QOTD: A Case of Too Little, Too Late?
Auto manufacturers don’t always get things right on the first try. Altering existing product takes time and lots of money, two things which aren’t always easy for OEMs to pull together.
Today we ask: When did a vehicle change or evolve during its production, only to still fall short of expectations?
Putting a new model on sale only to have it trashed by the motoring press, dealers, and consumers is a thorn in the side of Big Autos Incorporated. And there’s no guarantee that spending more time and money on a model to revise it will bring on the customer love fest. That’s where today’s example comes in.
Ah yes, the Cadillac Cimarron — or perhaps more appropriately, the Cadillac Cavalier D’Elegance. In 1982, General Motors was desperate for some compact luxury love. BMW was killing it with the 3 Series and taking all the young money down the road. Cadillac watched from the showrooms as its smallest offering (the rather large Seville) collected dust. But what do you do when you don’t want to spend the big bucks to come up with a competitor?
You add leather, change some trim and badges, and voila! Cimarron! Except the desired customer wasn’t having it. The Cavalier Lux fooled nobody, and the motoring press and customer took it to task. The interior wasn’t nice, the engine was a wheezy 88-horsepower inline-four, and the asking price was much too high.
“We can change it!” General Motors thought. And it did. Over the years, the brand revised its styling and standard features, fitting the Cimarron with a 2.8-liter V6 from the Skylark. But the initial engines were perhaps the biggest issue with the Cimarron, and by the time the V6 entered the fray the car’s image and reputation was worse than bad. It was really a case of too little, too late for the Cimarron. Which is probably why it had no successor until the Opel-cum-Catera many years later. And that went well, too.
What are your picks for the Too Little Too Late brown ribbon?
[Images: Murilee Martin/TTAC, GM ]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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The current Ford Taurus. The prior one--based on the Five Hundred--was pretty good for what it was supposed to be--roomy, good visibility. Its replacement offered sleeker styling, on the same chassis, at the expense of the roominess and visibility. Yes, I know someone beat me to it.
The 1990s European Ford Escort. A terrible car in 1990, by the second facelift they'd ironed out most of the issues and made it into an adequate car. But it was always adequate, especially up against the fun to drive 306 or the British-Japanese 'R8' Rover 200. Then the Focus came along and was actually a good car, and they quietly killed the Escort off.