Free Republic

GM challenges German brands with small CadillacBy Deepa Seetharaman and Ben Klayman DETROIT | Mon Jan 9, 2012 7:55am EST (Reuters) - General Motors Co proved with the Chevrolet Cruze it can build a top-selling compact car, cracking a market long dominated by Japanese brands. Now the No.1 U.S. automaker is targeting the entrenched German luxury brands with a more nimble compact Cadillac. The 2013 ATS is central to GM chief executive Dan Akerson's mission to refashion Cadillac into a global luxury brand by winning over younger buyers with a sportier image. From the start, GM took aim at BMW's...

Federal bailout funding may have prevented General Motors from going through a normal bankruptcy process, but it has come at a significant price in terms of reputation and potential buyers. Fifty percent (50%) of American adults are less likely to buy a GM car because of the bailout. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds just four percent (4%) are more likely to buy from the company that critics refer to as Government Motors. Forty-two percent (42%) say the bailout has had no impact on their buying plans one way or the other. The flip side of the data...

Professional subsidy-sucking General Motors, which seems content to marinate in its taxpayer "investment" indefinitely, is getting ambitious. No, not in the sense of paying backthe $50 billion U.S. government bailout, or in producing vehicles people actually want to buy, but instead in finding other governments to subsidize its products. Not surprisingly the new partner - in a 50-50 joint venture with the state-run auto industry - is China. And also unsurprisingly, General Electric will join GM in a related partnership in the communist nation. And you probably already guessed the agreements surround the development and sales of electric vehicles....

Criminals seem to have a thing for big vehicles. The Cadillac Escalade remains the car most likely to be stolen, according to new data from the Highway Loss Data Institute. This is the fourth year in a row the Escalade has topped this list. The rankings for most stolen cars are based on auto insurance claims data from 2008 and 2009.

According to a USA Today report, General Motors has decided to offer a Cadillac version of the Chevy Volt called the Converj. This follows reports that the Obama Administration will continue to hold its stake in GM. That makes sense, since a decision to build a Cadillac version of the Volt could not be based on economic considerations, but political ones.Sales of the Chevy Volt have been horrible. The statements out of GM that the vehicle was "virtually sold out" turned out not to be true. Even in a best case scenario where sales pick up, the vehicle is...

The Car That Thinks It's A Tank: Inside Obama's 'Beast' Cadillac that is being flown from the U.S. to drive down the Mall By CHRIS GREENWOOD and REBECCA ENGLISH 23rd May 2011 An extraordinary entourage will accompany President Obama and his wife Michelle when they sweep into London tomorrow. The team of at least 500 will include White House aides, a six-doctor medical team and a squad of personal chefs. There will be more than 200 secret service agents, many of them armed. The President will travel in ‘The Beast’, his gigantic bomb-proof General Motors Cadillac with eight-inch thick armour-plating...

Let's say you bought this car, a Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon, with a 6.2-liter, 556-horsepower Corvette V8, six-speed manual transmission, magnetorheological dampers (I'll get to that), Michelin SP2 gumballs, 15-inch front Brembo brakes with six-pot calipers, and microsuede wrapping on the steering wheel and shifter. Well, first of all, you'd be one strange cat, which is to say, unusual. Notwithstanding any nitro-burning ice-cream trucks or flying boattail Rollses in your neighborhood, this wagon is about as esoteric an automobile as you're likely to find. Statistically speaking, General Motors will sell exactly none of these cars, the Detroit equivalent of Zoroastrianism....

The luxury automobile maker, Cadillac has noted the potential of small cars and has now come out with a concept car for urban driving. It will still be a spewing with luxury from all angles, including scissor doors and a very spacious cabin. Which brings me to one very troublesome fact - the small Cadillac isn’t very small. In fact it is only a couple of inches shorter than a sedan! As far as specifications go, the small Cadillac, Urban Luxury, will have a 1.0 litre petrol engine with 3 cylinders and an electric motor. It will be equipped with...

US Rep. Conyers reimburses for son's vehicle useUS Rep. Conyers reimburses $5,682 for son's unofficial use of government Escalade in Detroit On Thursday December 23, 2010, 12:54 pm EST DETROIT (AP) -- Taxpayers have been repaid for the time Detroit Congressman John Conyers' son spent using a government vehicle. The U.S. Treasury Department was reimbursed $5,682, the House Judiciary chair said in a statement Wednesday. Conyers said the amount was based on the daily use of the Cadillac Escalade by his 20-year-old son, John Conyers III, over the Thanksgiving holiday. He announced that his son used the sport utility vehicle...

Obama's 'Beast' Creates Stir at NATO Green Summit (Nov. 20) -- World leaders attending the NATO summit in Lisbon, Portugal, zipped around in zero-emission electric vehicles. Journalists covering the event hopped aboard electric buses to get from venue to venue. And President Barack Obama's eight-ton, diesel-fueled armored limousine dubbed "the Beast" drew even more attention than usual. Lisbon newspapers dedicated pages of coverage to the vehicle, with charts featuring every detail that the Secret Service is willing to divulge -- like the special foam in the gas tank to extinguish any fire from a direct hit, and the supply of...

Global Warming allies left scratching their heads as Dear Leader arrives at summit in a 8mpg Panzer... Most Americans are no longer surprised by Obama's do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do liberal duplicity on issues such as smoking, green lifestyles, or personal modesty/frugality. And anyone who did actual DD on Obama's environmental platform back in '08 can tell you his last ride before arriving in DC to heal the earth was a 300hp Chrysler 300 Hemi. But the starry-eyed European Left is still coming out of the hopenchange ether, so many of them were appalled that even as the EU's left-leaning leaders -Obama's best carbon-trading...

The Air Force's latest recruiting tool is a Cadillac Escalade-bodied monster truck designed to look like an A10-C Thunderbolt Warthog, complete with a t-shirt-shooting Gatling gun. Wasteful? Yes. Overbuilt? Yes. Awesome? Oh hell yes. God Bless the U.S. Air Force.

Chevrolet-Buick-GMC-Cadillac Sales Up 25 Percent in July 2010 DETROIT - August 3, 2010: July sales for Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac increased by a combined 25 percent to 199,432 units. Buick and Cadillac brands each sold more than twice as many vehicles in July, compared with the same month a year ago. July marks the 10th straight month in which total and retail sales for GM's brands increased year-over-year, demonstrating the continued strengthening of each brand in the marketplace as GM continues to rebuild momentum a year after its launch as a new company. "When we say we want to...

If you want to drive something dependable and long-lasting, steer clear of these vehicles. With a 22% improvement in sales last month, and despite the six-month, $4.3 billion loss it announced Wednesday, General Motors is likely to have its strongest spring and summer in years. Plus, the automaker had critically acclaimed new products at the recent New York Auto Show and the much-anticipated Chevrolet Volt is due out this fall. More from Forbes.com: • In Depth: Worst-Made Cars On The Road • Navigating Your Way Through Traffic • Cars With the Best Gas Mileage Year-over-year sales of GM's Cadillac division...

In a potential step forward for Obamacare, Congressional leaders and the White House stated they had reached an agreement with labor groups over the taxation of high end health care plans, something labor unions had long opposed. The deal was one of the larger hurdles left for Democrats as they try to push health care through before the President's State of the Union address.

The White House has reached a deal with health care negotiators, including labor unions, on taxing the high-level "Cadillac" plans that workers with high-risk jobs often purchase. The White House has reached a deal with health care negotiators, including labor unions, on taxing the high-level "Cadillac" plans that workers with high-risk jobs often purchase. The excise tax on high-cost insurance plans has been one of the biggest sticking points in the negotiations, as President Obama has favored the Senate plan, which calls for the tax, while House Democrats have preferred raising taxes on high-income earners.

This is a red herring. The solution to the "logjam" was already floated last summer when the Senate was debating the Baucus bill. Union members and their families who receive healthcare benefits paid for by their employers would be exempted from a new tax on healthcare under one option being proposed by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mt), according to a report by the Fox Business Channel’s Peter Barnes. Baucus’s plan would tax health care benefits to raise from $161.9 billion to $418 billion over ten years to fund the nationalized “government provider” of health care benefits President Obama and Democrats want....

WASHINGTON – The White House on Monday defended President Barack Obama's support for taxing high-value insurance plans to help pay for health care overhaul, a levy the AFL-CIO president angrily said "drives a wedge between the middle class and the poor." Obama is scheduled to meet with labor leaders on the issue Monday afternoon. Labor opposes the tax, arguing it would hurt union members who negotiated good health benefits instead of salary increases. Hours before the meeting, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka lashed out at the so-called "Cadillac" tax in the Senate bill. "The benefits tax in the Senate bill pits...

In the wake of Tiger Woods’ notorious early morning crash, GM took pity.. On the Escalade. GM now plans to repair and possibly auction off the battered SUV, as it was one of several vehicles Woods agreed to be seen in after his promotional deal with Buick ended last year. Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell explained: “The vehicle will be repaired, firstly. This is a promotional/marketing vehicle -- the kinds of cars used for advertising, public displays, photography, etc. That makes this a little different than a garden-variety car repair - given its special usage.” Caldwell said the repaired Escalade could...

General Motors Corp. is dropping the franchises of 70 percent of Cadillac dealerships nationwide and southeast Wisconsin is no exception, leaving only two area dealerships confirmed as continuing beyond 2010 — Metropolitan in West Allis and Crest in Brookfield. Metropolitan Cadillac, in fact, is running commercials urging customers whose dealers are closing to switch to its dealership. “My understanding is that there are a lot of Cadillac stores closing,” said Metropolitan president Max Stephenson. “The only two that are staying open are Metropolitan and Crest.” General Motors will not disclose the identities of dealerships that are closing. Only one area...

Bailouts: You're a once-mighty auto company that's been bailed out by taxpayers, taken over by government and just posted a 22% sales drop. What's your next move? Why, unveil a new men's fragrance, of course!It got little attention, but GM's decision to launch its new fragrance line in honor of Cadillac's 100th anniversary may go down as one of the most absurd moves by a troubled corporation ever. No doubt they kept a team of highly paid MBAs busy for months with the project, while the car end of their business was imploding faster than a black hole. Is this...

It's not the smell of the interior of a new luxury model, the whiff of gasoline or even the aroma of burning rubber. It's much more. It's the luminous fresh scent from grapefruit and camomile and a mix of geranium, tarragon and cinnamon – plus sweet spice and incense. Think of "Cadillac, the new fragrance for men." Sputtering General Motors Co., just out of a quick drive through bankruptcy court, will soon be using its iconic Cadillac brand to sell a line of fragrance for men. Beauty Contact Inc., a Dubai-based cosmetic company and holder of the fragrance licence,...

Three hundred and eight years later the birthplace of the modern automotive industry is to lose the last downtown auto dealership that sells cars bearing his name. Dalgleish Cadillac -- which has sold the luxury car brand in Motor City for General Motors Corp since 1954 -- was informed in early June that by September 2010 they must close as part of the automaker's restructuring plans. The dealership's owners say the stunning news came in a letter signed simply "General Motors Corporation."

Mr. Unbelievable, the neighbor, went with his father when his father ordered a 1978 Cadillac Eldorado. In the late 1970s, Cadillac was experiencing sales records across the model line. The word had gotten out that in 1979 the Eldorado would be significantly downsized, so it can be stated with certainty that Mr. Unbelievable persuaded his father that he should get the last of the big ones. By the last of the big ones, I mean comically big, riotously big, stupendously big. And on the day that General Motors declared bankruptcy last week, effectively ending its long reign as one of...

We might have to retire the Chutzpah & Hypocrisy Award . . . Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) went on Fox News Sunday this morning and condemned “greed.” You know Charlie, the guy who: * grabbed four rent-controlled apartments in NYC; * rides around at taxpayer expense in an $800/month Cadillac; and * writes our tax laws as Chairman of the Ways & Means Committee, but didn’t pay his own taxes on a rental property in the Dominican Republic, blaming “cultural and language barriers.” View video here.

General Motors Corp. is counting on the 2010 Cadillac SRX crossover vehicle to lure luxury car buyers with new design and performance features. The redesigned vehicle was unveiled Sunday and is set to go on display at the 2009 North American International Auto Show in Detroit later this month. It replaces the SRX model first launched in 2004. To help compete with better-selling rivals like the Lexus RX, Acura MDX, and the BMW X3 and X5, the SRX's designers took elements from other Cadillac models and melded them into this one. The new SRX looks faster than its boxy predecessor,...

My Pop has a 1985 Cadillac Eldorado. He got divorced the same year he bought it and afterwards locked the caddy up in the garage. I guess he didn't want his second wife to get a hold of it. It still has the original 85 tags, plates, tires on it. It hasn't been driven since 85. Dark blue leather interior, Landau roof, midnight blue paint. After reading that story about the 6 million dollar car being found...how much cash would this 85 Eldorado fetch??????? 12,000?

SOUTH PASADENA — A pedestrian was hit and killed by a car as he walked home from a swim Friday evening. A Cadillac driven by 85-year-old Renata Rathmann hit Christy Lizzoli, 56, of South Pasadena, about 6 p.m., just after sunset. The victim's family said he was walking home to his condo across the street after working out and swimming in the Intracoastal Waterway. Lizzoli was in a crosswalk at the time of the crash at 1893 South Shore Drive, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office reported. The 1999 Cadillac De Ville was headed south on South Shore Drive, deputies said....

2008 CADILLAC CTS!!!!!!! GM is hanging its future on this car...and it's a good one. They finally got it right!

Cadillac, once known as "The Standard of the World," may want to dust off that old title. When it comes to customer service, a Business Week survey put the company third in a group of 25 "luxury or specialty" brands or companies, including those not in an automotive-related business. When it comes to cars, Cadillac outranked stalwarts such as Lexus and Porsche. Business Week supplemented 2006 data from J.D.Power & Associates with a survey of about 3,000 Business Week readers who were asked to nominate three companies that offered the best customer service. In the end, Cadillac was outranked by...

I was trying to put some pure acetone which I just bought for 5 dollars for 32oz into my car

There were some pretty outrageous cars in the late 1950s, but the 1959 Cadillac takes the cake mainly because of its enormous size, glitzy chrome trim and -- most of all -- soaring tail fins. More than anything, Americans think tail fins of all shapes and sizes characterize the flamboyant autos of an optimistic and increasingly confident country in the 1950s. Why not have outlandish tail fins on the most prestigious U.S. car when America had new rock 'n' roll music, color television and Jupiter space rockets? » Click to enlarge image Some auto collectors, however, regard the 1959 Caddy...

Is it time to upgrade your current set of wheels to something a little more professional and comfortable? Are you trying to figure out how to drive something that looks like it should be on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but with a nickel-and-dime budget? So where can you find a car that will impress without breaking the bank? Check out this list of cars that are all high on luxury and under $30,000 on the lot.

LIVE > 3-6PM Pacific/Listen live: Here

The company is bleeding billions, but management is beginning to see the light. There are a few bold steps -- including the scrapping of one of its brands -- GM execs should take to keep the auto giant running. According to some analysts on Wall Street, General Motors lost credibility last week when the company said that it would be restating 2001 earnings. That’s what it took for GM’s management to lose credibility? How about years of mismanaging its production effort? Or refusing to aggressively streamline its product offerings, recklessly pursuing incentive strategies, failing to address ballooning health-care and pension...

Like so many people today, I work a second job to make ends meet. I write a column for a quarterly magazine called the Turbo Diesel Register, a special-interest publication for the owners of Dodge Ram diesel pickup trucks, one of which I happen to own. I provide this background to explain why I happen to know so much about 1950s Cadillacs, and why dumb marketing at Cadillac is so emblematic of the deterioration of the entire General Motors Corp. For a recent TDR column, I found myself researching the early development of the Chrysler Hemi engine and the competitive...

Background: Gore gives a speech about global warming at the Sierra Club Summit in San Francisco. He is driven away afterwards in a gigantic gas guzzling planet killing Cadillac Escalade SUV. ========================================================== MIDI - BEEP BEEP Al went to San Francisco to give a great big speech We do not know whether he hit all the bars that they have at North Beach Poor Al it seems was disappointed 'cause Carol Doda is there no more But, after all, she's old enough that they'd hang to the floor Bleep bleep...bleep bleep...what Al said we must bleep His driver parked the...

Title and link only. All GM vehicles except the Hummer H3 at GM employee discounts? Huge! Read about it, especially if you are in the market for a newer vehicle. http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/gm28e_20050528.htm

Sweden's Saab Plant to Build New Cadillac Model, Giving Workers Some Safety Amid Looming Cuts STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- General Motors Corp. said Tuesday that it plans to build a new mid-sized Cadillac at its plant in Trollhaettan, giving workers there some sense of safety amid looming job cuts. Carl Peter Forster, the president of GM Europe, made the announcement at the annual Geneva International Motor Show in Switzerland, one of the continent's most important automotive exhibitions. Saab said the new Cadillac BLS sedan and the Saab SportCombi mid-size wagon are to be built at the plant, along with the...

DETROIT (AP) — Americans will get an idea of what Cadillac's newest model will look like when President Bush rides down Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday. Mr. Bush will take part in the inaugural parade in a jet-black Cadillac DTS limousine produced by General Motors Corp. It will provide a glimpse of the design direction of the mass-produced version of the 2006 DTS. "General Motors and Cadillac are proud to write this latest chapter in American automotive history," said GM Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner.

Cadillac, Mercedes battle over hip-hop throne DETROIT, United States (AFP) - Move over Mercedes-Benz, Caddy is this month's king of cool, according to Americas trend-setting rappers and musicians. AFP/File Photo While the German luxury brand was the favoured status-symbol of rappers last year, a review of the top 20 best-selling records in the United States in January shows that Cadillac was the hottest set of wheels this month -- at least in the eyes of America's music-makers. "Don't want to meet your daddy, just want you in my Caddy," runs a line from "Hey Ya!" a tune by hip-hop band...

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - It's time for the communist cadres' Red Flag limos to pull over. Cadillacs are on the way. General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it plans to boost its manufacturing capacity in Shanghai by 50 percent to build Cadillacs, expanding its push into the luxury end of the world's fastest growing auto market. GM, which already markets Buicks and Chevrolets here, said it would sell both imported and domestically assembled Cadillacs. To meet rising demand, it plans to expand production capacity at its factories in Shanghai and in southern China. Producing Cadillacs inside China would allow customers to...

Escalade a runaway winner in thefts SUV IS TARGETED AT HIGHER RATE THAN ANY OTHER VEHICLE By Dee-Ann Durbin Associated Press WASHINGTON - Thieves broke into Don Massey Cadillac in Lone Tree, Colo., last November and stole seven Escalade sport-utility vehicles. The dealership was not alone: Thieves go after the $55,000 SUV at a higher rate than any other vehicle, according to a report by a research group funded by auto insurers. The report, by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, reviewed insurance claims for thefts or break-ins for 2000-2002 model year cars, then compared those claims to the total...

General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz (right) boasts that GM’s new $250,000 Cadillac “will show the world that we simply take a backseat to no one” The Fast and the Luxurious Can an outrageous $250,000 Cadillac with a V-16 engine make Detroit king of the road again? Bob Lutz is betting his reputation on it. Jan. 13 issue — Detroit isn’t known for its fashion shows, but this past Sunday it hoped to create a buzz machine that even New York would envy. To set the stage for a big coming-out party at this week’s auto show, General Motors spent...

------------------------------------------------------------------------Posted on Sat, Sep. 14, 2002 Bowling Green plant to build new Cadillacs BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - Test production of a new line of Cadillac sports cars will create 128 new jobs at the General Motors factory here, although most of them will go to outsiders. The plant is expected to reach full production by April of the Cadillac XLR, a $70,000, two-seat sports car that goes on sale next year. All but about 20 of the new jobs will go to workers already employed by GM in factories elsewhere. The Bowling Green plant was specifically chosen for the production...