Cadillac is an interesting story, much like Buick and Oldsmobile. They all had an "image" that they were premium products for high-SES adults. But when the German and Japanese luxury brands came in, "younger" drivers grew to view a BMW or Lexus as a status symbol and a Cadillac/Buick/Olds as "what dad drives".
So they never really replaced their consumer base, and then their consumer base started dying of old age. Oldsmobile didn't survive, Buick is trying to pivot, and Cadillac seems to be all over the place.
I wonder how much of this is that those brands never really tried to create an "entry" model. Something like the BMW 3-series or Lexus iS. A car that's expensive enough to be aspirational but inexpensive and stylish enough to appeal to a well-to-do <30 year old. I feel like Cadillac and Buick are trying to do this... And not quite succeeding.
GM's incompetence is legendary. I think the main problem is that the organization (GM as a whole) is so huge that it is almost inherent that there are parts of it always doing things that seem to make sense locally (ie, within that brand) but make no sense on an entity-wide basis.
My example: killing off Pontiac and trying to rebrand Buick as a performance make (like an American BMW).
When I was a kid GM had _ brands:
- Chevrolet - basically entry level on up
- Buick - a slightly overpriced chevrolet
- Pontiac - a slightly overpriced chevrolet
- Oldsmobile - a more overpriced chevrolet
- Cadillac - Sometimes a stand-alone luxury brand, other times a REALLY overpriced chevrolet (see the Cimmaron)
Then they added Saturn which was supposed to be like an American Toyota I think and Hummer which was purely an expensive SUV.
Five was WAY too many brands. Way back in the '50's and '60's there was some differentiation but even back then they shared an awful lot of parts. My dad drove a parts truck for a Cadillac dealership when he was in HS (mid-late 50's) and even then the parts all said "GM". Worse, if you got a chance to peek at the cross-referenced parts book you could see that a given part was available for all five brands:
- $2 for Chevrolet
- $3 for Buick
- $3 for Pontiac
- $3 for Oldsmobile
- $4 for Cadillac
Adding Saturn and Hummer was just incredibly stupid. They should have known by the mid 80's (at the latest) that they didn't need five brands and that three would be plenty. Those three should be:
- Entry Level: Chevrolet is obvious for this
- Performance: This should be the survivor out of Buick/Pontiac/Oldsmobile
- Luxury: Cadillac is obvious for this
Way back in the 1980's they should have folded Buick, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile into one brand and made it their "performance" brand.
Buick, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile each had some history of building performance cars. However, to their credit, starting no later than the early 90's Pontiac really catered to that niche. They spent millions on ads that all of us saw during CFB games selling "Driving Excitement" and built some pretty good sporty cars.
So when GM finally hit the wall and they had already killed off Oldsmobile they had to kill either Buick or Pontiac and what did they do?
Did they keep the one (Pontiac) that had done a decent job developing a performance reputation?
Nope, they killed Pontiac and kept Buick which had an "old man's car" reputation. Now they are spending millions trying to rebrand Buick as a performance make.
My understanding is that they did this because apparently Buick was more established in the emerging markets. Ok, why? Whose dumbass idea was that?
