Baby + Cadillac = Oxymoron? Maybe Not. - October 8th, 2007
Without question we’re in a “smaller is better world” these days. This weekend, on Saturday, the Boston Herald ran an interesting piece “Automobile Buyers Fall for the Small.” The article quotes a Seattle woman who just bought a Honda Fit, “I just don’t find it acceptable anymore that a car could come on the market if it gets less than 30 miles per gallon,” she said.
On the heels of that, I read on Automotive News today that “GM plans [a] rear-drive baby Caddy.” Now, in the small West Texas town where I grew up, Cadillacs were the ultimate sign of status. They meant you’d had a good business year — generally at the auction barn since that’s sheep and goat country.
When I hear Cadillac I think about something a city block long with a bouffant-sporting woman behind the wheel (who probably has a loaded weapon under the seat.) It’s just hard for me to imagine a small Cadillac, but that appears to be part of GM’s plan to get the brand’s reach beyond the said bouffant / gun toting genre of drivers. [Insert regional qualifiers of your choice.]
Put these two articles together and they lend even more support to the twin influences we’ve seen driving the market for some time now — better fuel efficiency / greener performance and smaller form factor. I, for one, would not mourn the death or merely the gentile decline of the SUV and it’s going to be interesting to see what a brand like Caddy does with the concept of “small.”
Posted on October 8th, 2007 by Shorty
Filed under: news |
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