The Cadillac Cimarron is a car that I have mostly contempt for. I feel pretty comfortable in this, because these things were, charitably, heaps. Well, that’s not really accurate: they were overpriced heaps. These slightly overdressed Chevy Cavaliers sold for the equivalent of about $41,000 today, and I can tell you, they were not worth it. What bothers me about this is I think they were part of why the concept of a luxury compact car never really caught on.
I feel qualified to throw shade at the Cimarron in part because I had a college girlfriend who had a 1982 Chevy Cavalier, which was based on the same J-body platform, had the same 85 horsepower, 1.8-liter drivetrain, the same three-speed slushbox, most of the same body panels, and the same all-encompassing blandness that made any time with that car only slightly more exciting than a book of industrial carpet samples.
That car drove like a block of surplus cheese shoved across a sidewalk, but maybe with a little less, um, dynamism.
The Cimarron was, of course, a Cadillac and not some plebeian Chevy, but aside from badging, all that really meant was you could get the inside slathered in leather.
What was especially galling about the Cimmaron was how Cadillac chose to market it, and what cars it chose to compare it to. Look at this:
Look at the cars it’s up against there: Audi 5000, BMW 320i, Volvo GLE, and the Saab 900S, all of which were vastly better choices than this Cavalier that shoplifted some jewelry. Also note that its referred to as “Cimarron by Cadillac” and dealers were told not to call it “Cadillac Cimarron” because of, um, I guess reasons? Who the hell knows what goes through the brilliant yet often addled mind of GM?
I’m not really sure why Cadillac wanted that comparo chart up there, because it only shows that the Cimarron got better gas mileage and had, um, leather.
There’s some of that leather! Of course, it’s wrapped around an interior that was pretty much the exact same as the cheap-ass Cavalier, but at least you could get these with a stick shift, though I’m not sure I ever saw one without the three-speed auto. Just seeing that steering wheel is giving me some really boring flashbacks.
Sure, these things were crap, but you know what the worst crime really is? The Cimarron was boring, so deeply, unrelentingly, clinically dull. It had all the pizzaz of a manilla folder, but without the sexiness.
These things are why we don’t seem to understand the potential of premium small cars. Well, maybe the Aston-Martin Cygnet was a factor, too, but that thing was way cooler.
What a pile.
42mpg! That’s better / equal to what the gas Corolla / Civic gets today!
Sure, those cars are way bigger today…and who knows if the Cimarron actually got that, and I’m guessing overall emissions have improved a ton…but it’s been 40+ years!
The EPA highway ratings back then were on a different test cycle than they are today, and they were wildly inaccurate.
Yup. The 54-mpg fleet average requirement is based on the standards in place when the first CAFE mandates began in 1978, which is something like 41 mpg by the standards of whenever I saw something written about that change during the second Obama administration.
I’ll always feel great hostility toward the Cimarron because it’s the clearest example that GM was no longer in the business of making good cars. We all suspected it, but the Cimarron is the smoking gun.
GM produced the best cars in the world through the end of the ’60s. You can have your Benz 250S, it’s interesting and quirky, but I’ll be living like a stylish sultan in my ’66 Pontiac Catalina. A ’64 Cadillac Fleetwood, a ’64 Mercedes 600, and a ’64 Rolls Royce Phantom V leave NYC for Los Angeles in the heat of summer. Which car arrives without an issue? I’d bet the ranch on the Caddy. I’d also bet the ranch on a base Chevelle. GM cars were truly excellent.
Then it became apparent with the next generation of large B body cars that management had traded excellence for cost savings (the interiors had been ruined by ’68 — GM claimed safety regs but the truth, if you look at what the Germans were doing with interiors, is that they cheaped out). These 88s and 98s, Electras and LeSabres, Devilles and Bonnevilles suddenly shimmied and shuddered down the road. All of them. You could feel the railroad crossing you just rolled over for an entire block. They shimmied and shuddered because cost had been taken out of the chassis and it was flimsy compared to the previous generation. These vehicles shimmied for the entire decade. Then the downsized ’77s B bodies came out. Entirely new! They shimmied and shuddered. Unbelievable.
I could go on about things like deciding that rear seat passengers would only be able to open the rear windows halfway — I mean, really! The chutzpah! But I will nominate the Cimarron as the ultimate expression of disdain for the customer. It is a metal, rubber, and plastic middle finger.
> deciding that rear seat passengers would only be able to open the rear windows halfway
That’s a safety feature for kids so they don’t fall out of a wide open window. All the cars I rode in as a kid did that.
Nah, that’s usually design related. The wheel well intrudes. Many cars have a little divider in the rear, but it doesn’t look as good.
The rear windows didn’t go down at all in the downsized 1978 GM A-bodies so they could recess the armrest in the door for a little more hip room.
No, it was to save money. Then they had the salesmen present it as a space-saving feature to any punter who happened to notice during the test drive (I bet you most buyers didn’t realize until they heard their kids cursing in the backseat).
Well, yeah – they were too cheap to find another way around the problem.
Weirdly, this badge-engineered disaster was more the result of divisional autonomy than a sign of losing it. Cadillac’s general manager, Edward Kennard, wanted a smaller car to slot in under the Seville for 1982, and submitted a request to join the J-Body program in 1980. GM’s CEO, Thomas Aquinas Murphy, didn’t think it was possible to develop a proper Cadillac on the platform in such a short timeframe and was inclined to reject the idea, but Kennard insisted it was possible and got his way, the car launched in 1981 for the ’82 MY after a development period of about a year, which allowed for almost nothing besides minor detail changes over the Cavalier.
My mom had a 1985 Cavalier with radio delete and Rusty Jones stickers on the side rear windows. That thing didn’t even make it out of the 80s before it was a rusty heap. She did get it a cheap Sears tape deck radio at some point so we could listen to Billy Ocean and Phil Collins. The radio was at least reliable and rust free. I can’t imagine the Cimarron to be any better than what it was based on….. She ended up with a 1989 Ford Probe after that which was much better in many ways. But being a sucker for any new things, she regressed in 1992 to a Hyundai Elantra GLS when she wanted more room. It was another heap which went through a transmission under warranty and also lost its clear coat on all skyward facing surfaces.
I drove one with a stick! They DO exist! One of my other friends bought it after that and it’s still kicking around TX: https://www.thedrive.com/news/37839/the-infamous-cadillac-cimarron-was-a-bad-caddy-but-not-as-awful-a-car-as-you-think
That being said…
Go sit in the corner. You know what you did.
My Grandpa bought one of these when he took his Caddy in for service. He was drunk at the time. Three days later he took it back and bought his old Caddy back from the dealer. And wasted several grand getting screwed in the transaction.
BTW look at how the driver’s seat is crooked in the photo here. Same deal in every one of the pieces of fecal matter that rolled off the line. Just say no.
Great take here Torch.
I secretly like these. I guess the secret is out now.
^ User name checks out! 😉
“Front wheel drive, standard”.. Was AWD or rear wheel drive even available on the Cimarron? I mean to compare it to “not available” FWD on the BMW, implies the option is the advantage? I know this is marketing wonk speak but still..
FWD only. NWD when on the wrecker.
Back in the ’80s, FWD was a major selling point for a lot of people, it would be mentioned in the same breath as stuff like rack and pinion steering, full wheel covers, body side moldings, AM FM cassette stereo, map pockets, vanity mirror, and front disc brakes, all the latest and greatest features
Oh I’m that old… I remember the co-owner of the stereo place I worked traded her Volvo 240 turbo for a SAAB.
Me: Oh you like FWD?
Her: Oh yes, the Volvo didn’t have any front wheel drive.
My Mom was one of those people, I remember her being surprised that a coworker’s new Mercedes was RWD, because it was so expensive and surely should have been FWD, if even Hondas and Toyotas were
You can really tell who knows how to engineer a car and who doesn’t; Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, if they really knew what they were doing they’d have FWD.
My ex-brother in law once said “I’ll start driving FWD car when I see them on the banks of Talladega”
A friend’s sister bought one of these when she got her first job out of college. She was so proud of the thing that I just shut my mouth when she took me for a drive in it. It was truly an ungodly pile of crap.
Comparing it to the 5000 and GLE was the height of ridiculousness.
Even Car and Driver saw through this and included the 4000 and GL in their comparison test – along with the 320i and an Accord.
Not sure why, but the comparison chart doesn’t seem to ‘help’.
4-speed
ChevyCadillacCimarron by Cadillac vs 5-speeds?Salesman: You don’t need a fancy foreign 5-speed. This here car can do it better with only 4-speed.
Back in the fifties and sixties, Japanese buyers distrusted cars with more than three gears – they reasoned cars only needed so many gears if they had weak engines. Very strange.
What a horrible way to start the day.
Especially for the guy making the lease payment while parked next to the neighbor’s Cavalier.
Also as far as the “luxury” aspect of the Cimmaron, the seats were comfy, the leather was actually high quality/NICE, they did have decent sound insulation(lot quieter than a Cavalier)
Big thing though was the vastly superior GM ICE COLD A/C. The Germans, Jaguar, Volvo, Saab, etc hadnt quite cracked that nugget in the early 80’s
The funny thing is these got DRAMATICALLY better when they introduced the 2.8 v6/automatic combo. They were actually pretty quick and smooth for the 1980s, theyd run circles around all the other 80s Cadillacs with the awful HT4100 v8. Also around that same time they got a big refresh in the styling with composite headlights and a domed hood, which is how they should have looked to start with.
Id say they were the best Cadillac you could buy when they put in the v6 cause the HT4100 was so slow and unreliable. Look at the back dock area of any Caddy dealer in the 80s and theyd have dead HT4100 and Olds diesels piled up like a cord of wood.
Well, maybe the Aston-Martin Cygnet was a factor, too, but that thing was way cooler.
I unironically want a Cygnet! And an OG Lagonda (although that’s definitely in the category of yesterday’s question, “what car do you really want but are scared to death to actually own?”)
Although it feels like there should be a market for real compact luxury perhaps the truth is that if you have enough money to afford the luxury you don’t care about the attendant problems with having a larger car. I mean, fuel economy is obviously not a concern and while size could be a concern in tight European cities it’s certainly not in most of the US and Canada. So, particularly in the US, what is the benefit of a luxury compact?
But…….was it? You all are always screaming about the lack of affordable cars, but yet when we had them (the Chevy, not this) everyone said what a pile they were. Yes, they weren’t BMWs, but the also didn’t cost what a BMW did, either to buy or service. So this is a “premium” version of a cheap Chevy, so what? It actually drove OK……sure with 85 hp and a 3 speed slush box it wasn’t fast, but remember, this was the era of 140HP 400cu.in V-8’s! I owned one of those Chevy’s new and frankly they were as good as any other inexpensive car on the roads then, including the Toyotas and Datsuns of the era. I agree that a tarted up Chevy really wasn’t worthy of the “Cadillac” moniker, but then all the Cadillacs of that era were just tarted up Chevies, weren’t they?
Meanwhile, in the UK you could get the Vauxhall Cavalier SRi 130 that would happily do 120 mph and was completely unpretentious. The US auto industry just destroys smaller cars.
My dad had an Opel Ascona 2.0; admittedly only with 115hp (catalyzed) but he absolutely loved it. Couldn’t hold a candle to the old, RWD Asconas he used to drive, though.
The Cavalier is honest about it’s frugality. The Cimarron is awful because it’s up-charging people purely for the brand name. Can’t afford a real Cadillac but still want to gloat to your friends? Buy this Chevy with new badges!
And everyone I knew thought it was named the “Cinnamon”. Weird name.
The idea that slapping a luggage rack and an egg crate grille on Cavalier made it a BMW E30 competitor was peak Roger Smith hubris. I drove an Olds Firenza in period and found it wasn’t even a match for our 77 Honda Accord. OK the Olds had AC, but it was December so that was irrelevant. The worst of it is the US market J car never got much better. My wife to be’s 88 Cavalier was still crap. It ran and drove, but handling was flaccid and acceleration was “well OK’. I was driving a 1984 Jetta and it ran rings around the Cavalier despite being a mid 70s platform.
You’re going to just take a big ‘ol steamn’ dump on GM’s jazzy J-body without mentioning that, according to Wiki, it was the First Ever Cadillac to have “export” taillights with separate amber turn signals (for the US market)!? State of Amber Turn Signals, indeed.
Literally the best part of this car. However, the first gen Cavalier also had amber turn signals (which were unceremoniously snatched away in all later generations) so that wouldn’t be a reason to justify the extra money spent on the tarted up model.
And for the pop up/hidden headlight fans, Buick would build you a station wagon with concealed headlights!
Cadillac Standard of the World indeed. Look at all those standard features! Tires, door handles, blinkers, steering wheel, AM/FM Radio! No Cassette tapes for you. I love how they call out the 4 speed standard transmission when everyone else except Volvo has a 5 speed.
Miles per gallon must have been calculated differently back in the day, because 42 may be the answer to life, the universe, and everything but I don’t see that car getting 42 mpg on the highway unless it is being pulled by a pack of wildebeests.
As I recall, that “Standard of the World” moniker has its roots back in 1908 with their then-amazing ability to interchange parts. They really took it to a new level with the Cimarron, a Cadillac that could interchange parts with quite a number of other cars, many of which weren’t even Cadillacs.
Okay, I’m confused by this item in the comparison chart. The Cadillac and the Volvo are both listed as having a “4-speed manual, including overdrive”. The shift knob on the Cimarron shows 4 speeds, so I assume that 4th gear had an overdrive ratio. The Volvo manual transmission of this era was the M46, which had 4 forward gears PLUS a fifth ratio created by a Laycock de Normanville overdrive unit. (And the rest of the cars in the chart also had 5 forward ratios.) So to describe both the Cadillac and Volvo transmissions using the same phrase is pretty much an outright lie.
Not that it really matters, though. I think I only saw one or two Cimarrons with a stick, ever.
“Also note that its referred to as “Cimarron by Cadillac” and dealers were told not to call it “Cadillac Cimarron” because of, um, I guess reasons? Who the hell knows what goes through the brilliant yet often addled mind of GM?”
This was completely deliberate. After realizing it’s farsical folly, GM didn’t want this, um, automobile directly associated with the Cadillac brand.
Wasn’t it more to be like Chrysler TC by Maserati? Weren’t the 2 contemporaries?
I mean, that’s plausible, but I like my explanation better.
The Cimarron predated the TC by several years, although Cadillac’s own Italian-influenced convertible would beat the TC by a couple years to market.
GM also tried such a naming exercise again with the “Aurora by Oldsmobile” but that was an effort to avoid or escape the old (and Olds) image, sort of the reverse of the Cimarron thing.
DISAGREE! Yes, what was promised was not what we got but these cars were cheap and cheap to operate. I had an 87 Cavalier with the iron duke engine from 98 to 2000. Sure the body was rusty and the head cracked but the head cost me 300 to have rebuilt and a local home mechanic changed it for 400$. I recall changing the starter twice because each time I replaced it with one form a scrap yard for 40$. To this day I have never had a car that drives better in snow. I would on purpose seek out snow drifts to plow through. I once also pushed a Jeep Cherokee out of a snow bank with my little front wheel drive Cavalier. Sadly it was squashed in a highway accident and I then bought my first new car, a 2000 Altima.
There is no gainsaying the capability of genuine GM-engineered front-wheel drive setups. With so much engineering know-how derived from the original V-8-motivated Unified Power Package, that’s one thing they got right more often than not.
The problem with the J-cars (as always with GM) was thick-headed, penny-pinching management who would reliably cut off their noses to spite their faces. Management decisions turned the J-car into a bland, cheap rattletrap. Slapping the Cadillac badge on a J-car was just adding insult.
To the credit of the engineers behind the platform, though, at least they were sturdy cheap, bland rattletraps.
You did note that it was $41K new in today’s money, right?
Of course, that value did sink at an alarming rate after you drove it off the lot…
Not that it would have made a dramatic difference, but a point I heard a while ago was that it might have helped if they used a Skyhawk/Firenza dash rather than the Cavalier (standard)/Sunbird dash. Sure it’s all GM plastics and still a Cavalier at its core, but the Buick/Olds dash had a lower cowl and looked a bit airer, more like what you saw in an import vs. the big hooded dash of the cheapest J-bodies.