Cadillac, and the rest of GM have become way too much "me too" in the design department.
Cadillac had the big beautiful (poorly made) Fleetwood model, and of course all the other models. Then Caddy started to want to look like the European models and is just now getting around to making "box cars" that those cars used to look like.
In the mean time, Mercedes and the other overseas companies are picking up Cadillacs old strengths and coming out with big beautiful cars, just where the GM strength USED to lie.
Instead of playing follow the leader, GM needs to do it's own thing again. Where is the Caprice Classic, the Buick Roadmaster and Park Avenue, where is the Eldorado, Deville, and Fleetwood?? They are gone and now Toyota makes the best selling sedan in the USA - the Camry. The Impala can't even be recognized anymore.
And the Oldsmobile thing was a total screw-up. Dealers all in place all around the country, a distributorship all in place and it is closed down. Why didn't that become a retro car line. GM has a wealth of successful cars from the past that could have been remade into modern versions and marketed thru OLDsmobile!!
Speaking of retro's, Cadillac needs to take some of it's own old glory cars and make them into new modern versions. The Cadillac 6200 would be a new version of the 62 Caddy, the Cadillac 5900 would be today's 1959 Caddy.
Oh wait, Mercedes has to do that first, and also put Chrysler into the mix of resurrecting it's old cars, then Caddy might do it 5 years later.
I want to see Caddy make a gorgeous car for today. The styles coming out are just okay. The Mercedes S500 would have been a beautiful Fleetwood. What do we have, a square box DTS as bland and uninteresting as can be. The new Lexus 460 is kind of pretty, but the Caddy should be a stunner, not a car trying to be as bland as possible, blending in with cars from 5 years ago.
Trouble is I bet if GM set it's design teams free they have more than ample talent already sitting there inside Cadillac to make cars that make you go WOW. Instead, the spoiled children you used to see in restaurants where their parents could not control them from being spoiled brats have grown up and are now in high corporate positions across America.
The music industry is taking grandmothers to court. The American car makers not only have lost their bite of the American car sales market, but they have lost the ingenious things they used to do in the past. Soybeans - hello Ford??? Look what Ford is doing to their Lincolns, it almost looks like a team has gone in there with a purpose of sinking the Ford Motor Company. Cadillac, maker of big beautiful cars doesn't make big beautiful cars anymore because they are following the Europeans, who needed to be rescued by the American military cause they couldn't think enough on their own, and now we are following their mentality. And ironically, all the Euro's need to do it look at the history of the American car companies and follow it. A plan ready made to order.
Come on Cadillac, I want to see some style. How many hours did it take to see how flat you can make a car from all angles?? Even the XLR, one of the better looking Caddy's, looks best when a picture of it is taken from above, and that is exactly the picture Caddy has on it's web site. Who sees that car from above it?? Why does it look so good from that angle?? Because that is where you see some unusual and pretty styling.
The low level designers at GM could probably bring GM right out of it's slump. The high end high paid people over there are holding GM down and there needs to be a real adjustment over there.
That's my 2 cents. And you know what free opinions are worth
Peter
