Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss
When Johan De Nysschen took over at Infiniti, his first moves were to move the brand’s headquarters and revamp its naming structure. That led to a jumble of confusion as industry observers and enthusiasts struggled to make sense of the new naming convention. Fresh off of moving Cadillac from Detroit to NYC, we have word that De Nysschen will implement a new nomenclature for Cadillac.
The first car to use the new convention will be the unnamed flagship, dubbed the CT6. According to Cadillac, the new system “…will only change a product’s name when the product itself is redesigned or an all-new model is created.”
There’s also no word on how this will relate to trucks and SUVs, but surely destroying the Escalade brand equity in favor of some alphanumeric combination is a criminally stupid idea.
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From the time I heard about the new flagship sedan, I assumed it would be either a Fleetwood or an Eldorado. Bringing back the meaningful names would be the best attention-getting move Cadillac could make. The CT6 name does not evoke any luxurious image. The "C" is too low on the scale and the "6" indicates to me a 6-cylinder engine. There are not a lot of historical "names" to choose from, but it certainly seems like Cadillac could do better. If I were in charge, I would go with Eldorado for the new sedan (yes, I know Eldorados have always been 2-doors). The name has magic and oozes class. The other names get a bit tough. The XTS seems like a DeVille, but the CTS line has coupes and sedans that go with the DeVille name nicely. Seville, Biarritz and Fleetwood are all good Cadillac names of the past. I personally like the Cimarron name, but it could never be used again by Cadillac. None of these names work well for the SRX, so something new might need to considered there. The alpha-numeric names have to stop at some point. Infiniti's new scheme is a nightmare. BMW has completely destroyed its original concept, which made some sense at one time. Mercedes seems to be trying to consolidate its system, but it's not working well. The days of a car name creating an exciting image seem to be long gone.
Anyone that works in a corporate environment knows this is just the new manager trying to put his mark on Cadillac and make it his, no matter how dumb and pointless this appears to the rest of us. So now any new products that have success will distinctly be remembered as being launched as under Johan De Nysschen, especially the new flagship. Its a cornflower blue stamp on a product that pretty much wouldn't have any other input from him. As other redesigns come out, it will be 'oh the xxx-stupid name launched under Nysschen', not the redesigned DTS was released. And it creates some separation for him from past Cadillacs- oh that DTS wasn't mine, I had the xxxother stupid name. It doesn't really cost much money to do, so its easy for him to push through. Stupid Stupid Stupid.
They should have just called their new flagship "Fleetwood".
I have a 1985 Cadillac Eldorado "Business Coupe" in my storage garage and am about to purchase a 2000 Eldorado ETC. I'll ship the 2000 Eldorado to Ft. Worth, Texas to Carroll Classic Cadillac for the new Northstar headbolts and get it back better than new! In 2002 I bought a 1983 Coupe deVille from Spokane, Washington and drove it to southern California in three days. I remember stopping at Hubacher Cadillac in Sacramento and seeing all the customers lined up to test drive the NEW Catera (CTS!). I agree on the naming of cars properly. ETC means Eldorado Touring Coupe but the ELDORADO name is there as well! Too bad 2002 was the last year. ATS, CTS, DTS and the rest don't do it for me... Ask the folks in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania!