Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 21:52:18 +0200 From: Nel Frikandel <nelfrikandelnopsamail.com> Subject: Re: GM to increase SAAB lineup
On Mon, 14 Apr 2003 08:41:04 -0500, "Walt Kienzle" <wkienzlenopsam.net> wrote: >Yes, the much touted "bustle-back" design. Ugly as sin. Car magazines were >claiming that GM was just copying Chrysler and doing a poor job of it. Very >embarrassing! Oh, man, was that car ugly! And to put it on the market with a standard V8 diesel and FWD... BTW, This engine was a nightmare in its own right, especially in the FWD configuration. How do I know? After the '76 seville my dad was quite impressed with the caddies, and bought a '79 eldo diesel... Big mistake. Still have memories of many hollidays that ended on the shoulder of the german autobahn... Try to get a German mechanic to repair a caddy, let alone a V8 FWD DIESEL... ROFL. Seen that car a time too many behind a tow truck. I remember my dad had been utterly insulted when an elderley (apparently American) lady walked on the sidewalk when he parked the car and when he got out, she commented: "Nice truck you got there, Sir!" After that he was cured for good. Besides a stange choice marketingwise, that diesel was a plain bad performer as well. Despite it's displacement it performed poorer than it's contemporary Mercedes 2 liter 4 cylinder 60Hp diesel as featured in the 200D (W123). Thew cad reached an astonishing max speed of 140Km/h flat out. And while at it made a smoke curtain that Saddam's burning oil wells would be envious of! >At one time I was actually considering buying the US version of the Sierra >(Mercur XR4Ti), used. At that time I was suscribed to road &track magazine, and ROFL'd many times when reading the reviews, and the add's. >All the conversions seem to be designed for fleets, >such as Police departments, Taxi's and corporate fleets such as delivery >vehicles. I remember being on a trip to Vegas in 2000, I could tell from the familiar exhaust smell that the cabs and partol cars were LPG's >I can answer that one! Cadillac has never made/sold an estate/station-wagon >model. Anything that has a Cadillac badge and looks like a sedan based >station-wagon is in reality a hearse. Cadillac has the market locked here >with sales to funeral homes and is the transportation of choice for dead >people - and their berieved in a matching large, black Cadillac sedan. >Something that could potentially be mistaken for a hearse would be somewhat >of an embarassment at the golf course parking lot. LOL! Here it's the same. Cadillac hearses and black stretch limo's to follow. And when the limo's are written off by the funeral home, they end up being sold to the senate of student bodies (something like your fraternities), that abuse them untill they're ready for the scrap... But wasn't there an original wagon version of a Deville back in the 60's? Anyway, I was so full of my idea (about the Catera Wagon) that I even made that suggestion somewhere on the Cadillac.com website, under a consumer feedback section. I got a polite mail back from the cadillac customer esponse team, that a staiton wagon was not fitting the corporate identity of the brand. That was way before the SUV came up. > >If you think the Escalade and the CTS are ugly, just wait for their new >model (I can't recall the name right now). A two passenger sports coupe >based on the Chevrolet Corvette, with the same styling as the CTS and >Escalade. Yep, the XLR. A worthy successor of the AllantÈ! Aside from the squarish headlights and rear end, the general body lines are OK to me. Lot's of old model SL look and feel from the picture. http://www.cadillac.com/cadillacjsp/futuremodels/xlr/videos.html >Exchanging ideas is always fun, even if they are a bit off topic. With all >the platform sharing, its not hard to get back on topic! And I like hearing >about what is going on in "Yurp" (LOL). I hear u! That's why I like Usenet! BTW talking 'bout platform sharing (or local vs global brand marketing) , when I was in Chile I saw the term stretched to it's max. Down there every possible GM product from around the globe is marketed as Chevrolet. I mean subsubsucompact asian can'o-worms, the Yurpean Opel Astra to full size US flagships. Have a look at www.chevrolet.cl and have a laugh. Surprised to see that they don't even offer the 9-5 as a Chevrolet! >Walt > Nel
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