Don’t look for a Cadillac ML320 or Cadillac Navigator or Cadillac LX450 or any big sport utility vehicle carrying the Cadillac crest in the near or even distant future.
That’s the word from the man who should know, Cadillac general manager John Smith, no relation to present General Motors Chairman Jack Smith or past General Motors Chairman Roger Smith or even Jack Smith’s assistant Janis Smith.
If your last name is Jones, don’t even send a resume to GM.
But we digress.
“If we wanted a luxury sport utility and got a luxury sport utility, we’d be the last one out in the market with a luxury sport utility and that just isn’t right for Cadillac, so we’re putting a luxury sport utility behind us,” Smith (John) said in an interview.
“If we were to get into the sport utility market it would be the size of a Chevy Tahoe or GMC Yukon, and every stitch of capacity for those two vehicles is spoken for. The investment to add one more model would make for a negative business case,” Smith added.
The Cadillac executive said the luxury sport ute market will be “touch and go” the next few years, with a large number of nameplates vying for attention.
But Smith doesn’t rule out a sport ute more along the lines of a Subaru Outback or Forester, a vehicle that rides and handles and gets the fuel economy of a station wagon, but sits a tad higher for greater down-the-road visibility and offers four-wheel drive.
“Toyota had such a vehicle called the SLV at the auto show and Volvo is talking about one, and BMW said it is contemplating a passenger car-based SUV. We see Cadillac participating more along those lines,” Smith said.
Hmm. Ironic in that just a few weeks ago at a dealer show in Florida, Buick rolled out such a vehicle, a cross between an Outback and a Mercedes ML320 that is rumored to be built off GM’s front-wheel-drive minivan platform and is reportedly being tested for a 2000 to 2002 debut.
The concept reportedly will be unveiled publicly at the Detroit Auto Show in January, and since Chicago is Buick’s No. 1 market in the world, it would then probably wend its way westward toward civilization at the Chicago Auto Show in February.
We asked Smith about the Buick concept.
“I’ve only seen it in passing at the (design) studios. Our vehicle looks and behaves differently and is more car-like,” he said, obviously hinting that a Cadillac utewagon is more than a dream.
Sources say the Cadillac vehicle leans more toward a wagon than a sport ute.
Without getting into specifics, Smith said over the next 10 years Cadillac will bring out eight new products, two of which (one is Catera) will be all-new body styles.
And all except the redesigned DeVille coming in the fall of 1999 will be world cars, Smith said, designed and developed in both right- and left-hand drive versions to sell in any market in any country on this planet. DeVille is an exception, he said, because it is the biggest sedan in the Cadillac lineup and aimed almost exclusively at the U.S. market.
“We had the new Catera in 1997, the new Seville in 1998, and before the millennium is up we’ll have a new DeVille, after which we’ll bring out Catera in an all-new form,” he said.
What, no mention of the Eldorado coupe, the car Smith’s predecessor John Grettenberger wanted to drop from the lineup?
“The Eldorado is in that cadence of eight new vehicles, though I’m not sure what the driveline will be,” he said.
Sources say Eldorado will stay in the lineup, but move to a rear-wheel-drive platform eventually, just like Catera, which would allow Cadillac to build them in the same North American plant. Catera production is set to switch to North America from Europe when the next generation comes out. And word is that a baby Catera is in the works, a smaller BMW 3-Series rival.
While Smith focuses on future product, he insists that “distribution is the problem we have in our gunsights.”
Cadillac wants to whittle its number of dealers from a current 1,600 to 1,300 and perhaps fewer by the year 2000.
“We have 125 dealers who sell Cadillac exclusively who account for 40 percent of our business and 175 dealers who are Cadillac/Oldsmobile duals, and these 300 dealers account for 80 percent of our annual sales. In the days when we were selling 300,000 cars a year (mid- to late ’70s) we needed that number (1,600) of dealers, but that’s not the state of the business today, when we are selling 180,000 units,” Smith said.
“A number of rural dealers with triple and quadruple duals (selling Cadillac plus two or three other brands) haven’t sold one of our cars this year,” he said.
“Many of our dealers were organized before superhighways, but the place to be today is at the exit ramps to those superhighways,” he said.
“Look at Lexus and Mercedes and BMW, who average only 250 to 300 outlets each and are still successful. I’m not saying we’ll get that small, but we certainly don’t need a 4- or 5-to-1 ratio of Cadillac dealers to Lexus, Mercedes, and BMW dealers,” Smith said.
Smith said Cadillac will focus on reducing the dealer count in the U.S. while adding new dealers outside this country.
The forecast is that the luxury car market will hold steady at about 1 million units a year in the U.S., while sales outside the U.S. already reach 3 million units a year and are expected to top 4 million units within 6 years.
That’s the reason all future Cadillacs except DeVille will be built in both left and right (export) versions.
“And that’s why every car we build in the future will be built with the world market in mind,” Smith said. “We only sold 12,000 cars outside the U.S. last year, yet Cadillac is the second-most recognized brand in the world behind Mercedes.”
Cadillac will export a mere 5 percent of its total production overseas this year, but plans to boost that total to 10 percent in 1998 and 20 percent by 2000. Though no specific date has been set, Cadillac officials say the long-term goal is for 50 percent of its output to be sold outside the U.S.
