Our Daydreaming Designer Solves Cadillac’s Problem From 40 Years Ago

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If there is any one car that destroyed decades of equity in a brand, it has to be the Cadillac Cimarron. Often featured on those “Worst Cars of All Time” lists, it really doesn’t belong there, but it IS a great example of a large corporation finding out that the buying public isn’t as dumb as the company thinks.

Cadillac knew it needed to make a smaller “international” sized car back in the seventies, and its first attempt was the Seville…a clean, nicely proportioned sedan that was several feet shorter than the next smallest Cadillac. Despite being based heavily on the proletarian compact Chevy Nova, General Motors priced the Seville as the second most expensive Cadillac, and it sold surprisingly well. The sedan had a live axle on leaf springs in back, and you initially had to have a vinyl top to cover the add-on pressings to the Nova roof, but buyers didn’t seem to care. GM raked in the profits.

However, GM pushed its luck with this formula a few years later, with buyers that were now more sophisticated and really DID care. To lure the younger Three Series crowd, GM offered a Cadillac version of the Monza/Vega replacement J-Car, which was about as far from a Bavarian-bred machine as possible. It was called the Cimmaron. While the Seville looked nothing like the Nova on which it was based, the Cimmaron looked every bit the Cavalier that it was. Oh, did I mention it charged nearly twice the price of the Chevy?  This really marked the beginning of Cadillac’s long downward slide during the 1980s.

Cimmaron1

It didn’t have to be this way. What is amazing is that GM actually had some nice production cars and great designs for concepts right under its nose. The brand’s European division that could have been implemented as credibility-building Cadillacs…but GM’s top-tier marque didn’t do it.  What’s worse is that it let some OTHER guy do essentially that, but with his own brand.

It all started with the Opel CD, a concept coupe that GM design star Chuck Jordan created in 1969, and I think it’s a slick-as-hell design. With a wreath-and-crest badge, this could have been like a seventies CTS coupe, givving Caddy some Maserati mystique.  You just KNEW that GM would nix it, the reason possibly being Because Corvette. (Bob Lutz worked on making a more production-friendly version before it all got shot down). Once it was nixed, an Austrian ex-racer and future car-maker named Erich Bitter was encouraged by GM to build the thing himself, which he did as the didn’t-even-change-the-name V8 Opel Senator-based Bitter CD:

Bitter1

Next, however, Bitter had a design in mind for a luxury coupe, and GM would again offer mechanicals and interior components from the upcoming redesigned Open Senator/Monza on what became the Bitter SC.  Supposedly Erich “designed it himself.”  Uhh…sure:

Initially Erich Bitter considered a design embodying strong frontal overtones of the CD with a more practical, but less attractive, back half using a more compact estate car style. Bitter dropped this concept in favour of the rough SC design which he sketched in the late sixties. Bitter’s design was finally refined for production by Opel stylists Henry Haga and George Gallion.

I don’t claim to know Erich Bitter’s design skills, but I seriously question this merely “refined for production” statement, since the overall look of this thing seems to VERY closely follow the design language of Hank Haga’s Senator/Monza on which the SC is based (see below..the Bitter’s doors are right off of the Monza).  I would venture to say that GM’s Haga easily did the majority of the design work on the car (he was also principal designer on the ’67 Camaro…imagine round lights at the ends of the grille below and you see a similarity to the shape of 67-70 Camaro grille).  The Firebird side marker lights actually look good on it.

Bitter2
Image: Bring a Trailer

Here’s Haga’s Senator and Monza, which is what is under the Bitter SC’s skin.  This Senator was supposedly not equal to a BMW on the road but surprisingly close and an underrated car:

Opels Senatorandmonza

So now we have ANOTHER cool design by GM that it didn’t produce itself!

Alternate Reality

Okay, enough of boring reality. Let’s imagine another path:

Erich Bitter (who had almost no success selling the SC in America) licenses the design to GM (even though it likely really designed it) so it can use it for a competitive Cimarron-type 4 door car (as long as it only built 4 doors. Bitter would still exclusively make the coupes).  Hell, Cadillac could have even have had a by BITTER badge on the car and slip Erich a few more bucks.

Here’s what it would be – see the Photoshop below.  I basically just put the SC front clip and tail onto the Opel Senator’s unchanged four door greenhouse and body center section (I just added new door skins), and the thing holds together pretty well.  Let’s call it… I dunno… a Cadillac Cantata?

Canata1

Oh, and DON’T say that this wouldn’t sell because “the Catera was an Opel Omega (Senator replacement) and that was a flop.” By the time of the Catera’s launch, there were FAR more choices in the market than there were in the Lexus/Acura/Infiniti-free early 80s.

Don’t believe me?  Below I’ve shown the concurrent 1982 German rivals that a “Cadillac Cantata” owner would park next to at Bushwood Country Club. There’s a Bimmer with a lame “eta” engine, a car with standard vinyl seats (sorry…”MB Tex”) that idled like a cement mixer full of rocks, and a big VW Passat. Hardly insurmountable competition.

3comps

The inside would just be the upgraded Senator interior, and advertising would capitalize on this being an actual German-built car that is made to fit American needs and tastes…even if it’s just a rebodied, bored-out Opel:

Cantana Ad

Here’s the back view. Obviously for the Cadillac Cantata I took out the Bitter’s Lancia Scorpion/Monte Carlo taillights:

Bittertocantata Tail

[Editor’s Note: I think The Bishop’s re-location of the taillights and using flipped our-world Cimmaron lights is a vast improvement. – JT]

Do I believe that this West German-built thing (now mass produced to a competitive price point) have been a viable competitor?  I say it would have totally held its own, and if you’re my age and were a car geek back then, you would have been proud to have your mom drive you in this thing to play Galaga at Pizza Hut.

Would this have given Caddy the yuppie credibility it so desperately wanted and needed? Compared to the CIMARRON??  Are you kidding?  I think slimy Cadillac dealers would be gouging them with Honda-like markups and they’d STILL sell.

(Images: Cadillac, Bring A Trailer, Wikimedia Commons, The Bishop)

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77 thoughts on “Our Daydreaming Designer Solves Cadillac’s Problem From 40 Years Ago

  1. A few design changes would have greatly differentiated the Cimmaron from the rest of the J cars. Maybe a slight change to the roofline and a new dash, instead of the Cavalier dash. However, what it really needed was:

    A 2 liter, (dual, maybe) overhead cam engine with fuel injection
    A 5-speed transmission with limited slip to eliminate torque steer
    4 wheel disk brakes.

    These alone would have made it competitive with the BMW 3-series.

  2. Fun article. But I’m pretty sure the Bitter CD was (principally) designed by Dick Ruzzin, not Chuck Jordan.

    Haga was also responsible (as studio head) for the outstanding 70.5 Camaro.

    1. Yes! That came a bit later than this proposed car, but didn’t even the earlier VK have a V8 option? Using that as a basis….now things are getting serious….like the company in Munich being REALLY annoyed by this thing.

  3. The Bitter SC always looked very Italian to me. The coupe evokes a Ferrari 400i and The Bishop’s 4 door could easily be a Maserati Quatroporte. I see nothing wrong with that, Italian styling and German engineering is a good mix.
    Going back to the Cimarron , the US Cavalier was a middling car neither terrible nor very good. The Cimarron’s problem, especially in original 4 cylinder form is that it was neither a good Cadillac nor a good sports sedan. The Seville worked because it was a scaled down Sedan de Ville at the right time. The big Cadillac also had a live axle and pushrod V8 so it worked. The Cimarron was obviously a Buick Skyhawk with Cadillac badges so it didn’t convince. The later Catera was another screw up by being insufficiently European and being sold by people wearing white shoes and belts pushing padded vinyl roof treatments and fake wire wheels.
    After dropping Opel in the early 70s the onl really successful Opels in the US were the Saturn Astra and Aura because there was no budget beyond federal certification.

  4. Here’s my unpopular opinion. The Cimarron wasn’t a bad looking car for the time. Had it been the only J car and had it been built worth a flip it would have been a success. I remember reading a story where the president of GM told the head of Cadillac, “You don’t have the time, and we don’t have the money, to turn that little shit box into a Cadillac.”

  5. One of my friend’s moms had one of these back in the day. It was exactly what it looked like – a Cavalier with a leather interior – but it was a product of its time that, like most things from that time, get looked at through the lens of 40 years of hindsight. The Cimarron isn’t even the worst thing Cadillac has ever done. The V8-6-4 and the 4100 V8 stand on the top two steps of that podium.

  6. GM had briefly considered selling the Opel Admiral in the US as a small Cadillac, but had to go with the Nova platform instead, when it was discovered that their US manufacturing facilities weren’t capable of replicating Opel’s production tolerances and the amount of re-engineering required to accommodate the sloppier American plants was as expensive as just designing a new car.

    What was really needed was an extra year of work on the Cimarron, they were probably stuck with using the J-platform no matter what, but just the time and budget for more unique sheet metal, including door pressings, and all new interior trim, including switch gear, would have helped a lot, along with having the V6 from the start, plus more rational pricing. The first Seville was a shockingly credible entry in the range, it proved that you could take an economy car platform and rework it into a luxury car and have your customers accept that, but it still felt like a real, proper Cadillac just scaled down, they hid the econo car roots successfully, which wasn’t done at all on the Cimarron, which was a much more rushed and lower budget job, but didn’t have to be. GM had the money to build Roger Smith’s inefficient, hideously oversized new power plants and paint shop air handling systems, they had the money to stick a little more in Cadillac’s R&D budget.

    1. Ranwhenparked- I agree that they could have done a lot more with the car, including adding the V6 right at the beginning, but could they have made massaged into a true, legitimate car that a BMW buyer might have cross shopped? No, I don’t think so…and I have heard that thing about not being able to meet the German production tolerances, which is why I was suggesting that the Cantata still be built in Russelheim.

      I DO think that the X Car, while being no better than a J car in terms of quality, would have been a far better sized car to use as a basis for the Cimarron…it’s just that much bigger inside and not that much larger outside, and it had the all-important V6 alreadly.

        1. Fuhrman- I know what you are saying, but think ahead a few years…the 1985 Downsized Deville and Fleetwood were only around five inches longer than the A Bodies! They would be very, very similar in size inside and out…and GM was already having an identity crisis. I think if the Cimarron was to be a ‘smaller’ Cadillac it would need to be smaller than that.

          1. To that extent though, the Senator is about the same size as the downsized Cadillac Seville in ’86 (plus, apparently much, much thirstier – 11/16mpg as per the EPA, at least with the automatic that most customers would have spec’ed).

      1. Yeah, but the DM-USD exchange rates would have really cut into the margins in the ’80s, that’s part of why the Mercury Capri switched to a rebadged Mustang instead of a rebadged Ford Capri, and also contributed to the Fiesta leaving the US market (the first time)

        1. Ranwhenparked- that’s true, and was the case with German small Opels as well and why they stopped importing them in the seventies. But unlike those cars (and the Capri) this was not an entry level car…GM could charge a pretty penny for the Cantata…and I think still undercut the price of the BMW and Benz.

    1. Yes! And it’s FAR better than the Lincoln Ford Granada Mercedes…the Lincoln Versailles. The failure of that attempt at an even cheaper way to make a Seville should have been a warning to GM on the Cimarron that they did not heed.

      1. That was Ford’s MO at the time – look at what GM did, then product a half-assed discount version of it a bit later. Even the Panther cars when they came out in 1979-1980 were inferior to the 1977 B-bodies in just about every measure, including with the interior packaging.

  7. I’ve owned both an Opel Senator and an Opel Rekord E, and I can tell you that with just this proposed bit of Americanization, the both the Senator and the Rekord E would have made excellent small Cadillacs that would have kept the brand much more relevant.

    And not having Japanese luxury to compete with is an extremely important point made by the author.

    I actually think the British market variant Vauxhall Carlton with the Mk 1 grille and the Mk 2 tail lights would have been an excellent Cadillac with almost no other exterior changes.

    However, in this alternate history, Cadillac probably would not have ever attempted their bold and wildly successful “Art and Science” reinvention of the brand, so be careful what you wish for.

    1. I do think that this might have indeed been successful as a Cadillac even with far less extensive body changes…but I love pop up headlights so I couldn’t resist

    2. We have to accept that Cadillac’s marketing was focused on selling to Cadillac customers. Where the market is, not where it is going. They had no idea why their customers would want something different than what they had been buying for years, or decades, or…

      1. andy- with the first Seville, I have to agree with you. However, there were advertisements for the Cimarron with guys wearing driving gloves behind the wheel of a 5 speed model, so I have to think that they were outwardly courting well off boomers that were looking at BMW/Mercedes/Audi

    3. PaysOutAllNight- I really appreciate the first hand account of these cars! It’s tough to express the merits of cars that I have never actually driven but glad to see that what I’ve read about these underrated GM products is true.

  8. IIRC for the Seville they made some considerable improvements to the chassis for NVH, in addition to stretching the nova platform a bit. This resulted in a genuine improvement over the other corp siblings. By the Cimarron they simply loaded it with all the bells and whistles, gave it a digital dash, slightly tweaked styling and called it a day. A tarted up cavalier it was. I drove one in the late 80’s, it was my bosses car, I could tell it was a nice J body, and the styling wasn’t all that bad with the flush headlamps, but yeah it was a turd lol

    1. The first Seville was HEAVILY modified indeed…it even had fuel injection and rear disc brakes. Wheelbase was different from the Nova. It’s unfair to say that it was ‘just a Nova’, but to price it just under the factory Cadillac limousine…well…I know they made some money on it.

  9. Well,The, or should I say Mr. Bishop.
    In 70 years or so an article repeating the exact wording, may be written with only the pictures changed for newer Cadillac iqs.

  10. A. The original Bitter was based on the Opel Diplomat underpinnings (the Senator didn’t exist yet).
    B. Bitter made a four-door SC themselves, no need for photoshopping.
    C. The Bitter would have cost as much to make as two-three Sevilles… they could have just brought the Senator/Monza without the Bitter bodywork.

    1. A. The original Bitter (the CD) was based on the Diplomat, but not the SC. That was based on the Senator. I even has Senator wheels.
      B. Bitter did make several four doors that were stretched coachbuilt things. What I was suggesting is just a new front and rear clip put onto the existing four door Senator body, which the Bitter four doors were not. If you look pictures of those, you can see that the few 4 door Bitters are stretched VERY long and all parts are bespoke.
      C. The Senator was a nice enough looking car, but it needed that something extra to really step it up above the competition. The Bitter was a handbuilt car in the dozens, and as such was indeed expensive…I am suggesting that GM would have tooled up a new front and rear clip to add to the Senator (and door skins) that LOOKED like the Bitter…mass produced in the tens of thousands it would have been far, far more affordable.

  11. There was nothing stopping them from taking an Isuzu Gemini and sticking the Oldsmobile 350 diesel in it, slapping some wood on the dash and a caddy crest and calling it a day. Even that would have been better than the Cimmaron.

    1. Isuzu already built a T-Car diesel, available in the US as both the I-Mark (presumably someone else had the rights to the Gemini trademark) and earlier Buick-Opel, both made in Japan, and under the hood of the domestic Chevette.

      What GM’s skunkworks tried but didn’t put into production was a 2.8 V6-powered Chevette. It wouldn’t appeal to the BMW crowd but might’ve embarrassed some of them if it had been built. Fast, cheap and crude.

  12. My first car was a *shudder* 4 door Pontiac Sunbird (evil twin to the Cimarron) black exterior with mauve interior. If the car wasn’t up to temp on a cold morning, there was no power steering if you turned left, and I had to turn off the AC to have enough acceleration to pass other cars on 2 lane roads. I appreciate you trying to fix some of GM’s past automotive nightmares, if only in an alternate reality. Keep up the good work! : – )

  13. “If there is any one car that destroyed decades of equity in a brand, it has to be the Cadillac Cimarron.”

    Don’t forget they did it again with the Caddy that zigs. The Cadillac Catera. We are well overdue for another repeat of this mess. Maybe a Caddy based on the Chevy Spark?

    1. I mentioned the Catera in the article. As I said, there was far greater competition when the Catera was introduced, plus the Catera was pretty dull looking and not particularly quick. And it didn’t have pop up headlight as my proposal would have had, and they make EVERYTHING better.

  14. I still to this day lust after a Bitter SC, and to a lesser extent the Ferrari 400i, well, really a manual version of the 365 ancestor. I think the Bitter SC is a beautiful car with its classic angular lines and the Opel underpinnings just make it easier to find parts for.

    1. Did you ever see the episode of “The Goldbergs” where the father treated himself to a Bitter? It was based on a true story and is hilarious!

    2. I used to believe the popular line that the SC was a twin or ‘copy’ of the Ferrari 400, but the more you look at you can see that it’s quite different…the Bitter is certainly heavier looking with more visual mass below the beltline, but I like both cars…always thought the Ferrari 400 unfairly got a bad rap as a ‘boring looking’.

    3. The bitter is cool but the name isn’t great. When your name means a certain bad taste in the language of a very large market, it may be best to not name the car after yourself. The only thing keeping me from making a car called the Metcalf is that people will think it is a vehicle for meeting juvenile cattle.

    1. Maybe the BitterCaddy wouldn’t work, but the XR4Ti (which people sometimes would ask me ‘what is an ex-rat-eee?’) was ultra aero with a biplane rear spoiler before people were used to that look , and it had a turbo Pinto motor, and nobody know what a fucking ‘Merkur’ was. So it wouldn’t be exactly the same.

      1. I always thought that the Merkur, along with the Rover-by-Honda Sterling, is one of those cars that would’ve sold better with a different name. “Merkur” is weird and has no real resonance in the US (it sounds like you are mispronouncing “Mercury” or “Mercedes”. Like “I hear you got a Ferrari!” “No, I got a Volare”)

        You know what might’ve worked? Just calling it “Sierra”, just like it was known elsewhere. Sierra is a word that has some resonance here in the States as it’s the name of a lot of places, plus there’s a large Spanish speaking population. All the advertising bumf goes on about European sportiness and build quality and testing at the Nuburgring and leather seats and stick shifts and the Stelvio Pass, then say “Your adventure awaits. Sierra….by Ford”. Boom. Done.

        1. The mid-80s UDMs were all about shallow gestures to “European” style and chic. Sterling was just a little more ambitious but somehow convinced themselves that American buyers wanted a Honda with cut rate fake wood and 70’s era English sofa interiors. “Sierra” would never have satisfied the itch. They should have just called it the Mercury Blackpool. That would have been slightly cool sounding to people with no sense of geography.

          I would gladly take one of the rebadged Opels or either Merkur model over the extremely cynical Chevy “Eurosport” options.

    2. I think the Merkur was just the wrong car, starting with it was kind of embarrassing to say the name. Kind of SAAB-ish appeal, maybe. Some people got it (Biplane wings! A Turbo! (in 1985)) and most people didn’t. I drove one, it didn’t have great power, needed balance shats, and then the dollar-to-DM rate got worse and worse. SAABs were weird but also excellent at being cars.

  15. General Motors did consider Opel Diploma B (1969–1977) as a basis for the first-generation Cadillac Seville. However, Opel’s tighter built tolerance wasn’t on the menu since the American factories allowed extremely looser built tolerance and gaps between panels so wide that you can slip a camel through. Thus, shamelessly repurposing Chevrolet Nova as a plushmobile.

    Oh, by the way, the taillamps inside the bumpers wouldn’t meet the 5-mph bumper mandate.

      1. Wow, your comment with link got approved so fast! What gives?!?

        The rear bumper on this Lotus is lot beefied up than the one on supposedly Bitter Cadillac.

        1. I’m not sure why it got approved so fast…do they not see that it takes you to a porn site?

          Anyway, yes, the framing around the lights would likely need to be beefed up…no question there

          1. Yes, I did include the links to the photos that show the UK and Australian versions of Land Rover Discovery taillamps along with Nissan Patrol that shows the two taillamps due to the spare tyre mounts. Another links show the US and export versions of Ford Probe with different pop-up headlamp panels. Nothing insidious about them.

  16. I like it! But I feel honor-bound to defend the poor Cimarron, because I’m one of probably five people who genuinely, unironically likes it. We had one; my dad bought a 1984 Cimarron to keep miles off a leased Audi 5000. It turned into the “spare family car.” Everyone drove it, no one was careful with it. My brother and I both stuck it in ditches. It just shrugged and kept going. It had comfy seats and a nice bright airy interior (ours was pale yellow, inside and out), got decent gas mileage, and never had a lick of mechanical trouble.

    World-beater? Obviously not. Beater? Hell yes. It’s the best Cavalier they ever built.

      1. I know a few people who did that with Cimarrons – used, though. It’s still a Cavalier (a car I have an irrational dislike of) but at least it’s a little nicer to sit in.

      2. It was six years old and already had 100,000 miles by the time we got it. And who said anything about “destroyed”? It was the family fleet car for 5 years, but after that my dad sold it, still running and driving fine, and looking decent.

    1. As I said, it does NOT deserve on the list of Worst Cars Ever. It’s not a great car, and as a new car was a terrible value, but there are cars far, far more deserving of the Worst status.

        1. My one point of anecdotal experience (a 2000’s-era Saturn Ion quad coupe) would back that up. The car has never been great but it will just. not. die.

    2. This is weirdly refreshing to hear. I had a teacher in middle school who absolutely loved hers. Referred to it as her “baby Cadillac”. It was the first time I had saw one in person and was genuinely impressed by how clean she kept it. I think my wife would enjoy driving one if I could find a decent example. Her first car was an ’88 Olds Cutlass Calais and that had a similarly airy interior and comfy seats. She still lists it as one of her favorite cars simply because “it was comfy, and easy to park”.

  17. A request/suggestion for a future post. I’m not sure if this is a Torch/Sketch idea, or a Bishop/Design project, but I’m really interested to know what a designer thinks all these modern designs without all the black cladding would look like. Some of these are obvious answers, a Crosstrek without cladding is an Impreza, etc. But how about the Mazda CX50? Is that really just a pretty station wagon without the off road cosplay?

    1. Nobody will die if you put some chrome on a car. I remember building scale models as a kid before I knew how to paint and leaving wheels and all sorts of things raw black plastic and hated how the finished product looked. Still do.

  18. Getting some 4-door Ferrari 400i vibes here (which is good!)

    But yes, thinking about it – GM could have easily rebodied/rebadged a contemporary Opel as a Caddy. I’ve always liked the look of those Opels, and I recall that for European standards they were quite sizable cars as well.
    Special mention goes to the Opel Monza which is just such a clean and goodlooking coupe!

  19. I would very much like to take the trip to your alternative universe, if only for a peak at the automotive what-ifs. And because the geeks would be the cool guys in high school.

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