Must admit I have a ghoulish fascination with Cadillac’s trials and tribulations in Europe.
Maybe it stems from attending the launch of the Seville in 1998, another chapter in a long history of trying to persuade Europeans that it is a credible luxury brand. And, of course, another heroic failure.
So it was interesting at the Paris motor show to talk to Caddy’s new boss, Johan de Nysschen, a veteran of both Infiniti and Audi and therefore someone who should know his onions when it comes to the luxury car market.
Indeed, he’s already making waves that include moving the company’s headquarters out of the Detroit mothership and down to the trendy SoHo area of New York.
He’s well aware that although the US and China are the main glittering prizes for Cadillac, you can’t ignore Europe if you are really going to see huge success. And he isn’t going to get that with the current line-up of saloons and SUVs, all exclusively powered by petrol engines.
I expected him to say that Europe was on the agenda; the target is to start playing here properly in 2019 and it’ll do so with diesel engines and smaller-capacity petrols.
It wasn’t a surprise, either, to learn that a smaller car was on the agenda – something to rival the Mercedes A-class and Audi A3. The big shock was that this is highly likely to be rear-wheel drive, "in order to be special and differentiate ourselves". A small SUV is also on the cards.
Big, bold words from the new boss, then. But Cadillac’s task of conquering Europe, selling more cars here than Jaguar currently does, is a huge one. Not least because the brand image is painfully skewed in Europe and there have been many false starts.
I guess the key question is: if Caddy made the ‘right’ cars, would you be tempted?
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Yeah.
Agent Smith had an Audi.
Says it all.
Why has it taken them this long?
GM could be competing already
Why did they spend all of that money sponsoring the Man Utd kit for a brand of car that is going to be dead in the UK in a couple of years?
They could have used this money, the currently weak dollar, underused US factories and Opel turbodiesels to make an EU Caddy today, that would be 5k cheaper than the BMW or Merc version and not be a boring grey box.