Truly Great Moments In GM Advertising: The DTS Visits A Diner

by Jack Baruth

January 8th, 2013 10:28 AM

We’ve taken a fair number of potshots at the General lately, but some times the company and its ad agencies get it right. Watch this and tell me you don’t kind of want a DTS at the end of it….

The truly great thing about this ad, and it almost never happens in Cadillac advertising or even American-car-company advertising, is this: there’s no competitive-comparison garbage. While the DTS may well have had an advantage in skidpad g or trunk space over the Lexus LS430, we never hear about it here. Instead, we see eight pretty cool guys enjoying their Cadillacs. The car is presented as aspirational in and of itself. How rare that is! Of course, Mercedes-Benz does it all the time, as do other genuinely aspirational products. I’ve never seen an advertisement for the Gibson Les Paul that bothered to mention those “Agile” imitation slabs from Korea, but somewhere along the line the domestics panicked and started trying to win people over based on comparison charts. The endless “Pontiac Grand Prix Has Four More Ribs Than The BMW M6” garbage foisted on Americans over the years cheapened all the brands to the point where something like this just feels breathtaking and exciting.

If only Cadillac had bothered to make the product to stand behind an advertisement like this. Can you imagine how effective it would have been applied to brand-new take on the long-discontinued LT1 Fleetwood? Welcome to the world of gentlemen, indeed.

#Cadillac #DTS #GM #Marketing

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6 of 55 comments

SoCalMikester on Jan 08, 2013

They REALLY need to bring back the "Cadillac Style" jingle... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaZpHSnjprI

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Chas404 on Jan 08, 2013

My 37 year old younger brother drives one and loves it. some mechanical issues but the price is dirt cheap i think like $18k for a 2007 or so a few years ago super low miles. decent navigation (at the time) and AIR CONDITIONED seats. nice rear seat room. It aint no towncar (but it drives sportier and has good power). I liked the older cushier model from before. I drove escalades and when they were (always) broken i would get a Soprano Deville loaner and tool around. loved the older model super super plush and QUICK. I drove a 1992 towncar at 29 yrs old with whorehouse red carpet, dash, matching seatbelts and WHITE leather. AND black cherry paint. I bought it bec it was $12k and PERFECT condition (owned by Dr. Stone before me) and i thought it would fun. EVERYONE loved it. I miss it. 26mpg hwy. why drive an appliance?

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JohnE on Jan 09, 2013

I bought one of these last year, a red/shale 2008 DTS Performance model with about 27,000 miles. I've liked these ever since they changed the body in 2006 and kept my eye out for a performance model since I'm drawn to the body-colored grill and the performance-model wheels. This one had to be one of the most loaded up examples built and I have to say I enjoyed driving it. The only time it felt squirrelly was when floored at at low speed and torque steer would raise it's ugly head. It has about 48,000 miles on it now and so far I've just had to replace one MagneRide shock absorber (leak). No issues from the Northstar, same story as my 2001 Eldorado with the Northstar. I just picked up a 2009 SRX Sport with the Northstar as well...hopefully the no-failure theme will continue.

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TheRealQuaid on Jan 09, 2013

Well I'm 31 and I'm on my second DTS. First one was when I was 29 and it was a 2006 Lux II. Now I have a Performance sedan. The regular sedan is serviceable but try and drive it aggressively and you'll find out fast that the suspension is comically soft. With the Magneride its pretty much canceled out but the Performance sedan uses the same coil springs as any regular DTS so they are still to soft and you can sometimes feel it. Magneride should've been standard as far as I'm concerned. After driving my L37 drive line for a while now I'd rather a LD8. Sure the acceleration is good but the 3.71 axle ratio means your sucking down fuel at 70+ MPH. The LD8's 3.11 is a good compromise. If I keep mine I may try to see if I can stick a 3.11 in the trans and program it, tuning options are available for 2006+ DTS. So far a lot of discussion here about the 2006+ N* are worried about headbolts losing their clamping force well don't. Since 2004 GM has made some changes to thread pitch and design so its pretty much solved that problem. But that's not to say that there aren't any issues. This motor still leaks like many of the late 90s N*'s. The main culprits are the valve cover or the more labor intensive half case seal. The coolant crossover will probably start to leak as well. But other then that oil consumption isn't a problem if you rev 6000 a few times and its easy to change the oil. Both of my DTS's suffered from leaks and one popped the crossover gasket. The 4T80E is a great transmission. Downshifts promptly and for this generation I don't hear of the dreaded P0174 happening (look it up, $50 part in $2000 of labor). Its a nice car but for those that go for the performance sedan be prepared to get just over 300 miles to a tank of gas. My lowest recorded MPG was 13. I average 17 to 19 MPG mixed road commute. Just get a certified one and enjoy being isolated from the world but if you looking for handling even in "Performance" trim you ain't gonna find it here... I'm thinking of getting a CTS wagon or Hyundai Genesis 3.8 sedan for my replacement.

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- DeadWeight on Jan 09, 2013
  
  That's pretty awful fuel economy given that it has a...20 gallon tank? I was under the impression that the head bolts AND the threads were the problem with the Northstar, given the head bolt tendency to expand and contract under extreme pressure (along with expansion and contraction of the block, which could result in cracks there, also), and given that the threads are not nearly aggressive enough to keep said head bolts from "backing out" with enough heat & time? From what I have been able to discern, no one has credibly made the case that GM really did ever fix this issue, as of 2004 or any later year, and a virtual cottage industry has sprung up to stud the bolts as an expensive method of attempted prevention to stave off what is a monumentally expensive disease. It's also my understanding that overheating conditions (suffered even once) exponentially increase the possibility that the head bolt/thread issue will occur, resulting in a gasket failure. Have you driven the Genesis Sedan? I've driven the 2012 model year with the "revised suspension" one that Hyundai claimed resolved the criticism regarding the suspension's shortcomings, and the end result did not impress me, to say the least. I can honestly say that Genny Sedan has one of the worst suspensions of any luxury or near luxury car I've ever driven, bar none.
  
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- TheRealQuaid on Jan 09, 2013
  
  @DeadWeight 18.5 Gallon. With the LD8 275 HP N* you can touch reasonable MPG's mid 20s. The 2005 and older N* get far better MPG and I've verified this with 2002 & 2003 Deville loaners I've gotten. And for some reason GM states the 91 is recommended, the 2000-2005s could run with 87. I don't know what to tell you other then if you go to the biggest Cadillac forum you'll see a thread that would take you half a day to read from various people involved in the cottage industry to the people whom rely on GM to get paid fixing them. The headbolt design was changed in fact it was changed a few times by GM. Numerous people have cited that the latest headbolt design is good and that the clamping force is good. There is a guy that makes Studs for the N* and even he said they are sufficient. The main years for this problem headbolt/head gasket problem is 1997-2003. And not all of them do it either which further throws a wrench into the works. Some have claimed hundreds of thousands of miles. If I had to guess a cause Dex coolant being in the system to long and the cars not being driven hard enough. Also some motors were cast very poorly and some have stated that this can lead to the motor being porous and causing issues. I got over 120k miles logged on 2 2006 DTS's your more likely to see the coolant crossover leak then see you headbolts go. Yes it is a PITA to fix on these cars cause you have to take the motor out to fix. But once you fix it your not touching it again and I'm confident that you don't need to worry about doing it on a 2006+ but anything is possible. Thanks for the info on the Genesis, I'll need to drive one to see if its worth moving to. I like what I see and its almost comparable to the DTS in terms of equipment and the base 3.8 is more then adequate. I know from what I've read Hyundai keeps changing the suspension tuning.
  
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