#GeneralMotors

In 1959, Bill Mitchell was newly in charge of Cadillac’s design department. Keen to shrug off his predecessor’s gaudy choices, Mitchell made sweeping exterior changes for a single all-out year full of sweeping body lines and excessive fins. Alongside the exterior design changes on the new Eldorado Seville, Biarritz, and four-door Eldorado Brougham of 1959 were interior advancements and upgrades.

Nearly all of the top automakers selling vehicles in the U.S. have announced aggressive electrification plans that include shifting a majority of their production and sales efforts to EVs over the next decade. Such long-term plans are difficult on their own, but adding Americans’ polarized politics and unique driving culture to the mix has proven exceptionally challenging, even for companies with deep pockets and the most talented engineers. General Motors recently softened its stance, opting to produce more hybrids to fill the EV demand gap, and Cadillac now seems to be following its parent company’s lead.

The popular Equinox represents bread-and-butter sales for many Chevy dealers, so any wholesale changes are often eyed with equal amounts of anticipation and trepidation. Looking far more square and rugged compared to other iterations, the Equinox also gets a higher starting price for the 2025 model year.

Last week we reviewed the dramatic and super finned exterior design of the 1959 Eldorado, in its two-door Seville hardtop coupe format. While its less popular convertible sibling Biarritz received matching styling in all ways except its roof, there was exclusive and different styling reserved for the third type of Eldorado: the four-door Brougham. Assembled by hand in Italy at Pininfarina, the large sedan was very rare, a last-of-type, and was a sneak peek of future Cadillacs.

All good things eventually come to an end. The Chevy Corvette got its most dramatic makeover ever in 2020, but the man behind the car’s evolution since 2006 recently announced his retirement.

Normally, when a large, well-known company moves its headquarters, it's pretty big news.

That's because in many cases, the company is moving across the country, or perhaps from the city to the suburbs.

However, General Motors announced a move earlier this week and it seems like it's been met with a shrug.

That's because in this case, GM is moving just a few blocks.

It was time for a new styling theme at Cadillac in 1959, when lead designer Harley Earl reached mandatory retirement age. Bill Mitchell, longtime right hand man and team succeeded Earl and implemented immediate styling changes. Some of those - like huge fins - were to compete with Chrysler and Imperial designs, but others were an effort at streamlining and modernization; moving away from post-War looks. Today we’ll take a look at the changes underneath these grandiose and (often) pink metallic bodies.

For those with the capacity to think back all the way to 2021, you may recall GMC announcing that the all-electric monstrosity that is the Hummer EV would come with a base trim after the limited launch edition (E1) became the less-collectable EV3X. The base model was to wear the EV2 suffix and effectively be a more affordable version of the EV2X by ditching the peppy tri-motor setup and running with the 400-volt electric architecture and a smaller battery pack. Originally estimated to retail for $79,995, it would have been the cheapest way to get into a modern Hummer. 

However, it looks like General Motors has abandoned the idea — likely due to it not making much financial sense. 

It’s become a fool’s errand to blithely quote gain/loss percentages in terms of car sales in America, given the wild supply chain swings and other market forces over the last few years. Yelling that the Corolla was up 65 percent in March helps no one in a vacuum, though if any of our readers are in a vacuum at the present moment we encourage them to seek assistance from the Bridge or Main Engineering.

We’re back with more Cadillac Eldorado today, in our final entry on the third generation models. We spent our last installment reviewing the special and sometimes troublesome engineering that was standard on the Brougham. Since then, I discovered this April 1957 edition of The Cadillac Serviceman, GM’s in-house magazine publication for its dealer service centers. Twelve clearly scanned pages of technical and service detail await you! After reading, return here and learn about the changes made to the Eldorado line in 1958.

A significant percentage of new car buyers want Apple CarPlay in their next vehicle, but that popularity has the government on high alert. As part of its recent antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant, the U.S. Department of Justice listed CarPlay, saying that it stifled the development of technologies that could work with a phone while residing in the vehicle’s interface.

We’re back with more Cadillac Eldorado coverage this week. In our last installment (over a month ago) we reviewed the interior accouterments of the Eldorado Brougham that were far beyond the standard Eldorado. Aside from its coach door hardtop body style, the other area where the Brougham went its own way was in engineering. And some of that engineering was of the experimental variety. What could go wrong?

The Saturn Division spent the first half of the 1990s printing money for The General with its no-haggle pricing policy and plastic-bodied cars that only rusted in areas you couldn't see easily, and all those cars were based on a single platform: the S Series. Today's Junkyard Find is an example of the sporty coupe version of the first-generation Saturn S, found in a Denver-area boneyard recently.