(first posted in 2010 at TTAC; 6/6/2014 at CC) What exactly is it that magnetically stops us in our tracks to look at a junky old car sitting at the curb and ponder it? Yes, it might unleash a treasured or long-forgotten memory of our youth. Or it might dredge up experiences we’d just as soon forget. But for most of us, there are only so many cars that afforded us memories of happily spilling our bodily fluids within or that spewed its hot fluids in our faces.
In the bigger picture, since old cars aren’t exactly fossils or butterflies, they tell the highly variable story of the humans that created them: that rare spark of true brilliance, or the flights of imagination, for better or for worse. But all too often, it’s really schadenfreude. Yes, there are few things guaranteed to make one feel better about one’s own foolish mistakes and shortcomings than to chortle at someone else’s. And today, I’m going to need a really big helping of schadenfreude if it’s going to keep me from slipping into empathy for this car. Because the truth be told, we’ve all built our own personal Cimarrons. Or at least come mighty close to it.
When I last left you all, it was with the brilliant idea to rescue a half-fallen down, rotting wreck of a gutted old house with my younger son, for him (and his friends) to live in. I saw the project through the eyes of a strong young man; more correctly my own youthful eyes. I imagined myself forty years ago, as eager to learn about old houses as I was about old cars. Just one minor problem: my son isn’t me, forty years ago, or ever.
Yes, he initially got excited about the idea of the project; or should I say, he liked the idea of the end result of it. But he has none of the enthusiasm and aptitude about actually doing what it takes to make something like this happen. And I really can’t blame him for that. He’s as strong-willed as I was then; if my father had tried to get me involved in Greek history or electroencephalography (or anything he might suggested, for that matter) when I was eighteen, the outcome would have been inevitably the same. But that’s only part of the story.
We did spend one day tearing off a hundred years’ worth of accumulated roofing on one side of the house (someone/something else tore off most of the fake cabrio roof on this Cimarron), along with a couple of his friends. To set an example (and the pace), I worked hard and fast, and royally tweaked my back. It took a solid month to (sort of) for it get back to its increasingly semi-permanent state of precariousness. Did that stop me? Did Cadillac pull the plug on the Cimarron after the howls of protest when it foisted a slightly tarted-up Cavalier on an unsuspecting public at over twice the price of a similarly equipped Chevy donor-mobile?
No; I spent weeks nursing my back at the work table, putting my imagination into endless drawings for how the house would be raised and moved forty feet onto a whole new lower level, creating a three-thousand square-foot three-story monster, and engrossed myself in fleshing out all the details while losing sight of the bigger picture. The epiphany came just after I dropped off the plans at the engineer’s: this house was going to cost way too much, and I was starting out with a sagging old box of two by fours, and my son’s fleeting interest had long evaporated by then. It was one thing to build it in my mind, but when it came time to actually tally up the cost, buy the permits, hire the workers and start writing all the checks, I relearned the painful lesson that GM eventually tumbled to: trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear can be deadly.
I should have known too, since I actually test drove one of the first Cimarrons in LA. This was at the TV station I was managing at the time, and we were blessed/cursed with an engineer who was the ultimate GM fanboy. He had been buying GM cars for the organization that owned the station for years, and we were an official fleet buyer. He always custom ordered the cars, and was an expert at putting together the best components and options GM’s very long RPO book offered. He proudly told me about the ’74 Malibu wagons he bought for one of our affiliate organizations, tricked out with 454s and all the best handling, braking and every other conceivable HD or police-duty goody. The fact that the super-Malibus spent their time running errands for a printing press in a little town in upstate New York was irrelevant. He knew that GM could build the finest cars in the world, if you just knew how to order them properly.
My company car at the time was one of a fleet of four 1980 X-Body Buick Skylarks he had specially ordered, with the V6, HD suspension, and extra wide wheels and tires. We’ll cover the Xs in another CC. But let’s just say it actually wasn’t too bad a ride for the times, especially since I had my pick of them; naturally I chose the best running one (there was lots more production variation then than now). The gutsy little 2.8 V6 pulled pretty hard considering that it had only some 2,400 lbs to pull. It would outrun a BMW 320i, at least on straight or smooth roads. I’m digressing way too much, but it’s all part of the story, somehow (full story here).
The two of us spent way too much work time talking cars, and we had been reading the usual build-up in the buff books about the Cimarron. I was pretty dubious from the description, but he was a sucker for every new GM car, and would be for quite a few more yet. I wonder when or what finally burned him. Anyway, he came back all excited one day from lunch, having driven the first Cimarron at the local West LA dealer. He raved about the interior, the BMW-beating handling, and how that little 1.8 liter mill “just revved and revved”. Hard to believe; but the station was doing pretty well, and I was starting to think about a new company car for myself. Since it was a slow afternoon, I slipped out for a test drive.
Well, that was my final GM epiphany, and my personal GM Death Watch started right there and then. I had been a confirmed GM man as a boy, but the cracks first appeared in 1970, when the new ’71 barges that came out that fall. The fact that they appeared a few months after the first Earth Day may have had something to do with it. I just couldn’t see where this trend line was going…and then of course, there was the Vega and its horrible offshoots.
But I still had some residual respect for the engineering and styling prowess that GM could muster in the seventies, especially in those moments when it all came together just right. I could even still fake some of the old-time GM religion with the X-Bodies, especially since they were still new, and because the Skylarks we had with the HD brakes and big tires didn’t lock up their rear wheels quite as bad as most of them. I already had some nagging doubts when the Cavalier’s new four came with pushrods instead of an OHC. Hello GM! It is 1980, and Hondas purr like sewing machines! But I actually hadn’t driven a Cavalier.
And now I was sliding into a $13,000 ($40k in 2021 dollars) Cavalier. Yes, the seats were trimmed in leather, but the dash and everything about the car screamed Cavalier! Nothing more so than the engine: the little 1.8 liter four was utterly unchanged for its appearance in Cadillac’s first attempt to take on the successful BMW 3 Series. It had all of 88 hp, and it moaned and groaned like a dying dog, as it pushed futilely against the three-speed slush box. It made my $6k Skylark V6 with 110 hp feel like a Jaguar XJ V12 in comparison.
Yes, as if there was ever any doubt, GM truly jumped the shark with the Cimarron, and it led the way for what was GM’s most disastrous decade ever, the eighties. Only GM could have such utterly outsized hubris to think it could get away with dressing up a Cavalier and pawning it off as a BMW-fighter, without even touching the engine, among other sins. Never mind that the 318i had all of 98 hp itself. But at least it didn’t sound like a kitchen mixer trying to make muesli out of nuts and bolts.
Needless to say, my next company car was not the Cimarron. Or any GM product. And I stopped taking this engineer seriously right then and there, and our afternoon GM chats came to an end. He did go on to “sell” anyone he could on the Pontiac 6000 STE a couple of years later, which redeemed him somewhat.
Now this particularly colorful Cimarron is one of the later versions, maybe an ’87 or the final year ’88. By then, it had been upgraded with the 2.8 V6 itself, and a new electronic dash to distinguish itself from the lowly Cavalier. But it was all to no avail: the Cimarron was a dud, from the get-go. GM managed to fool some 25k buyers the first year, but sales steadily drooped thereafter. The damage it did to the Cadillac brand was incalculable. But the Cimarron was just one of many wounds of the ritual suicide Cadillac was putting itself through during those dark days.
Wasting a month drawing dead-end plans for my overpriced Cimarron house and having to re-learn that kids have to find their own passions isn’t the only thing I’ve spent my summer on so far. I’ve had rentals to re-rent, maintenance projects on houses and cars (my ’66 Ford pickup has self-canceling turn signals after 23 years!), numerous hiking trips, trips in the old Dodge camper, kayaking, harvesting a bounteous crop of berries, etc… Then I tweaked my back again (slightly) yesterday, and was very frustrated last night given all the physical work projects I had planned for today. But I woke today realizing two important facts: Despite my innate resistance to it (a combination of cheapness and denial), I can/must/will hire others to do what my inevitably aging body can’t; and I can still sit down and write, especially on a foggy morning.
The sun will be back tomorrow, and there’s still a lot of fun and (hired) outdoor work to squeeze into the now dying days of summer. Meanwhile, today’s cool fog is a reminder that fall is not far off, and that writing doesn’t need a strong back. Yes, GM made a colossal blunder with the Cimarron, and a somewhat lesser one with the Catera. And some part of me knew going into my Cimarron house project that I hadn’t really fleshed out all the angles.
Hey, but at least I pulled the plug and didn’t go bankrupt! A big bowl of GM Schadenfreude is so delicious, especially with home-grown blueberries and strawberries. Yumm! I’ll have to come back for another helping.
Paul, couldn’t you have renovated the “cimmaron house” into a mini apartment complex, or a co-op style house?
The zoning here is R1, meaning single family houses only. Plus, the house ended up to be much more rotted than I expected. It could have been saved, as anything can, like an old car that’s rotted out. But it wasn’t worth it, so we tore it down.
And it sat across two lots, that are in a great location. I actually have already submitted permits to build anew house on one of them. When I actually get to building it is another story.
Thank you Paul.
One thing I have never understood about the Cimarron is this: Why on earth did it have such a relatively long model run?
Clearly it was a benchmark for failure, and an admitted embarrassment to Cadillac and GM within two or three years of its introduction. Why let one of the most celebrated failures in the automotive world continue year after year?
what a terrific piece of writing – thanks Paul!
To this day, I wonder what a Cimmaron convertible would have been like, have GM chosen to offer one.
There is one somewhere that somebody made out of a Cimarron and Cavalier V6 convertible, they did a pretty good job, I imagine that everything is almost a direct swap, it looked pretty good from what I recall.
Besides not hiding the J-car origins well enough, one of the other failings of the Cimmy was the one body style configuration, they should have at least offered the coupe and later convertible versions.
Something like this: http://www.ascona-cabrio.com. A few coachbuilders made slightly different versions.
You asked “what would a Cimmaron convertible have been like”?? Just as awful, but with even more hubris, pretense, plastic, faux wood and delusions of grandeur than even a regular J-car convertible.
If the car had been half as good as the writing of this piece, GM wouldn’t have gone bankrupt. Great story.
Agreed ~
When I _look_ at one , this car seemed neat but then to actually drive or work on one , what a pile of junk .
Shame on Generous Motors .
-Nate
One possible definition of a Deadly Sin is a car that caused GM to lose the business of people who were previously lifetime customers. By that definition, the Cimarron was most definitely a deadly sin.
A friend’s parents bought one of these, probably an ’82 or an ’83. They traded in a ’78 Cutlass Supreme that they had been very happy with. The liked the idea of “upgrading” to a Cadillac without breaking the bank, and, entering the empty-nest phase of their lives, they didn’t want a big, boaty car.
They almost immediately regretted their decision. Trim pieces were coming loose before the new-car smell wore off. Within a year or two, they went down the road to a Honda dealer, dumped the Cimarron and bought an Accord, which they loved.
They weren’t the only Cutlass owners who ended up in an Accord by the time the 80s were over. In our leafy, suburban neighborhood, you would find a Cutlass in just about every other driveway (including ours) throughout the 70s. Most of those driveways had Accords in them a decade later.
That generation of car buyers is beginning to die off now, which is good news for GM. Because many of them were so badly burned by a GM car (in our family’s case, it was by an ’81 Phoenix) that oaths were taken never to repeat that mistake.
It wasn’t just Cutlass owners who defected. In the 80s I worked with a lawyer who finally reached a level of success that allowed a Cadillac. A 1981 Sedan deVille – with the V8-6-4 engine. He had no major problems with it, but after 5 years decided that it just wasn’t really worth what it cost. He paid cash for a 1986 Accord and never drove anything but a Honda again, even though he could have afforded much better.
I watched in some horror as the Oldsmobile / Honda transition played itself out in Omaha. The only Oldsmobile dealership was at 78th and Dodge, a progressive place on the edge of Omaha when it opened sometime in the ’50s or ’60s. I loved the occasional visit there with the Olsmobile owning parents of my friend. My first car was a ’73 Cutlass, and going to the parts counter or driving through the service bay made me feel like I was making it, even as a high schooler.
O’Daniel Olds brought Honda to Omaha around 1975. It was in the corner of the Olds showroom, and the dealership expanded greatly with the Olds boom of the late ’70s and the quietly growing Honda part of the business.
Eventually, they built a ground up Honda dealership across the street, and the Olds franchise began to falter. Eventually the Olds store was sold for the valuable real estate under it and it was torn down to make way for new retail shops. The Olds franchise went to the Reagan family and it got a small new store in an odd location – and then became Reagan Buick, then Saturn, and now an office building.
The Honda store continues to do quite well.
Around 2000-01 I was driving an 84 Olds 98 Regency. I had finally had it with the wonky programmer in the automatic temp control system and drove to a longtime Indianapolis Olds dealer to have it replaced. I was amazed that the Olds operation had moved into the small area that had formerly been the Nissan sideline. Nissan now had the big showroom and service department. That was really depressing to see, a little service area set up for maybe 8 or 10 cars. Nothing like the huge, impressive Olds dealers I remembered from my youth.
That pretty much says it all.
I’ve always been of the opinion that the Cimmaron should have been based on the Celebrity, not the Cavalier. A larger body to work with would have helped immensely all the way around. Not that toss-it-away engineering and indifferent build quality would have improved one step up the ladder.
At least though, GM could have said “new, entry sized Cadillac” instead of “way over blown Cavalier”.
There was a similar story here in San Diego about an Olds/Honda dealer. Tipton Olds. They took on Honda right when the 600 was showing up. Now they’re strictly a Honda dealer in another part of town. The original Olds dealership changed hands a few times until it became a strip mall about a decade ago.
The Cimarron has been called Cadillac’s deadly sin, but was it really that bad?
As a transportation device, no. As an expensive BMW fighter, yes. The 1.8 L engine used in the first two years was horribly underpowered, and very crude sounding. Even Chevy ditched the 1.8 asap. It was a true dog.
Wasn’t the whole raison d’etre of Cadillac supposed to be distinctive effortless luxury? Seems the Cimmaron fell down badly on two of those three. And was the third really all that much better than you’d get in a Chevy?
The carbureted 1.8 was only used the very first year 1982. All 1983 on up models used the larger TBI 2.0 OHV Chevy L4 and by 1985 the 2.8 V6 was finally offered as an option. Starting in 1983 a different Brazil made 1.8 OHC TBI L4 was made available on the Olds, Pontiac and Buick J cars. Chevy and Cadillac stayed with the OHV 2.0
The Brazilian OHC 4 became optional on late 1982 Pontiac J bodies, not sure about the other brands. Only with auto trans, I think. There is a callout on the leading edge of the front fender on these.
Depends on your definition of ‘bad’. If someone doesn’t mind paying nearly three times the price of a regular Cavalier to get one with a factory-installed leather interior and a Cadillac emblem then, no, it wasn’t that bad.
I developed a teeny bit of respect for these because of a family whose kids went to school with mine. Their kids drove an old Cimarron to school for quite a few years. I have no idea where they bought/inherited it, but the old thing just kept trudging along despite its obvious demotion to high-school-beater status. Unlike the later Catera, the old Cimarron still had some of that old-time GM toughness that allowed it to survive several years of neglect and abuse at the hands of teenaged girls (who I am convinced are harder on old cars than are teenaged boys).
Thanks, PN, for reminding all of us of the guy whose writing makes him King on this site and why.
I bought an 83 Buick Skyhawk, which is the same car as the Cavalier, except that it and the Olds were delayed. I did order it with a ride and handling suspension, the OHC 1.8 4, and automatic electronic touch climate control. I drove it for about three years, in the summer to the Marshall Space Flight Center where I had a summer job. What I recall is that it would get around 40 MPG on long trips, and the body had some sort of vibration at certain speeds that was annoying. I had traded an Olds diesel for it, so I found it to be an interesting change. I moved on after three years to an 86 Electra T-type. I bought the Skyhawk because it did have fuel injection and automatic climate control. I also got the 5 speed transmission (Japan).
I think that it was Cadillac who wanted the Cimarron, and GM top execs cautioned the Cadillac top exec that it wasn’t a good idea. What should have been done was to downsize the Seville for 1980 instead of moving it onto the Eldorado platform. However, I think GM’s top execs probably wanted the Seville moved to the E-body to reduce costs somewhat.
Cadillac had wanted a smaller car even before the Cimmaron. During the FWD X-car development Chevrolet had several 2 door designs being tested out, one of which had a very squared off and formal roofline. The Cadillac people saw it and thought it would be a great addition to their lineup, and wanted it as a Cadillac exclusive. Ultimately Cadillac was denied a X variant, and it is my understanding that the Cimmaron was the consolation prize… You can follow these links to see what that formal x-coupe looked like :
http://autosofinterest.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1980-Chevrolet-Citation-full-scale-model-19-coupe-notch-rear-left.jpg
http://autosofinterest.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/1980-Chevrolet-Citation-full-scale-model-19-coupe-notch-profile.jpg
Well remember that the J-car program was just a notch behind the X-car program in development, the J-cars were out by Spring 1981 or so, the Cimarron was an 11th hour addition to that project, if Cadillac had taken a little more time and a little more money to make “Seville-Up” the Cimarron like they did with the RWD Seville in 1975-76, the Cimarron could have been something pretty special for Cadillac.
My experience with the J-car (Skyhawk) suggests that to make over the J-car into a Cadillac would have required some refinements on the basic structure of the body. The J-cars were buzzy bodies. Once you do something like that, making it a bit larger is possible and more of a Cadillac. However, this take more than a little bit of time and in the end become like the first Seville, a car on a single platform at significant expense. I thnk rather than what was done with the 80 Seville, a downsized Seville would have been the right move on either X or the J platform.
Not really, the Seville was a much more expensive car than the Cimarron, buy the time the Cimarron came out the Seville was over $20,000, and if people are insulted by $13,000 J-car based Cadillac, they would have been down right murderous about a $21,000 J or X car based Cadillac.
The J-bodies were an international effort. Opel/Vauxhall/Holden had their own versions of the J’s with different interiors and end-caps. IIRC the 1.8L was a euro engine.
The 1980 Buick Skylark 2 Door Coupe had gotten the Citation with the formal roof line instead of Cadillac. It did appear almost identical to a shrunken Impala/Caprice redesigned coupes and having the size of the lame duck 1980 Monza Towne Coupe.
While the J-car was probably more cost effective then the X-platform, why was the latter was improved into an A-platform Compact given the latter is derived from the former and was available with AWD?
I can’t help but laugh at the little duck on the hood with the “oh no!” expression….
The owner appears to be cognizent of the Caddy the Zigs campaign. The “Oh No!” experssion is an excellent statement on the missing hood ornament and and the car itself!
Cimarron’s did not start off with a standup hood ornament, and while I can’t say that they never had one, I don’t think they did as this did not fit into the BMW class of things.
The standard Cimarron didn’t have a hood ornament, it had a flush BMW style emblem with the crest, but interestingly not the wreath, most of the emblems on the Cimarron were just the Cadillac crest, sans wreath, interesting, I never really noticed until now.
When the Cimarron was launched, Cadillac was still abiding by the crest and V’s for DeVilles and wreaths and crests for everything above the DeVille. this was changed in 1985 when all Cadillacs received the wreath and crest, except for the Cimarron. The other interesting Cimarron emblem is the “winged crest” semi-throwback emblems on the taillights, they were on all Cimarron’s through their run.
Cadillac did use the wreath in the early days (around 1910 and before). See this for example (on a wheel hub)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/34274025@N05/6230758339/in/photolist-auAgnV-auCYsQ-auD1WG-auCXc7-auCXbQ-auCYso-auD1WL-auCXbf-auAgnB-auAgnc-auCXaW-auCXbb-auD1Wy-5PJwtd-auD1WU-ceygpA-buSa9b-8gNfcG-ceyguQ-buSahA-ncEi1p-5PEgyg-jtzYBa-5VirdU-k726Xe-cRJXPA-nzAv65-8p5KU-bEDFMm-bTyqa4-bEDFyC-752N7x-ni6st9-bHLVDv-oEtoN-crv3d5-5sUbD4-7J7pLb-7Nub7w-7NnL5c-bCAec9-iMBKHj-7J3mNv-fx1t9G-fxDZuc-7J7jzd-9PW418-5sUbv4-7NnFqp-7Nn5i2-5sUbXn
My hunch is that somebody fitted a stand up into the emblem, along with the padded top and probably the fat chrome bar at the top of the grill. Likely another dealer installed Le Pimpmobeel de Speciale Edition package.
Yeah, the hood ornament and grille are add-ons, this is a way over pimped out Cimarron, though I’ve seen worse, everything this car has, PLUS a continental kit and real wire wheels, it was like a Victorian era transvestite midget prostitute, awful.
I had not noticed that the radiator was non standard.
This was right in the middle of the “Mercedes Affectation Craze.” But any of those pseudo-Mercedes grills just looked stupid.
Even the Buick factory got into the act!
That’s the first thing I thought of–the Catera’s animated duck spokesperson. Definitely a clever commentary and the expression is priceless!
“…[N]ow dying days of summer”? It’s the beginning of June.
This was written on August 9, 2010. I did note that in the intro.
Great piece and a good reminder about our relationships with our kids.
As Paul mentioned, it may have been an okay transportation device, and probably a damn nice Cavalier by its final years. But, even as a high school junior I was horrified and quite afraid for Cadillac when these came out. Not only was it not a BMW figheter, there was nothing that was properly Cadillac about it. Way too much shared sheetmetal, interior bits, drivetrain, etc.
You have to wonder if someone at GM was saying to themselves; “Oh God, no!”, but was too fearful to speak up. (I think I just mangled some punctuation.)
I think that GM’s upper managers did tell Cadillac’s manager that the Cimarron was not a good plan. The basic problem was that there really wasn’t another platform that would have worked, so to get something in production quickly meant going with the Cavalier. Had they downsized the Seville for say the 81 or 82 model year, this would have kept it as a separate platform (expensive).
What I do not really understand is who wanted a small Cadillac. The customers (old Cadillac owners) did not have to buy it, so I don’t see them as horrified. As I understand it, most Cimarron’s were sold to new customers, so this was according to the plan. Whether the Cimarron owners then moved up to the DeVille is not clear.
Cadillac dealers were asking for a smaller car, they kept seeing younger, affluent customers going after small imports like BMW 320’s and Saab 900’s and they kept asking Cadillac for something to compete in that market. Worse, Cadillac saw many longtime single point Cadillac dealers start “dualing up” and adding BMW and other franchises, this was also a big no-no that they wanted to prevent.
I think that among a certain group of younger people the in car was the lower end BMW. For some of these people it was because the BMW was a sports sedan, but for most of the others it was just the in car to own.
Anyway, if in fact Cadillac’s dealers wanted a small car, they had no business being “horrified” by the Cimarron. Granted they probably wanted something a bit less Chevy and more refined, but to expect a car on a whole new platform was not going to happen.
I don’t think anybody expected a new platform, the vast majority of Cadillacs have always shared platforms. At the time the Cimarron was introduced the not so distant cousin of the DeVille was the Impala (or low line Caprice if the Impala was already gone).
The Cimarron was Cadillac’s Versailles. A lazy tacked together car that would make a great parts bin for somebody wanting to create a Cadillac convertible from a Cavalier. One would have thought that Cadillac might have noticed how the Versailles worked out for Lincoln.
Cadillac’s advantage over Lincoln and Imperial was that it always shared little that most people could see or feel below the greenhouse with any other GM car. The big bucks bought you exclusivity from the mainstream brands. The Cimarron was blatantly badged engineered, something Cadillac had not done before at anything near this level. They did learn something from the Cimarron, they’ve never done this again.
How in the name of any form of intelligence anyone would have thought A Cimmarron was the answer to an entry level BMW or Saab is beyond me. That is just stupid. The Cimmarron was junk as a Chevrolet and as a Cadillac. Hell, it even had the same knobs and switches as the Chevrolet. I do not think even the Cavalier owner aspired to own a Cimmarron. I remember reading Cadillac thought it was more maneuverable for the senior customers. It was another step down the deep dark hole of the death of the marque as we knew it. The Cimmarron lived most of it’s life on new car lots and used car lots with sharp mark downs.
I did see older, probably widowed ladies driving these fairly frequently down here in Miami when they were new, so there is some rational to that market, but 65 widows might have been the only people who thought a Cimarron was OK.
Carmine, GM has recalled more cars in the past 6 months than they have built in 5 years. Remember this is the company who recalls cars years after the fact and only when they are made to. GM is the poster child for everything that is wrong with our system. They are on the way out and would have already been dead had it not been for the American tax payer. Go find yourself a sports team to cheer for.
That’s a great number Le Baron, but what does it have to do with anything? Most of these recalls are on cars manufactured 10 years ago until 5 years ago. What’s the significance of “More recalls than 5 years’ worth of sales!” ??? I’m not defending GM, but I do stand up for common sense. That misleading headline makes it sound like every GM vehicle produced the past 5 years was recalled–not true.
49% of Cobalts traded in March-May were for new GM vehicles, 46% bought a Cruze (Cobalt’s replacement). If they were such junk and death-rides, this number wouldn’t be so large. Clearly the sober drivers without a bag of keychains dangling from the ignition have been satisfied. How’s this for a headline? “Delighted with their cars, half of GM recall owners buy another!”
Perhaps you should learn how to reply to the proper posts first before you tell people what to do. (Hint…its a couple of posts down..not here) I’ve gone roundy round with you before, on the ATS heated seats and the $1500 750il, and what I learned from that is that your a little bit of a jerk, and just as a reminder, you lost, so I’m not going to even bother, have a pleasant afternoon.
Carmine, I lost what? You may think me a jerk but I think you don’t know what you are talking about since you think GM sales millions of car each month. Drink your Kool-Aid and enjoy your GM cars, not to mention that Goodwrench service:)
Yanns, You aren’t defending GM because there is no defending recall number like that, especially given the fact GM was forced to recall the cars. Do not concern yourself with the people with key chains, GM didn’t. Who would have ever thought people would be using key chains in such a place anyhow??
The one new Cimarron customer I was aware of was an upper middle aged and decidedly overweight clerk in the accounting department of the company where I was working in 1989 or so. Her husband would pick her up outside the building each evening at 5:00 P.M.
Cadillac *HAS* done badge-engineering this blatant since, with the Escalade, At least the original one differed from the top GMC Yukon only in badging.
And yet,they sold like hotcakes, and still do. In black, no less, for the all-terrain-hearse look.
For some reason that Caddy looks like a severely maltreated Opel Ascona C.
(Photo: Wikipedia/Rudolf Stricker)
I believe that is a J-car or related underneath, so there is some DNA there.
DNA is right out in the open check the rear door quarter light easiest way to spot a J body from UK to Korea
That’s what I figured, but I didn’t bother to check. That rear door is a common tie.
Only exception is the Isuzu Aska – they squared it off like an early Commodore.
NZ got the Aska badged as a Camira they were crap the one on Wiki is my fathers it was a horrible car but strong he end for ended it over a bank and walked away for the wreck unscathed.
Detroit did “World Cars” by dumbing-down their European divisions’ designs. The Chrysler L-body was probably the least egregious example.
Because it really was. With a tarted-up NA Cavalier dash.
This was obviously a negative commentary on the Cimarron – the car itself was a very well trimmed & produced version of a Cavalier – GM made a mistake by tieing it to Cadillac – too bad you used the pictures you did of a real piece of crap – the car was not junk, just made so in people’s minds by articles such as this – but no matter at this point in time !!
As trimmed, the Cimarron was beyond what a Cavalier should have been. It might have made some sense as an option for either the Buick or Olds version. I think that it was too expensive to sell though.
What’s the story on the Mercedes?
Was it an accidental hole or in the name of science?
Either way, poor W126 🙁
Apparently, a run in with a high curb very late at night. The downside of alloy oil pans; a steel one probably would have taken it ok, with a dent.
He now says he only drove it a couple of blocks or so without oil, and is looking to find a replacement oil pan and hope it still runs ok. It’s not frozen up.
I already shot pics of this car and drove it, for a post I was going to do on it. He got it for $1500. This adds a new dimension to it…will it run again?
Start looking for the right SBC for it now.
There may be hope. I drove an Olds Alero for almost 2 miles with a hole in the trans pan (car bottomed out in a grass driveway with a half-buried large rock lurking), leaking fluid all the way, until I stopped for gas and noticed the smoke. All of it didn’t drain, as evidenced by the large puddle that formed underneath at the gas station, but I lost quite a lot of it and the car was fine once the hole in the pan was welded and the fluid refilled.
Had I not decided somewhat on a whim to stop for gas, I would have gotten on the highway and almost certainly destroyed the transmission. Automotive providence was with me that night!
ANOTHER outstanding post by Paul!
Way back when the first Cimarron’s came out, my 75 Rabbit easily pulled away from one at a stoplight. If looks could kill, I would be dead as the owner and his wife stared at me for insulting the capabilities of his new 13k early 80’s “Cimallac” with my pos VW.
After reading Paul’s excellent story as well as the recent ignition switch recall info everywhere, I’m ready to bade GM farewell. When my Lucerne dies, it will be another brand and manufacturer.
I know right, because no other car company does that right?
Add to that GM’s dependably, body integrity and resale is in the gutter. They no longer sale a desirable car for the enthusiast or a car anyone aspires to own. And their customer service is the very bottom of the barrel. If not for trucks they would be done.
Damn, I wonder who keeps buying all those millions of GM cars that “no one wants every month”?
I’m guessing all the C7 Corvettes are sold out because they don’t make any desirable cars to “sale” right?
Millions every month?? Have you lost your mind? I did not know Corvettes where sold out, but for a car with such a low production run GM should be able to find some buyers if they offer enough incentives and discounts.
Every year is what I meant, rather, they “only” sold 284,694 cars that no one wants last month.
“When my Lucerne dies”. It won’t, because it has an awesome GM engine (V6 I imagine). Oh, the irony!
On the subject of safety, GM does big cars well. Check out some crash info on your Lucerne. Tank.
My Lucerne has had ZERO recalls.
You get what you pay for.
Were any of the Cobalts involved driven by sober drivers????
Are you going to try “dependable” Toyota? Check out their crash info. Not a tank.
Exactly.
Point proven. Today, Toyota driver runs red light and hits Buick. Toyota driver in hospital, Buick occupants standing strong.
Looks like the Toyota CUV “got some air” & rolled after using the Buick as a ramp. Not sure we can draw any conclusions about relative safety from this since the accident was asymmetric.
Seems some have a short term memory. I seem to remember Toyota recalling a record number of vehicles the past two years and 85 deaths involving there cover up not informing the public on there floor mat and accelerator issue which cost them 29 million in fines if memory serves. Funny there is never any mention of that when always putting GM down.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/toyota-pay-29m-lawsuit-170840838.html;_ylt=A0SO8xCtApZTN24AkH5XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByb3B2a242BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMwRjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkAw–
“…Funny there is never any mention of that when always putting GM down.”
Because that’s the Moral Equivalence Fallacy: Listing a competitor’s sins doesn’t make GM’s any better.
Not technically in the same category (close but no cigar however); Mercedes-Benz had revived the Cimmaron idea by having the Renault Kangoo being rebadged as Mercedes Citan. http://www.autobild.de/bilder/van-vergleich-mercedes-citan-gegen-renault-kangoo-3606809.html#bild1
Mercedes also uses 1.5 liter Renault diesels in its A and B class. A new Renault 1.6 liter diesel will also be under the hood of the Mercedes C class.
You can’t beat the French (Renault and PSA) when it comes to small displacement diesel engines.
By the way, Infiniti uses Mercedes diesels these days. Also a part of the Renault/Nissan – Mercedes connection.
I have a candidate theory about the unpopularity of automotive diesels Stateside, apart from the Olds debacle: cetane rating. From what I can tell, what’s sold in America has a lower figure (~40) than is common in Europe (51), complicating maintenance & operation. This evidently is not an issue for the knuckle-dragging engines offered in “light” US trucks.
At any rate, so long as the Chevy Cruze & VW are my only choices, they’re a no-go for us.
Neil, all I know is that our diesel fuel must meet the EN 590 standard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EN_590
Indeed, the min. cetane number is 51.
But I do remember that an elderly farmer put “old fashioned” pre-EN 590 red diesel (for farm tractors, dozers, wheel loaders etc.) in his fairly new Mercedes-Benz C-Class turbodiesel with common rail injection. And everything went horribly wrong with his Benz, after a while.
It was illegal BTW, as it was forbidden to put the red diesel -it really was red- in cars and trucks given its lower price / less tax. Since a few years the diesel fuel is the same for any vehicle, so no more red diesel.
Good quality diesel fuel, with all the right specs, is absolutely essential in today’s high-performance diesel cars.
Thanks for replying; here’s what my state says about Red Diesel:
https://www.azdot.gov/mvd/professional-services/FuelTaxInfo/red-dyed-diesel-fuel
One owner’s struggle to find good Diesel for his VW:
http://autoweek.com/article/car-news/diesel-diaries-where-fill
By contrast, all I worry about for gasoline is Top Tier. Even if it is a marketing scam, it seems not to affect prices.
As always Paul, a very entertaining piece. Although not a sin to the extent of the Cimarron, one has to wonder if the Cadillac ELR is the Cimarron 3.0.
During 2011 when GM marketed their Compact (formerly Subcompact) Cars as new models, the Chevrolet Cruze, Buick Verano and Cadillac ATS, some people may believe that ALL 3 new models were practically spin-offs from the Cruze and its platform. Apparently not because only the Chevrolet Cruze which replaced the following Chevy identical size niche’ cars such as the Cobalt, Cavalier, Monza and Vega along with the Buick Verano which was a future spiritual successor to the Cavalier based FWD and Monza/Vega based RWD models were the only two which shared the same chassis. The Cadillac ATS meanwhile had a different chassis because its a RWD and different from both the Chevy and Buick even though ALL 3 are identical in size. The Cadillac ATS ironically is a spiritual successor to the YES 1982-88 FWD J-Car Chevrolet Cavalier based Cadillac Cimarron. Besides size, only their original predecessor parentage were the only things that ALL 3 share in common.
I own an ATS. It is nothing like the Skyhawk that I owned. The ATS is what the Cimarron should have been more like, although in the early 80’s the technology did not exist. The Cimarron could have been a much better car, but not on the Cavalier platform.
Unfortunately, the only RWD small platform GM had in the early ’80s was the T-car (Chevette).
Isuzu managed to make a credible sports coupe from it with help from Giugiaro on styling, turbocharging for power, and Lotus on suspension tuning; unfortunately, they did it in that order over the course of several years (sound familiar?) and by the time they had it sorted it was time to go FWD with the new model.
This is the point I tried to make above, that GM really did not have a good platform for either a FWD or RWD small Cadillac. The Cavalier platform was designed more for a low priced small car and did not have the refinement needed to make a decent Cadillac. Even the second generation Cavalier was not a particularly better car or at least that is my impression.
I saw an immaculated J car recently with elderly driver she probably bought it new no pics sorry it was even the awful Isuzu version my father totalled VERY rare car now,
The early 1980s was when Cadillac “jumped the shark.” It started with the trouble prone V8-6-4 engine. Next is the Cimarron, Cadillac’s attempt at going after the “Yuppies” who would buy a BMW 3 series, Saab 900 or Audi 4000. It was definitely an abomination. Then there’s the HT4100 V8 engine from 1982 which was anemic and unreliable. Between 1982-85, You would be better off buying a Buick (LeSabre, Park Ave,Riviera) or Oldsmobile (88,98,Toronado) with the 5.0 Liter V8 engine. The Olds gas V8 is far more reliable and put out more horsepower (140 vs 125) than the Caddy 4.1 liter boat anchor. Last but not least was the downsized 1986 Eldorado & Seville. They looked like a Pontiac Grand Am and was an epic fail. The 1980s and early 90s generally weren’t the best of times for Cadillac as younger wealthy people were turning to BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus. Cadillac appealed mostly to the AARP crowd.
The 80s GM car that drove me to imports was an 84 Firebird. The diff could not stand up to the forces of that anemic 4 cyl, seat belts fell apart, interior trim self destructed. After four years and less than 50k mi, it got traded to the friendly Toyota dealer for an 88 Camry.
I had an ’84 Cavalier Type 10 notchback coupe with the 5-speed, and while it had its quirks, it wasn’t a bad car. It was leagues beyond our old ’78 Cutlass in build quality, and it did the job. As a Chevy, it was okay…but there’s no way I could imagine the same car being marketed as a Cadillac. Seriously, what were they thinking? My in-laws had an ’88 Sedan deVille, and when you got behind the wheel, you knew it was a Cadillac. I don’t know how a car like the Cimarron ever got approved, but as the comedian Ron White said…”you can’t fix stupid”.
Chastise me if you will, but I actually like the later model Cimarron with the 2.8L, though I would not have paid the higher price at new. I actually do keep an eye out on craigslist for these and see one now and then. They are usually in great shape and fairly priced as used cars go.
They usually sell for around $2500 in good shape. I recently saw an extremely nice ’88 (“in perfect condition”) with only 11k miles, on “that Internet auction site” sell for $5600 (yes, I bookmarked it). Not bad no matter how you look at it. Seller gets a nice check for a tarted-up (POS?) Cavalier; buyer gets a like-new, low-mileage, entry-level luxury sedan.
The Cimarron came about when GM was in there everything has to be replaced by a FWD downsized economy variant mode. Caddy wanted a smaller higher MPG import fighter and the then new J-car platform was the newest. If only they took a Buick Century A-body FWD, changed the fenders, grille and back end, chromed it up a bit and gave it something like the Pontiac 6000 STE interior of 1983 with a HO 60 degree V6 with more power. Something like that would have been taken so much more seriously.
The sheer fact that Cadillac had taken an X-body and made it look so different from the humble Nova and so much more luxurious with a higher end port injected Olds 350 V8 8 long model years before shows how arrogant GM had become/badly run they were getting during the 80’s. This car deserves every ounce of it’s deadly sin status if for anything how much better they could have done if they really wanted it to succeed. Imagine how the 1975 Seville would have fared with the same Nova body with a mini Cadillac grille, the same 250 L6 or worse the quivering odd fire V6 from the Skylark and leather bench seats with hand crank windows. At least Cadillac tried there best to differentiate that car from it’s humble X-car origins and wanted people to think it was something special.
I think that it needs to be clearly understood that while the 1975 Seville started out as a Nova body, when the final product went into production, it was no longer a Nova body, but something referred to as the K-body. It was a completely new body.
It is my understanding the GM top management told Cadillac’s manager that the Cimarron would not work, as there wasn’t time to make it into a proper Cadillac. Had they taken the time to do something with the J platform to make it into a Cadillac, I don’t know what they might have done. However, if the body had been extensively modified, the final product would probably have had a base price nearer $15,000.
What they should have done is downsized the first generation Seville rather than make it into the same size on a new platform for the 1980 model year. Who exactly was at fault is not clear, either the Cadillac dealers, or Cadillac, or perhaps GM management put the first Seville onto the E platform.
A stoner down the street from me is still driving what may very well be the last public road licensed Cimarron in the Southwest USA. One thing I can say about it is no matter what he does to it, it keeps on taking him to his dealer’s public park for re-ups. 2 donuts on the ground, the vinyl top apparently mauled by a grizzly bear furious about Caddy glomming onto a Chevy model, fast food and junkfood wrappers upgrading the original interior of cheap foam flaking out of the shredded genuine leather seating surfaces for five, the pot leaf air freshener attached to the interior rearview mirror which lays propped on the dash– having long since departed from the windshield– and the i4-3-2 engine which randomly and intermittently reduces the firing cylinder count to 3 or 2 depending on its own whim of the moment, and never the same cylinders as the last revolution.
Still own my 1984 J car convertible. With over 340,000 miles on it since high school, it’s what I drive when the new volvo spends weeks at the dealer.
Smooth ride,30 mpg, no water leaks and always runs. Well…the clutch split in half at 280,000k…still not bad
Hahaha, my friend’s parents had one of these turds, an early model that was even more Cavalier-esque than the later ones that attempted to differentiate a little from the entry level Chevy (but still failed). And it was turd-brown coloured to boot. What a shed that car was.
GM learned nothing from Lincoln’s disastrous experience with Versailles. Hubris, to be sure!
An excellent point. Cadillac put serious effort into the ’75 Seville while Lincoln’s Versailles was a much more modest effort. The Seville cleaned the Versailles’ clock. It was taken seriously as an expensive (but smaller) car while the Versailles was not.
Then came the Cimarron. It was a very nice Cavalier just like the Versailles had been a very nice Granada. But it was nowhere close to being a Cadillac.
It never occurred to me before reading some of the earlier comments on this piece, but had Cadillac waited a couple years and tarted up the V6 powered Z24 convertible with “Euro-fied” Caddy trimmings they just might have pulled off a viable rival for the LeBaron convertibles. Despite the K-car underpinnings of the LeBaron, there’s little doubt that it stole more than a few sales from Cadillac, as the 1st and 2nd gen Lebaron ‘verts were a favorite among the well-heeled geriatric set that was Cadillac’s core demographic in the 80’s. (and of course they didn’t roll out the Eldo convertible until ’86-ish, and for a huge premium over the coupe MSRP) The 1.8 litre 4 door Cimarron though….yeah, no doubt one of the all-time worst ideas in automotive history.
Unlike several others this week, this DS will get no argument from me. This really tarnished the Cadillac name.
It makes me wonder where Cadillac would be today if this were a true BMW fighter. Perhaps similar to where they are today only with a lot more market share.
What Cadillac should have done is to down size the first generation Seville instead of making the bustle back Seville. Even so, I doubt that they would have been making anything like a BMW.
Insufferable.
Indefensible.
And today its shadow stands in the way of Cadillac making a full return to the prestige the current lineup now merits.
As I stated in another thread, it’s going to take years of excellence and perseverance to get where they need to be in the luxury market. I hope they pull it off.
Recall how Classic Era enthusiasts bemoan the Packard 120 “downgrade” even though it was a good & modern car.
That first Cimarron brochure cover image above with the 3/4 front view makes me chuckle. Looks like someone Photoshopped in the missing driver on a full-scale Caddie image and got the scale all wrong.
They couldn’t have actually used Photoshop to do that, as it was released 8 yrs. later.
I’d take an 86-88 model with the 2.8 V6 and leather. Similar to these:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics/cohort-classic-1987-88-cadillac-cimarron-could-it-be-the-nicest-one-left/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/ebay-find-1986-cadillac-cimarron-d-oh-no/
The brochure pix…where were the tiny 30s and 40s brochure people when Cadillac really needed them!
1982 was a really bad year for Cadillac. This car followed by 125 HP 4100 V8’s and 125 HP 4.1 Buick V6’s and 105 diesels cemented there real decline.
What’s amazing is that the first Escalade was exactly the same kind of shallow, cynical badge job and people lapped it up.
Well to be fair, if you bought an Escalade it was still a cynical piece of classic GM badge engineering, but at least the vehicle it based off of could be said to be near the top of its class. Cavalier not so much.
The Cimarron sales were in the 20,000 to 25,000 range until the last couple of years. This was about as good as the Seville.
The toy Psyduck on the lead pic is just too cute. For those that might not know, Psyduck is a duck (or maybe platypus) Pokémon with psychic powers. Most of its Pokédex (an index of all the species of Pokémon) entries mention how it can sometimes perform amazing feats with these powers, but suffers amnesia and headaches afterwards and so is perpetually confused. Any Cadillac parallels beyond Ziggy are escaping me at the moment.
My first memory of the Cimmaron was a photo of a metallic blue one, shot from the rear three quarters. An utterly forgettable, and obvious J-car variant, except for one thing- the front panels appeared to be a noticeably different tone of blue to the rest of the car.
This was in an official press photograph released by Cadillac…….
It’s safe to say it did not give the impression of a car of quality.
While the Cimarron was a disaster and probably would have been better off using the RWD V-platform as on the later Catera, it would have been interesting seeing a direct FWD/4WD platform derived from the 1988-2004 GM2900 platform as used by Vauxhall/Opel, Saab and even Saturn though with downscale 4th/5th generation Cadillac Seville styling.
Have to wonder though whether a GM2900-based Cadillac would have been able to use the 90-degree Shortstar V6 in place of the 60-degree GM V6.
On second thoughts the GM 54-degree V6 (despite its own issues) was superior to the 90-degree Shortstar V6 and already fits into the 1988-2004 GM2900 platform.
CC recently posted on the NOVA and then Monza Quintuplets and the X Cars. Now the Cimarron.
After over a decade of cookie cutter cars passing themselves off as individual products of a GM division, there was a limit that was reached with the JCars. It happened slowly, but by this time it got to be a real smell – cynicism. GM reeked of cynicism. Out of desperation, or subterfuge, or bad luck, GM brought out a car that could have been the peak of its cynical Roger Smith era – the Cadillac Cimarron.
Perhaps it could have been better received a decade earlier before the parade of cookie cutter cars with faux sincerity numbed us so completely by 1985. But when Forbes posted their cover story with that photo of look-alike GM products few could differentiate, an alarm needed to have gone off that the cookie cutter ruse was up. But GM couldn’t just stop, could it?
The Cimarron is perhaps the most cynical Cadillac ever. It was obviously not a Cadillac. It had Cadillac badges on it, but it was obviously a Chevy Cavalier. Yet here we are, watching GM put out advertising, brochures, TV ads, and the full gamit of victorious announcement that the Cimarron was something very special. Everyone knew it wasn’t. Everyone knew it was a bald-faced lie. The more GM and Cadillac presented this car, the farther they got away from the Cadillac legacy that every Cadillac owner and lover sunk their wages into. The Cimarron was a Cadillac parody, promoted by Cadillac?
The facts exposed a complete fraud. Not only was it not a Cadillac – it wasn’t even a good car. This wasn’t a beautiful dream boat with a few flaws that could be overlooked, this was a step beyond what anyone thought that Cadillac could take. While the Lincoln Versailles wasn’t a Lincoln – it was at least a faux luxury Granada that failed spectacularly. With the Cimarron – GM took a car one could buy as an entry-level stripper for fleet work at a prison, and told us that it was a Cadillac. GM had reached peak cynicism, right?
That’s one of many reasons the Cimarron is reviled. It wasn’t just a rolling bad decision – it was a rolling bad decision made by the GM division that should have never been pimped out. GM desecrated an American icon. It is pretty hard not to look at it and then look away without feeling a little dirty.
Between GM corporate, Cadillac management, and Cadillac dealers, while there would certainly be enough blame to go around, I would lay the most onto the dealers. They were surely howling on getting a small, fuel-efficient car ‘right now’ and, by god, they got one. Maybe if they’d made their feelings known during the X-body’s development, a suitable version could have engineered from the start. But by the time the dealers began lobbying for their verison of the X-body, it was too far along for a truly Cadillac-specific model (like GM had done with the Nova-based Seville). Instead, the Cimarron rush-job made it way too obviously a Cavalier.
All the manufacturers have had issues with their dealer networks commanding way too much power over product development, and Cadillac would be far from the worst. I’d put that one on Dodge, whose dealer network managed to entirely wipe-out the Plymouth division. It took them a while to do it, but there can be no doubt they were at the root cause in the way they kept encroaching on Plymouth’s low-price territory, beginning with the 1960 entry-level Dodge Dart line-up.
At least the Cimarron wasn’t eventually responsible for killing-off any of the other GM divisions. All it did was tarnish the Cadillac name.
What Rudiger said agrees with what Adam on the Rare Classic Cars channel said. Cadillac dealers were clamoring for a small car. GM had already invested multi billions into the downsizing programs and was unwilling to invest more than what it did with Cimmaron. A Cadillac version of the X or A would have been better, but Adam said that GM lacked the production capacity to develop such a car (which is hard for me to believe).
The X cars sold really well the first year or so, which was when the decision was made. By ’82, they would have had the spare capacity. But I don’t remember hearing it was even considered at the time.
I really think GM could have done something reasonable with the A-body if they hadn’t undermined Cadillac’s credibility with the Cimarron. The Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra had an options list that could turn it into a very credible luxury car, except for the part where it looked just like half a million rental cars from the outside. The price with a load of interior options that made it feel special to ride in was a good 50% over the fleet specials that people thought of when someone said they had a Cutlass Cierra. What if GM had come up with some crisp sheet-metal and nice paint and called the result a Cadillac Calais? Make all the good stuff standard and charge accordingly. They’d have had a Lexus ES300 or Acura TL years before the formula printed money for Toyota and Honda.
The 3300 V-6 and four-speed automatic offered on the later Cutlass Ciera and Buick Century was a nice combination on the A-body as well — respectable snap and surprisingly good gas mileage. Too floaty for my tastes, but if you were an old-school Cadillac fancier looking for something less cumbersome, you could have done a lot worse in that era.
The poor Cadillac Cimarron — the car everybody loves to hate. It was my first car, when I graduated from college in 1991. It was a used 1985 Cimarron with about 60,000 miles. It had issues. A couple of power windows didn’t work and the power sideview mirrors were defunct. But, who cares? It was a Cadillac and it had really nice seats. I was a graduate student at Yale and everybody loved the car (although I had to show them that it really was a Cadillac). Anyway, when I sleep, I still have dreams about that car. I was so proud of it. Since then, I’ve had new Cadillacs, a Jag, a Volvo, a few Mercedes, Lincolns… but nothing will ever excite my soul like my 1985 Cimarron.
At least 90% of articles about new Cadillac models in the last thirty-five years start out with a dig at the Cimarron. Lazy journalist group-think.
OK, I’m a dyed in the wood BMW fan. I’ve been driving them for most of the past 40 years. Not new. Some better, most better, at least one, not so good. The very 320i that Cadillac was apparently trying to steal sales from. Slow, handled poorly, crappy A/C that shook the whole car, but they did have FI and ran well. Lousy seats, so so interior, a step up from the 60’s 2002, but that’s not saying much in the 80’s. Yeah, I know, they sold a boatload of them here in the US, crappy as they were. And they were long lasting, it’s been said the worst thing about them was they never died… So for Caddy to be setting their sights on that car, wow, they were aiming really low. Now a 5 series would have been a different matter, but the 320i was a humble car, very humble and for that to be the target? Uh…
320i coupes were popular on my college campus in the early 80s, mostly driven by Greeks and preppy girls (it wasn’t coed until ’73, so no sororities). I had to look it up: the 4 door wasn’t introduced until 1983, so it’s interesting that ~1980, Cadillac chose to build only the 4 door J car. Perhaps they realized we weren’t ready for a hatchback Cadillac.
We had one, bought used with some years on it. It had the V6 and (red) leather seats. It was actually a very good car for us, reliable, a great commuter for my Mom, it had some nice interior features, none of the power features failed on us, the radio worked, the climate control was excellent, and it got good gas mileage. It may have not been a good Cadillac, but it was a very good J-car. I cannot remember why my folks ever sold it. It was in many ways equivalent to the Toyota Cressida my mom had later. She always got a kick in saying to us “let’s go in my Cadillac”.
As stated by others, the Cimarron was actually a pretty nice Cavalier; it was just a bad Cadillac. Imagine if it had been sold by Buick or Oldsmobile (and at a more reasonable price). It might have done quite a bit better in the marketplace at one of those dealerships.
But, no, Cadillac dealers just had to have a small luxury car ‘right now’ and at the last minute, and a thinly-disguised Cavalier is exactly what they got. If only they had made that decision a year or two sooner and gotten something like the original, Nova-based Seville. No one mistook a first generation Seville for a Nova, no matter how similar they might have been underneath.
The whole Cimarron moniker seems to be a little weird.
The etymology of the word comes from the Spanish adjective “cimarrón,” meaning “wild” or “wild.The term has been used since the second half of the 17th century. Here the meanings:
Maroons: In the British, French and Dutch colonies of America, this was used to describe population groups of predominantly African origin who escaped slavery through escape or active resistance.
In the Spanish colonies the name Cimarrón was used.
Uruguayan Cimarron (Cimarron Uruguayo): This is a breed of dog from Uruguay. The name is derived from the Uruguayan language and means something like “wild” or “untameable”.
Lost Pets: Originally, “Cimarrón” referred to lost pets in Spanish. This reflects the “esteem” that slaves had in society there and then.
Who the hell had the glorious idea to name a (luxury ?) car like that ?