Why did the Cadillac Cimarron fail?

Learn about GM's most infamous car, the 1982-88 Cadillac Cimarron.

Timecodes:
0:00 - Intro
1:16 - Cimarron discussion

Errata/errors:

Per John Manoogian himself (thx John!), he did not contribute to the early 90s Bonneville, but was a designer for numerous other Pontiacs in the 80s-00s.

[TonyBarr]

Hello Adam. I arrived in Detroit the summer of 1985 as a newly graduated engineer at Chrysler. I was a car crazed young man to say the least. With that in mind, I can't get enough of the American car industry from that time and my formative years growing up in the 1970s. Keep these car chats coming and I will watch, enjoy and "like" them. I also greatly appreciate your collection of low mileage American cars from the 60s, 70s, 80s & 90s. It is all interesting and very nostalgic to me. Thank you.

[errorsofmodernism]

GM did more self inflicted damage than any competitor ever could have dreamed of doing to it. It's worst enemies were within the organization.

[williamegler]

I was gifted a 1987 model by a elderly neighbor that could no longer drive.
I had been doing household chores for years such as mowing her lawn shoveling her sidewalk and driveway and cleaning her gutters.
It was in my parents driveway when we got home from my birthday dinner.
The keys and title were with the card.
It had just had a full service and detail as well as new tires.
It had been meticulously maintained and garaged it's whole life and only had 10, 485 miles.
I drove it all through the remainder of high school college and veterinary school.
Never failed to start or left me stranded.
With the V6 engine it was fairly quick.
Not the greatest car I have ever owned but hardly the POS urban legend suggests.
It was rear ended by a Ram pickup truck with 245k miles and everything but the cassette player still worked.

[jimmyg]

The encyclopedic knowledge of the subject matter is always impressive to say the least. Extremely interesting

[cadillacguy]

Adam, Really like the “on the porch” chat style. Definitely would hope there are more to come.
In discussing the Cimarron, in addition to the great information you provided, there are a couple of other factors that greatly influenced, and ultimately doomed that car.
Roger Smith was chairman of GM at the time of the Cimarron. I understand he was hawkish about expenses. You mentioned the 1.8 being a “parts bin” engine. I’m betting those engineers were told something like, “make us an all new engine, but it has to be from stuff we already make. No budget for engineering new components.” I’d be willing to bet Cadillac would have done a lot different to the J body if it could have. They had to know, in fact how they badged the car indicated they did, that Cimarron would always be “the red-headed step child” of Cadillac (No disrespect to red-heads or step children).
I think the second factor was CAFE. As the standards rose in the ‘80’s, how do you get Cadillac in compliance without alienating its customer base? Maybe they were hoping Cimarron would bring some buyers into the fold that would move enough to help offset those that wanted the big “gas guzzling” traditional Cadillac. That would certainly make getting to the CAFE number easier.

[carolinaking]

I think this format compliments the other content quite nicely. This is by far my favorite car channel, not only because of the cars featured, but also because of the information and history provided. Exceptional job you’ve done here!

[HereForAStorm]

I remember my dad taking in a brown Cadillac Cimarron 5-speed in on trade at our car lot. I couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 years old. He pulled it into the back (where our 1960 Eldorado Seville was sitting). Even as a child, I knew something had gone very, very wrong over at Cadillac.

[giggiddy]

I like these chat sessions as your detailed account of historical and technical information is wonderful. The longer the better also. Thank you sir!

[ab]

Interesting line of discussion, Adam. The Cimarron epitomizes all of what went wrong at GM in that era. It seems hard to believe when one realizes that Pete Estes was the CEO, being a highly-regarded engineer with a good track record. But he apparently wasn't willing or able to stand up to the Chairman, Roger Smith, and the rest of Smith's fellow 14th floor execs when it came to bean-counting taken to the extreme as Smith wanted, in order to allow him to engage in flights of fancy like Saturn and the purchase of EDS from Ross Perot. GM's cars in that era suffered greatly as a result of that cost-cutting. It seemed that any modicum of sense disappeared when someone undoubtedly stood up in a meeting and said the Cimarron would sticker for over $12K, and that got approval. What were they thinking? The customer research, if any was even done on that point, must have been something to see.

Of course it wasn't just the Cimarron, although that is the likely poster child for this era. You mentioned some other examples, like the 1.8 engine itself, the Olds diesel that was rushed into production, and the pair of Cadillac mysteries, the V8-6-4 and the HT4100. There were also various forgettable rush jobs like the shrunken Chevy small-block, the sawed-off V8s that became V6s and no doubt others. All of those engine programs were done to try to accommodate the CAFE regulations that were coming up and getting more stringent with time. GM's answer wasn't to develop more advanced, more efficient engines, but instead to reduce output and achieve fuel economy targets using existing pushrod engine technologies, presumably to save money. The result was a product line across the company that was saddled with underpowered, undersized engines. The early '80s were a bad time to be buying almost any GM car, although the other domestics weren't much better off. It seemed like all of the engineers they used to have who knew how to develop engines were no longer there. I would love to hear the discussions around the executive table that led to the HT4100 program at Cadillac back then. It astounds me that anyone would green-light a new pushrod engine program in that era. There were lots of reasons for the decline of GM that go beyond just that, but you can see the lack of vision and how poorly they understood their customers as an overriding factor.

[richardwissing]

The first car my grandfather drove or tried to drive was a 1912 (?) Cadillac. He was around eight years old and got a good licking from the family's chauffer. He graduated from college in 1926 and was gifted a new Cadillac. During the Depression and WWII he kept a lower profile. Post War back to Cadillacs and a Muntz Jet for fun. In 1963 a beautiful Rivera but he deemed it too low to the ground and went to an all white Deville with white leather interior and black cloth inserts.. The 1968 Eldorado was beautiful but was hit by an ambulance that ran a red light without a siren or flashing lights on. He took a cab to the Cadillac dealer and got a 1970 Deville. That was the only car of his that I drove but it was a solid, well put together automobile. They have not kept up. Different times. I rambled but I like this video. I remember when the Cimarron came out and it just showed how off the mark GM was. Thanks keep them coming.

[boowiebear]

The greatest gift the Cimmaron gave the world is all the videos and analysis almost 40 years later trying to figure out how it could have ever been released!

[DerrickOil]

I remember my parents friends had a new at the time 1985 Cimmaron. Any new car was pretty sweet for a 5th grader. 🤷‍♂️

[ondrejbures]

Hello Adam. Greetings from Prague (CZE). I just got into US cars this year and I am learning loads of stuff from your car videos. This format is exactly what I was looking for to fully understand how it all worked with the big three and all the brands they had. The more inside information the better:-) If you ever managed to make an interview with anyone from the car manufacturing, that would be just perfect. Thank you for this high quality content and all the best!

[xitgrocgetter]

My Dad's friend had a 1987 Cadillac Cimarron...V6 with a 5 speed manual....silver with a gray interior. Dad also purchased a Pontiac 6000 LE about the same time and thought it was better value. I recall him joking about his friend's Cimarron being a fancy Cavalier. I think later in the production run, they engineered enough differentiation into the Cimarron but it was too late.

My Dad's friend lived close to the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport and I used to stay at their house anytime I would fly out of town., He took me to the airport in the Cimarron and I thought it was a nice car...and being 21 years old at that time, I thought it was a classy way to get to the airport. Of course, my car at the time was a 79 Olds Cutlass with the fastback....I remember Dad's friend taking the keys to the car and saying, "I'll keep that buggy in the garage." Another family friend joked that he thought it was so ugly he wanted to hide it from the neighbors.

In hindsight, I think Cadillac should have based the Cimarron on the A Body front drive platform...which was tuned for decent performance with the 6000 STE. It would have had more space and immediately been available with a larger V6 and size wise would have been better matched for the BMWs and Audis of the day.

[johnfrakes]

Great format, I like hearing and reliving the history of GM. I remember those days quite vividly. Word on the street back then, the Cimarron was a joke! On the other hand, the Chevy Caprice was highly regarded as a very reliable, comfortable family car that was also a good value for the money.

[brianbalyeat]

I was just going to comment yesterday that it had been weeks since we had seen your face in a video, and voila! Here you are. So thank you. For those of us who like the charming delivery along with the awesome automotive knowledge. This chat format is amazing as is your level of detail. As Tina Turner would say.."You're simply the best"

[MrOktsx]

I think if Cadillac could have released the Cimarron as it looked in '88 as an '82 or '83 model it would have sold much better.

[joeseeking]

I still kind of want one - but the 87-88 V6 and 5 speed - they were beginning to get it right. But in 82, against an Audi 4000 - real German experience, but a little Spartan - or the newly revamped and much more powerful & loaded Maxima, hah. Fun fact - first Caddy since 67 with crank windows standard. Interesting that the J cars were actually more expensive than the X cars - they were trying to be a Honda Accord. Unfortunately, GM was just hopeless in the early 80s, but then so was Detroit, generally. They really sowed the seeds of their own destruction and in a larger sociological context it's a great shame for America. We had (still have?) no ability to think long term', labor exacerbated it, shareholders drove it and upper management featherbedded. But I'm way off topic now.

[micmac]

I was 9 years old, about to turn 10, when the Citation was introduced and I loved that platform. When the Cimarron came out I hated it. Cadillacs were NOT supposed to be tiny. Of course, my understanding of the sticker price and cost of vehicles was minimal in those days, but I never took that car seriously.

[jasonyoung]

I've always thought Cimarron sounded more like the name of a breakfast item at Taco Bell than a car.