 3.1 v6, in the early 90s pontiacs). Lets face it, you dont see too many GM cars going much past 250k, and running like they were semi-new.

I hear a lot of people complain about the interiors of Cadillacs compared to Lexus, BMW and Mercedes.. I really don't see the problem - but maybe I'm just, well, not seeing it.. Maybe Cadillac needs to improve in that area too...

I agree, and it goes with all GM. I think that your interior, and others on this board are taking extra special care of it. Most people just jump in their car, expect it to run, and look new without doing anything extra special, besides regular service. And that is basically what lexus and other import companies are giving- trouble free operation, literally. Ive seen Lexus' run 120k miles with NO problems, just standard mantainence. That is just outstanding. If cadillac can make what they advertise and claim, they will be the best in the world.

I think GM was trying too hard to save a buck. They still are in the truck department.No matter what the name on the grill says .....the Escalade is still a Tahoe. I mean there are only so many ways to skin a cat.

Exactly. I guess thats the american way. Its sorry to say, but the japs. may actually make better cars then we do. That is pitiful. The prices of cars wouldnt go up much if they would focus on quality and not on all the other crap they dump money into. Screw gas guzzling (although that is something that can be improved also), if you make a car that can last 100k with no problems its going to be worthwhile. My friend has a 95 or so Toyota Celica GT and it looks and drives new, with the exception of the plastic hub caps :) . It may require some other company designing the parts for us, but if thats what it takes then thats what it takes. Bentleys are still bentleys, regardless of the fact their under BMW (i think). If toyota designs a cadillac, its going to be a cadillac, regardless of the designer/builder. I am all for american made products, but if we dont stop slacking im going to buy imports.

Once again, if they focus on quality, then they will get more sales, and more profits, which lead to better cars.

END OF STORY

Very well said. But I say what is american made? Hell half of all GM products are made in Mexico and Canada.And the new GTO is made in the Land of OZ. And now Toyota might build a factory here in Texas. I used to work for an Acura dealership when I got out of H.S. back in 93 and I was impress by the way the cars were made. Even if Honda is the one making Acura.I would love to get my hands on a 95 Legend Coupe.

Yes, almost all GM products are made in mexico. In the 70s, Anderson, IN had 30some factories, and now there is only 1. Guide. Delco and delphi moved out just this week. The mexicans dont have unions, and they can be paid $5/hr instead of $40/hr.

I dont know if it is the cheapness of american made cars, or the neglegence of the designers, but all american made cars are horrible. Chrysler being worst, then GM and ford are about the same. When it comes to modular designs, ford is the worst. They only have 1 V8 engine, which they add various things to make it more powerful. Thats the way i see it, others may think the other brands are better.

When you talk about Lexus being so well-made, I agree. They have an amazing track record.. People like to make fun of people driving a Lexus saying things like, "Nice glorified Toyota".. Well, I hate to say it but Toyota makes one hell of a car - don't they? Cadillac does need to step it up.. Why should Toyota's be more reliable? Does it make any sense? Do we lack the technology?

No.

actually gm is suppose to be #3 in terms of initial quality according jd powers (following toyota and honda). GM needs new engineers to do the interiors. Materials used in gm cars look too plastic like. More metal or wood might cost more but it can also attract more customers. my .02

Well. I'm not a big fan of the Altima metal look - but the interiors do need work. I just sat in a new STS and DTS today. They're cheap inside.. It's hard to say otherwise... When you come out of a Lexus GS, for example, you can really tell the difference.. You spend a lot more time on the inside of your car than you do on the outside.. The inside needs to be nice...

Take in mind that JD power only looks at new cars. Most of the cars we talk about have seen their day. Mainly, GM uses too much plastic and not enough of the good stuff. It may take more effort and more money, but if the end product is better, then I say go for it. Even the fake metal they use is plastic. There's even littler things that could be improved on-- I have yet to see a decent cup holder that doesn't break and can hold those huge cups you get from gas stations, the headrest on my 01 tahoe broke because someone pulled on it, and now it doesnt adjust.

The list goes on... GMs exterior design is just as good as everyone else, but they lack interior. Even the higer class cars (like my fleetwood) have crappy interior, although better than the lower class ones.

When I sat in the new Caddys and started pressing some of the buttons on the dash and doors, the whole section moved - it was like... loose! The piece that the buttons sit in would be loose.. Eh.. What can ya do. Maybe the new Caddys will be of better interior quality. I know they're making a point of this for the new Vette...

What can you do?

Me and some of my friends had a discussion about GM, chrysler, and ford (notice ford and chrysler dont deserve to be capitalized). We decided that GM has the most diversity in their brands. For instance, ford has basically 1 v8 engine, their 4.6 that they add various things too. Also, a crown vic is the same as a merc. grand marquis which is the same as a lincoln town car (minus some minor changes). and chrysler, their cars (chrysler, plymoth, and dodge) are essentially all the same, it basically depends on how much you want to spend.

Originally posted by elwesso
What can you do?

Me and some of my friends had a discussion about GM, chrysler, and ford (notice ford and chrysler dont deserve to be capitalized). We decided that GM has the most diversity in their brands. For instance, ford has basically 1 v8 engine, their 4.6 that they add various things too. Also, a crown vic is the same as a merc. grand marquis which is the same as a lincoln town car (minus some minor changes). and chrysler, their cars (chrysler, plymoth, and dodge) are essentially all the same, it basically depends on how much you want to spend.

i disagree. All manufacturers are the same way in terms of cars based on same platform and engine. This is to save money in designing a whole new platform and powertrain. I think this is a good method and long as they don't make it too obious it's a good way to give us good products at decent price.

Engine
5.7 ls1/ls6 - Corvette, Firebird, Camaro, and GTO
3.8/SCed 3.8 - Grand Prix, Regal, Park Avenue, Impala, Monte Carlo, Bonneville, Camaro, and Firebird
Ecotec 4cyl - lot of saturns, sunbird, cavailer..

I know that every manufacturers do this. For instance a buick regal is basically a grand prix, just with a more dressed up interior. What i meant to say was GM has the most diversity when it comes to styling. The buick and the grand prix do not look anything like each other. You have to admit, a mercury grand marquis and a crown victoria look almost identical, minus the emblems and the price. The vic is almost 10k more. Also (not that I care), but all of chryslers minivans look identical, minus the price and the emblems. I realize that they have different options, but overall they are the same. Thats the bottom line. That is why i said that. I know that GM uses the same chassis and drivetrain for a lot of cars, but at least they dont make it obvious.

You guys are making me dread owning a Cadillac.
My last car was a Lincoln Mark VII with close to 300,000 miles on it. I never had any serious problems with it. It never burned or leaked oil, it was fast and the mpg was better than my Caddy. The only reason I got rid of it was that the body rusted away.
I bought my Cadillac with higher expectations.
Pat

Hey Pat,

Actually, the quality issue are existent in all domestic cars.. Foreign cars have higher quality inside and out. There's really no other logical way of looking at it.. The Cadillac you have now is better than the LSC you had - I've had both myself.. You can certainly feel it when you're driving.. Unfortunately, the LSC had much less to go wrong with it.. The Cadillac is of much higher technology - which means more possible problems..

You'll always have less problems with a car that's got no new technology.. What's to go wrong? So don't feel bad about owning the Cadillac.. 300,000 miles without any serious problems is an exteme rarity... No matter which car you're talking about...

Originally posted by Sal Collaziano
Hey Pat,

Actually, the quality issue are existent in all domestic cars.. Foreign cars have higher quality inside and out. There's really no other logical way of looking at it.. The Cadillac you have now is better than the LSC you had - I've had both myself.. You can certainly feel it when you're driving.. Unfortunately, the LSC had much less to go wrong with it.. The Cadillac is of much higher technology - which means more possible problems..

You'll always have less problems with a car that's got no new technology.. What's to go wrong? So don't feel bad about owning the Cadillac.. 300,000 miles without any serious problems is an exteme rarity... No matter which car you're talking about...

actually it's more like more technology that a lot of mechanics can't fix.

Right. It's more expensive to fix. But, I think Pat was worried about having more problems with the Caddy than with the Lincoln.. Basically, the more technology we use in cars, the more problems there will be..

Remember what kinds of problems you had in your car when high technology was a carborator? hehe. Times have changed... I had a '70 Nova as my first car.. Just the basics.. No big deal to fix... And not much to go wrong...

Alot of these "problems" are in the technology and do not make the vehicle not run. The northstar system is very solid, but its all the little gadgets that fail. 300k with any car is unusual, especially without essentially replacing the car over its life. Theres no way around it, the Germans and other foreign people know how to build cars, and how to make them last.

The technology in these cars would really make the run better if they didnt fail. Alot of times what fails are the sensors, so i guess the car assumes the worst, and assumes the part is toast. Overall (not every time), you can drive on these things, but the car wont behave like its supposed to until you get it fixed

Originally posted by elwesso
Alot of these "problems" are in the technology and do not make the vehicle not run. The northstar system is very solid, but its all the little gadgets that fail. 300k with any car is unusual, especially without essentially replacing the car over its life. Theres no way around it, the Germans and other foreign people know how to build cars, and how to make them last.

The technology in these cars would really make the run better if they didnt fail. Alot of times what fails are the sensors, so i guess the car assumes the worst, and assumes the part is toast. Overall (not every time), you can drive on these things, but the car wont behave like its supposed to until you get it fixed

Germans are no exceptions to this quality issue. When you start having electrical problems, they have trouble fixing them. (good example would be the Audi TT-weird power windows problem, guage, power loss....)

Absolutely. I have heard of the computer in older BMWs just quitting, and the car wil not do anything. To replace the computer is like 1000 dollars. That was a good example with the audi, my aunt had one and the check engine light never went off, and the audi people didnt even know how to bypass the light. So maybe, more so with the germans, they are using more technology then they can handle

I don't really think the modern cutbacks on luxuries are for cutting us a deal or the like. For example, there isn't even a such thing as a new Fleetwood...and I haven't noticed the Devilles getting any cheaper.... The economy has toilet-bowled recently, and history has shown the scoundrel nature of greed. Cadillac (among others) has certainly found little thing after little thing they can take off, but I doubt there was a similar cut in the price they would have us pay for it. I haven't taken a real up-close and personal look at one of the new ones, but I hope it's not following the design of most of the rest of these ugly bubble modern cars. I side-swept a deer in my mother's Stratus last month, and there is practically no bumper...the plastic covering broke away like the glaze on a donut. Fortunately, if the impact had been more serious, there would have been protection from the washer fluid reservoir directly behind said plastic...:cookoo: I could break the pieces off by hand if I wanted to. Just my opinion, but it seems like me, due to the unbelievable cheapness of the powers that be, that cars are becoming not just ugly and chinzy, but unsafe. :hide:

Yea Im glad someone brought this topic back as I never saw it. What you guys have mentioned (Sal and Wes) pretty much sums up my current thoughts regarding ALL American makes at this point and time. The American car market spends more of its time thinking on new ways to drive volume and increase profit than how to increase overall quality of the product they are selling. They arent even afraid to admit it, you see the ads all the time right? "CALIFORNIAS NUMBER 1 VOLUME DEALER!" You never hear a BMW or Lexus dealership (on its own) talking about volume sales or thousands of dollars on this quarters factory rebate because they dont NEED to. These vehicles have proven themselves in the hands of the drivers who OWN them.

GM and Ford boast about having some of the highest repeat customer rates in the industry. Well thats quite a nifty way to put it since the majority of that repeat customer money is buying Sierras and F150s, something we Yanks DO know how to build right, and the only real product were respected for in every country that can get their hands on them. No one can compare to us (theyre coming closer and closer) on our solid and purpose built trucks, but when it comes to our cars, they seem to just be homogenized versions of eachother more and more often. Cadillac with its CTS and XLR is actually one of the first to start breaking out of this mold, and for that they deserve a nod. The CTS-V will be one hell of a car when it shows up, but CONTINUED not just INITIAL quality will determine how well it will hold up in the eyes of the competition down the road,I can not hammer that point enough.

I dont care what you say about Mercedes,BMW and ESPECIALLY Lexus, just using the basic example of the venerable 3 series you can see that after 3 years it still maintains 60-65% of its original retail value and there has to be reasons for that. I was doing research on 93-95 LS400's yesterday and was ASTONISHED to see that there are still old LS's going for 12-16,000.00!! A 93 STS was going for less than 5000.00 with similar mileage and condition and to me that is just diplorable when all things considered the STS is obviously the car with more character and driving prowess. Years of poor reliability and customer feedback, along with poor dealership service, will do that to a brand however and this is where Cadillac really has a chance to stand out now. Theyve proven theyve got the designs, now all thats left is to get rid of the K-Mart buttons and switches (the little rotary dial on the CTS steering wheel is very very cool,need more of that!), throw out the plasti-feel console pieces, and put more money into engineering not only more powerful, but more reliable drivetrain components.

In addition, the entire dealer structure of Cadillac needs to be revitalized to maintain a more customer focused structure similar to the foreign luxury makes. Cadillac can be BETTER by bringing all the elements of this formula together and they are making some strides in doing so. Recently an arm was added whose entire job is dedicated to building the "feel" into switches and levers by feeding precise data into computers attached to these switches to come up with a perfectly balanced and smoothly operating control that can be replicated car after car. Once again, its a start, but the guys across the pond have ALWAYS had controls that operate this way.

I get so tired of constantly seeing initial quality reports on this vehicle or that vehicle, or seeing the overall opinion of a car skewed by the fact that Peterson Publishing or Hachette Filipachi hounds named it their "Car of the Year". So many of yesterday's Cars of the Year are TODAYS Dogs of the Decade. Sure on a vehicle that has just been introduced this is the only barometer you have, but its about much more than this. Long term quality is a threshold many here simply can not touch. Many of my friends and co-workers constantly tell me about Jimmys Malibu problems or Aunt Jennies flaky SL1. Lexus has only been around effectively since 1990, and has developed a reputation for quality never before seen in such a small amount of time. I joke about it alot, but even Hyundai, yes Hyundai, has revitalized their ENITRE assembly process, quality control and vehicle lineup in literally no time flat, the original utterly crapified Excel only arrived here in 1986!

But both the CTS and Lincoln LS are very very good, in fact, and they feel and drive much like my 3 series. But when two or three years passes and I purchase my shiny USED CTS-V, then and ONLY then will I make my final determination on quality. What im seeing only leaves me the hope of really being impressed, Cadillac really IS trying.

All 3 makes make cars that are the same under different names and use the same engines. GM just does it differently and decides to cash in on it and spend a bit of money to make the cars look a lot different and sell the as completely different cars while Chrysler and Ford just change some trim and sell them that way. Actually they don't anymore because Plymouth is dead and Dodges are different then Chryslers. Except in Canada most of the cars just had the Chrysler name- Chrysler Dynasty and Chrysler Intreipd. BTW, the Town Car is completely different then the Crown Vic and Grand Marquis and the Grand Marquis is the one that's priced in the middle. GM did the same sort of thing with the Roadmaster, Caprice and Fleetwood in the 90s and the same thing in the 80s with the Caprice and the Parasienne.

The cheapest thing in my Brougham is probably the cup holder. The way that thing is made it does hold your cup or can or whatever you have in it well but the smallest bump will shake it enough that you get something splashing out. The power window buttons and all that are solid on it.

Foreign car dealers do have their wild and crazy sales. Toyota dealers are always having "Toyotathons" trying to get people in. The reason some dealers such as Mercedes don't have them is probably because they're not allowed to have them by the parent company. It may be in the franchise contract.

Some of the foreign manufacturers may be able to raise the quality of the interiors and other things that can be seen, by the eye, on their cars because they can cut engineering and design costs elsewhere. Here's an example. When Saturn first started, they came out with an innovative ABS system. I guess you could say it was a system for the masses. As soon as it hit the showroom floor, a Japanese gentleman went to a Saturn parts department and ordered every single piece of the system down to the last wire. See how easy it is to cut your engineering costs? You just copy a system that works. All the design and testing is done. Now you have extra money so you can upgrade where the common consumer actually looks.

When Saturn first started, they came out with an innovative ABS system. I guess you could say it was a system for the masses. As soon as it hit the showroom floor, a Japanese gentleman went to a Saturn parts department and ordered every single piece of the system down to the last wire. See how easy it is to cut your engineering costs? You just copy a system that works. All the design and testing is done. Now you have extra money so you can upgrade where the common consumer actually looks.

I am not sure about the innovative ABS on Saturn cars (I have heard
that the ABS was common in aircrafts since 1950's and the first car
company to use is Ford), but what about Prius?

It was the first of its kind commercially available from Toyota.
I don't think Japanese came to the US to buy parts for that.

Quality issues and price are both due to Japanese strange national
character, I think. Engineers are known to earn salary below
average in Japan. So, engineering cars don't cost much for Japanese
companies compared to American (well, of course, relatively speaking...)

Toyota was the least desirable company to work for when many of my
friends who graduated from the engineering department were talking
about job seeking on early 90's.

Or maybe it is because Japanese don't buy parts from Mexico, but
Japan (Denso or NGK etc). I know their parts are way more expensive,
but they don't break. So, overall cost maybe lesser for the companies.

It was innovative as in inexpensive. Like I said, ABS for the masses. It was available on expensive cars before Saturn came along with theirs. It also included traction control at no extra charge.

Is that the same Prius that loses all its programming when it has a power loss? It has to be towed back to a Toyota dealer to get it running again.

The America companies have their hiccups, but they're not the only ones. When I worked for Toyota, they had a lot of issues, you just didn't hear about them. The American press is out to nitpick anything an American car company does, not foreign cars. Also, the Japanese government supports their car companies with subsidies. Our government is out to legislate our companies off the road.