After more than a
decade, Cadillac is looking to make some changes to its logo. The new
look will most likely debut on a concept car that the luxury auto maker
plans on showing next month at Pebble Beach. The decision to freshen the
brand comes from generally consistent market research indicating that
the current design "is seen as outdated and obsolete." The research
seems to have focused on a particular element of the brand design, the
wreath or laurels that encapsulate the logo.
As is the trend
right now in the automotive industry, Cadillac seeks to attract young
buyers extending and rooting their market influence for years to come.
The company believes that moving towards a more cleaner, contemporary
look will facilitate in that endeavor.
It's not uncommon
for car companies to adjust their brands to better suit the current
trends and styles. Cadillac has done it almost 40 times in the past 100+
years. Last re-engineered in 1999, it would seem that a revision is
long overdue.
Do you think that a change will be good or bad for the auto brand?
Performance
upgrade packages are common in the world of Corvettes and Camaros.
Cadillac describes the ATS, "as nimble and exhilarating as it is
luxurious and technologically advanced." There's no doubt that the ATS
has that sporty feel to it. But now with the available performance
packages from Pfadt Engineering that increase the luxury cars' output to
350 or 450 horespower (depending on how much you'd like to spend), you
can give even those sports car icons a run for their money.
For $4,900 you
get the full 450 horses which allows the ATS to run the Texas Mile at
162.5mph. If you're not willing to shell out quite that much cash, you
can acquire the 350hp package for just $1,199.
When people talk of a “flagship vehicle,” it generally means a full-size luxury sedan that is both prestigious and uncompromising. Like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, and the like. But it could also mean a niche halo model, like the Lexus LFA, or the upcoming BMW i8. The same type of concept may be in the works for Cadillac, according to a source from an Edmunds report.
Word of such a project comes just after GM tossed out plans for a tier-one full-sized luxury sedan aimed at Bentley, one that would start above $100,000. The program was based on the Omega platform and was internally known as O1LL, and because it was shaping to be too similar to the upcoming S-Class-fighting O1SL (what’s expected to eventually known as the Cadillac LTS), developers aborted the project before the company sank any more money into it.
With O1LL as it was known being scrapped, it opens the door up for something different, though equally mouth watering. According to the Edmunds source, it could be completely unconventional:
“There was a contingent (at GM) saying that a super ELR that uses a really leading-edge technology drivetrain could be a flagship, and they are right, it could,” the industry source said. “I am not saying an ELR, but I am saying a fuel-cell car or whatever.”
“Your options for a flagship are multiple,” the industry source continued. “You don’t have to do an S-Class Mercedes or a (Rolls-Royce) Phantom. You don’t have to do that car. There are other options.”
A fuel-cell Cadillac? Considering GM’s latest deal with Honda, there just might be some weight to those words.
Source: gmauthority.com
We just got another great customer review on Google+ Local! Check out the review, among others, here: http://bit.ly/ZYL9qd
Klout Influencer Edward Prutschi takes the #ATSDrive. Find out why he loves the #Cadillac ATS!
PITTSBURGH - Colin Montgomerie is coming to America and there is nothing casual or indifferent about his approach.
Montgomerie will make his Champions Tour debut this week at the SENIOR PLAYERS Championship at Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pittsburgh and everything he is saying and doing suggests that he is genuinely excited about being a rookie again.
Montgomerie celebrated his 50th birthday Sunday. Gladly.
“You don't normally look forward to a birthday - do you? - when you get towards 50, but in golfing terms you do,” Montgomerie said. “We're very fortunate that in other sports you would be well gone at 50.”
Montgomerie has been zeroing in on the Champions Tour by speaking to some of the golfers he has known for many years, like Bernhard Langer and Mark O’Meara. In addition, he’s followed closely on television.
“I've been watching more television than I would normally,” he said. “Sky Sports do a very good job in broadcasting the Champions Tour over to Europe, and I'm always surprised at the level of competition and standard that the Champions Tour has.
“Bernhard is a friend and we’ve played many matches together and I know how good he is. He’s on top of the tree right now, the standard is quite phenomenal and I’m in no illusion at all … I look forward to the challenge of it.”
Montgomerie savors the thought of playing with contemporaries.
“Right now I'm playing against guys that are well under half my age, I've got children older than them, and it doesn't seem fair,” he said. “So at least when I get to America I feel that I'm on more of a level playing field.
Montgomerie, who is looking for his first victory since the 2007 European Open at the K Club in Ireland, plans on a busy Champions Tour campaign with about 20 tournaments annually. He embarks on the next phase of his career after giving it considerable thought.
“I said this openly to the European Tour, that I wasn't really going to play Champions Tour golf or senior golf as we call it until I got to 50 and found I was as fit,” he said. “Well, I've never really been fit but as fit as I have ever have been. I think 50 is the new 40 to be honest. I think health has improved to that degree allowing us to go on longer than we would.
“But 50 is old, I thought I would be retiring and I would drive my wife nuts if I stayed home all the time. So I thought I'm better off doing what I do best, which is play golf, and I look forward to the competition almost more than the love of the game of golf. I'm very competitive still and I've remained hungry, hungry for success, and I think that's important.”
Montgomerie will continue to play what he calls “seniors golf” as long as he has an appetite for it and his health allows.
Montgomerie, who was enshrined in the World Golf Hall of Fame earlier this year, had a glorious career on the European Tour as the eight-time winner of the Order of Merit (Money List). He has 40 professional victories and was a central figure in eight Ryder Cups during Europe’s domination.
But he never won on the PGA TOUR, despite a couple of near-misses in major championships. Ironically, the most notable of those came in Pittsburgh, at nearby Oakmont Country Club at the 1994 U.S. Open. Montgomerie and Loren Roberts lost a playoff to Ernie Els.
“I had a great career, a great normal career if you like, and I would get to No. 2 in the world, now being inducted into the Hall of Fame is a great honor, but of course there's always an omission - isn't there? - when you talk about me,” Montgomerie said. “There's a lack of a major championship.
“All I can do from now on is hopefully add a major championship to the resume already in place and I look forward to trying to achieve that … So if I can compete in any major championship, I think it would fulfill a dream, of course it would. There are more golfers over 50 in the world than there are under and it would be fantastic to try and achieve the dream of winning a major championship finally, whether it be normal tour or Senior Tour, I do look forward to it.”
Montgomerie has a busy travel schedule arranged. He was at the U.S. Open at Merion, where he worked in the Sky Sports booth, and last week went to Germany to play the BMW Championship. He arrived in Pittsburgh on Monday for his preparations. He has zigged and zagged between America and the Great Britain for most of the season.
“My game is in good order,” Montgomerie said. “The bag of clubs is good, the equipment is okay. I'm just looking forward to having an opportunity of competing on more of a level playing field. You know, this is what it is. A lot of sport is age related and I'm fortunate I'm playing against guys that hit the ball a mile now and I would like to get back to normality where I can at least compete off the tee with some of the older guys, so I look forward to it.”
“And I've got a new hunger for the game now and I've been working all year towards this date whereby I can compete against (Langer) again. We used to have great battles on the European Tour, Bernhard Langer and myself, and I look forward to it again. I used to come over and play against Couples and Mark O'Meara and Kenny Perry and David Frost and all the great players you have on the Champions Tour. Now I look forward to competing against them again. Really, it's a new chapter in my life and one that I'm really looking forward to.”
Source: pgatour.com
Sixteen years ago
Cadillac was the top-selling U.S. luxury car brand. It seems impossible
in retrospect, as its line of cars featured the soulless geometries of a
geriatric suppository. Evidently, Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz
agreed, and they all moved in to carve out their share of Cadillac’s
market. Detroit soon found itself buried underneath the force of German
and Japanese design, engineering, and marketing--and sales tanked.
You’d think
things could only get better, but they actually got worse. There was the
bankruptcy of GM, Cadillac’s parent company, followed by the infamous
bailout. Cadillac was neutered, left without the ability to lease out
its cars at enticingly affordable rates, which is a hugely damning point
in the luxury car market.
The 2014 Cadillac CTS--Cadillac post comeback.
But
the brand had been thinking ahead. The organization had already
retooled, centralizing the design line under one roof. It had adopted a
new mantra of “art and science” to blend a new, bold aesthetic with
high-octane engineering. And they’d presented a Hail Mary concept car
that inspired its own designers and engineers to invent the decade of
turnaround to come.
You could call it all corporate lip service,
if not for one key fact: It worked. Today, Cadillac’s sales are the
highest they’ve been since 1976. The automaker’s cars rival BMWs on the
track. And maybe more importantly, for the first time in 40 years,
Cadillac has discovered what a Cadillac should be.
The Root Of The Problem
1959 Cadillac de Ville--rock those tailfins.
Historically,
Cadillac design is responsible for some of the most beloved tropes in
American automobiles. In the late '40s and '50s, Cadillac introduced the
first tailfin, wraparound windshields, hefty Dagmar bumpers, and
heavily polished chrome inside and out. Then into the '60s, it did what
you’d expect of any good designer who’d pushed the envelope to its
limits--it simplified, inspired by the clean lines of modernism, and
produced a sort of overstated understatement, a big car that was
confident enough not to overdo the filigree. The Cadillac design
language for 20 years was 'How do we not make this car look like a
blank?'
Into the 1970s, Cadillacs supersized in the name of
luxury, but at the worst possible time. The decade’s oil flow was
disrupted by OAPEC trade embargoes and Iranian revolution, quadrupling
crude oil prices while creating a hysteria of mass fuel shortages.
Things got even worse into the early '80s. GM was taken over by its most
notorious CEO, Roger Smith (the same Roger in Michael Moore’s Roger and
Me). In the interest of ruthless cost cutting, he combined GM’s six
distinctive car brands under two generic umbrellas. Ironically, this
quest for efficient production killed demand, and Cadillac, alongside
GM’s entire portfolio of design heritage, became a bland, homogenous
mix. Without an identity in place, Cadillac didn’t produce a lustable
car for a few decades.
The 1965 de Ville--note the shift toward simpler lines and less ornamentation.
“They
were wandering in the desert for a long time,” says Jalopnik
Editor-in-Chief Matt Hardigree. “The design language of Cadillac for 20
years was 'How do we not make this car look like a blank?' How do we not
make the Cimarron look like a base model Chevy? How do we not make the
Catera look like an Opel?”
“[Around 2000], Cadillac took a good look at themselves, and they said, ‘What do we need to do to be successful?’”
Staging The Comeback
Legend has
it, GM execs met in an informal meeting sometime around 2000 or 2001 to
discuss Cadillac’s future, and from this, they planned a reboot fueled
by $4.3 billion in investments to save the brand. Maybe it really was
one meeting. Maybe it was a series of meetings. The people I speak to at
Cadillac don’t seem to know, and they honestly don’t seem to care.
For
the collectiv inside Cadillac, the turnaround really began with a 1999
car concept called the Evoq, created by British designer Simon Cox. The
only way we could re-establish Cadillac was to do something evocative.
“That
was a revolution, and a change of internal culture in the company to
think about Cadillac in a different way,” says Cadillac’s current design
chief Mark Adams. “If you think about the boldness and the very edgy
concept that came about with the Evoq, it was deliberately shocking in a
way because the only way we could re-establish Cadillac in people’s
memory was to do something bold and evocative.”
The 1999 Evoq concept--Cadillac’s wake-up call.
It
might not seem like it now, but the Evoq was radical for 1999. If you
take a look at its Cadillac contemporaries--the Catera, DeVille, or the
El Dorado--the Evoq looks like it’s been set on earth to consume them as
prey. And while the entire sharp design feels a bit like
double-breasted Corvette, you can see many of Cadillac’s contemporary
signatures in full swing--a design language spawned a guiding philosophy
at Cadillac called “art and science.” The “art” is driven by the
impression of the Evoq--the brash machined lines, the towering
headlights, and a more aggressive posture that’s itching to pick a fight
with the nearest open stretch of asphalt. The “science” is the
engineering to make that possible, be it repurposed GM technologies or
new platforms that Cadillac would pioneer for themselves. Now, we design
and plan based upon how our showroom will look like in 2017.
Around
the same time, Cadillac united its design teams, which used to create
each Cadillac model in relative autonomy, under one roof. “Under
previous regimes, one designer might make a great Cadillac,” explains
Don Butler, VP of Cadillac Global Strategic Development. “Now, we design
and plan based upon how our showroom will look like in 2016, in 2017.
You have the ability to create continuity into the future. It gives you a
sense of reach. How far can we stretch this? How far can we push?”
Because
even if you determine a new direction, and even if you have all the
talent in place, it still takes about 10 years to turn a car brand
around. I’ve heard that before from Ford’s Chief Creative Officer J
Mays. And what I hear now from Butler echoes the sentiment.
“Cars
aren’t like mobile phones. We can’t change them overnight,” Butler
tells me. “Mobile phones turn over every six to 18 months. They
literally turn over; you don’t see a phone from 2001 still around. Guess
what, you still see 2001 Cadillacs on the road. The image in the mind
of consumers takes much longer to change.”
The original Cadillac CTS, released in 2002.
The
used Cadillacs I imagine are either the waxed white boats of the road
in Boca Raton, or the rusty tanks lodged permanently on the
non-ticketing streets of Chicago. And if you think that pair of images
is only ingrained in the heads of consumers, you’d be wrong. Even car
designers aren’t immune to the precedents set by their own vehicles out
there in the world. It’s why concept cars like the Evoq are remarkably
important. Cars aren’t like mobile phones. We can’t change them
overnight.
Building out Cadillac’s new showroom in the shadow of
the Evoq is a challenge that’s spanned a solid decade. In 2002,
Cadillac released the CTS, its first car with some of the Evoq’s DNA.
Jalopnik’s Hardigree calls the moment “a rebirth” but is quick to point
out that this was but one car in a whole line of previous-generation
Cadillacs. It wasn’t for another eight or so years that Cadillac’s
showroom felt like it had adopted the "art and science" philosophy from
car to car. And Cadillac was still missing the most critical piece to
complete the statement--not a luxury flagship but a featherweight
fighter--to prove it could appeal to a younger buyer and stand
toe-to-toe with Germany and Japan in style and substance.
The ATS
You see,
while the CTS was a decent midsize luxury car, Cadillac’s line still
lacked the most important vehicle in high-end vehicles today: a
performance-focused compact capable of wooing new buyers considering a
luxury car for the first time. What they created was the ATS, a smaller,
more nimble Cadillac to compete with the venerable BMW 3 series.
An early pencil sketch of the CTS’s little brother, the ATS.
"We
usually start with a platform or architecture, a set of components,
then we say, ‘Can we make a Cadillac out of this?'” Butler explains,
referring to GM’s post–Roger Smith philosophy of efficiency. “The matter
of fact is, when we looked at our shelf at the components we used,
there was nothing we had to compete with the luxury compact market.”
When we looked at our shelf, there was nothing we had to compete.
So
rather than rebranding GM parts--the approach that got Cadillac in so
much trouble in the past--Cadillac built the ATS largely from scratch.
It debuted, rather than repurposed, GM’s new performance-focused Alpha
Platform. The platform’s goal is to make a compact to medium-sized car
as light as possible, right down to the smallest detail. As Car &
Driver put it so eloquently in its review:
"When
you compare a CTS with an ATS, you see that every part--aluminum or
steel--is carefully sculpted to be no thicker than necessary. Aluminum
webs are slim, steel stampings have large lightening holes and rolled
edges to add stiffness, and most fasteners have been downsized. The
manual-transmission housing, the strut towers, the brake booster, and
the hood are aluminum…Cadillac is sweating the details. It needs to,
considering how much ground the ATS has to make up."
The final ATS (2014 version).
Via
its newly unified design studio, Cadillac crafted the ATS to feel like a
little brother of the CTS--a Caddy through and through, though maybe
most distinctively, with a wider, lower grill to accentuate agility. But
none of this would have mattered much if the car didn’t drive well. As
it turns out, it drove extremely well.
“The original Cadillac
CTS wasn’t as good as a [BMW] 3 series or 5 series,” Hardigree assesses.
“But fast forward 10 years in the future, and the new ATS is
benchmarked to, not the newest 3 series, but an older BMW 3 series that
actually benchmarks better." Some people will hear you have a Cadillac
and think you wear gold chains.
Hardigree continues: “If you can
swallow buying an ATS, it is the best car in compact luxury. It’s a
great car, you just have to suck up the fact that it’s a Cadillac. Some
people will hear you have a Cadillac and think you have gold chains,
chest hair, and three buttons unbuttoned. But they’re great cars. At
some point, people will get over that stigma.”
Adams, a Cadillac
designer, confirms that the next battle is to change consumer
perception. “We know we have work to do. We have a lot more people to
convert and bring them over to looking at us with a new level of
respect. That takes time, consistency, and integrity. We’re doing the
right things at the right time now, and we’re going to keep growing,
building the brand, and being laser focused on what’s next.”
What’s Next 
A sci-fi conceptual mock up of the ELR, Cadillac’s Volt.
Whether
it’s your cup of tea or not, Cadillac’s new design finally has a
perspective to buck the stigmas of Florida drivers and gold chains. And
with the critically acclaimed ATS in its pocket, Cadillac has a new
level of clout. The future for Cadillac hinges on expanding its line
with character and variety but with enough consistency to feel like a
steady, timeless luxury brand.
The next statement in their
lineup is what Butler calls the “epitome of art and science.” Called the
ELR, it’s Cadillac’s take on the Chevy Volt platform. Deconstructing
the entire concept will only lead you to a series of borderline silly
paradoxes: An electric coupe? An eco-friendly Cadillac? But the company
hopes it will be a showpiece, almost like a concept car that’s actually
brought to market. It’s perhaps Cadillac design’s least apologetic, yet
maybe most refined form yet--a balance between the hard lines of "art
and science" with the sculptured curves that historically define
luxurious goods.
The final ELR design. A single cheekbone connects the taillight to the front tire.
“Cadillac
has turned everything on the car into a design feature,” Hardigree
tells me, as I pore over the Tron-esque concept art GM had sent me
earlier. “The CHMSL on the ELR coupe looks like He-Man’s sword. It’s not
like a BMW where you have chutes and lines going in all sorts of
directions.”
Indeed, right down to the distinct curves of their
cars, Cadillac has found direction after decades of being lost on the
map. Only time will tell how many of us they can bring along on the
ride.
Via Mark Wilson
