Junkyard Find: 1983 Cadillac Cimarron D'Oro
The very first car in my Down On The Street series was a Cadillac Cimarron d’Oro. That was 2007, and I didn’t see another Cimarron d’Oro until last weekend, when I spotted this car in an Oakland self-service wrecking yard.
A lot of folks will tell you that the Cimarron destroyed Cadillac’s prestige image, damage that took until this century to repair. Ate Up With Motor‘s Aaron Severson thinks the ’76 Seville was what torpedoed Cadillac, and I’m on board with those who believe that Cadillac’s pursuit of big sales numbers in the late 1960s and early 1970s— plus simple demographics as the Baby Boomers started buying smaller cars around that time— was the root of the problem. Anyway, the Cimarron was emblematic of a long downward spiral by GM’s luxury division, and the d’Oro package (with its gold emblems and grille) really does an excellent job of highlighting the fact that this car is a very, very thinly disguised Chevy Cavalier.
“The smaller dream.” Cadillac buyers didn’t want to dream small!
This isn’t the Iron Duke engine, which would have been too rough even for the Cadillac of Diminished Expectations, but it is the nearly-as-miserable Opel-designed 122 pushrod engine. Later Cimarrons could be had with the 2.8 liter (pushrod) V6.
Symphony Sound!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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One thing I never understood was why the Cimarron was based on the Cavalier and not on the Skyhawk/Firenza. Sure, the differences were minor, but people had accepted for a long time Cadillacs being closely related to a Buick or Olds (Electra/DeVille, Toronado/Eldorado). The Olds/Buick instrument panel, in the fully kitted out version with a full set of gauges in four round dials, was a lot more BMW-esque than the Cavalier dash. That, and the V6 option should have been available from the get-go. Would this have made the Cimarron a great car? No, of course not, but it would at least have created some impression that GM was trying.
I've seen just two of these in my life. The first was well over 5 years ago, and the 2nd was a few months ago. I laughed hysterically each time, just because it is one the worst cars to have ever disgraced these roads. The Cavaliers were junk enough, this thing took it to a new level. The execs behind this car hopefully live in shame.