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Old 09-01-2007, 08:41 PM
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Jim B. Jim B. is offline
Who's flying this thing ?
 
Join Date: May 2006
Location: N. California./ N. Nevada
Posts: 3,611
Big ones like that are OK if you like sitting on a sofa while driving a tennis court

1976 was the last year of the really huge ones, but they were hobbled with monolithic catalytic converters, railroad tie bumpers, and stumbled around, hobbled with smog impedimentia.

This is the classic General Motors "training film" of how to drive their big barges from the early 70's really quick. Sports sedans? You decide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i6xfVek5Yg

They used to really mean something, you should have seen the new Cadillac ads of the 1950's and 1960's. They were a real status symbol then. All the movie stars, potentates, plutocrats and princes rode around in "the standard of the world". The height of their lurid styling excesses would surely have to be the 1959 Eldorado convertible, in lipstick red.

Their nadir was reached by 1982, when a tarted up Chevy Cavalier got leather seats, fake wire wheel hubcaps, and Cadillac badges, and was sold as a Cadillac Cimarron.
The awful diesel engines and limp HP4100 engines and the variable displacement V8-6-4 motors compounded the damage to their reputation, as did the god-awful quality control of GM in its cars from 1980-1990 and beyond.

They are slowly making a comeback today. Better than Lincoln, at least, which seems to have lost its way.


The CTSV is actually a decent sports sedan, drawing from the good GM Opels in Germany. The 1975 Cadillac Seville was the first attempt at a sport sedan, and as such it was a failure, though it sold pretty well in America, and actually was assembled in Iran for awhile also.

The Cadillac Catera, a rebadged Opel from Germany, also was sold recently,
and marketed as a sports sedan, but
but nobody ever mistook them for a BMW 3-series, and they sold poorly.


And the rappers and footballers catapaulted the Escalades to popularity, even they are basically pimped up Chevy Suburbans and pickup trucks.
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Last edited by Jim B.; 09-01-2007 at 08:54 PM.
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