What the hell happened to Cadillac

Cadillac brand was synonymous with success and luxury in the most capitalist country—the US. The brand dominated the US market, outselling all luxury cars in the US for decades. Just in 1980, nearly one-third of all luxury cars sold in the US was Cadillac. Before COVID its market share dwindled in Less than 7%., and the company is now struggling to keep up with competitors mostly European—Mercedes and BMW. During late 1960’s at the height of its sales , Cadillac was out selling over five times more that of its closest competitor—Lincoln—in the US.

When 1970’s oil crisis hit America, the economy declined and the whole idea of “Bigger is Better Cadillac” was not true for the buyers whom owing giant gas guzzling Cadillacs became more inconvenient day by day . Since European and later Japanese car makers had wider global markets unlike Cadillac which exclusively focused on North American mostly; consequently the GM production cost was much higher than its foreign competitions. To resolve these issues in the 1980s company began scale down its entire lineup to smaller/fuel-efficient cars just like its Foreign competitors but with a decisive big mistake was sharing the same components as other General Motors’ brands like Pontiac/ Oldsmobile/ Chevrolet/ Saturn/ Buick made Cadillac more affordable but indistinguishable from the same GM brands apart. Unlike GM blending all its brands into the same rank, its Japanese rivals like Toyota, Nissan, and Honda successfully created their own luxury divisions: Lexus, Infiniti and Acura respectively. On top of the newly Japanese competitions, Luxury European car makers successfully established better costumer dealership relation strategy elevating their resale product-values through exchanging them with new products with better price compared to the market.

In 1990’s consumers’ recognition of Cadillac brand declined dramatically due to poor quality easily interpreted in the company’s sales. Cadillac’s share in the U.S. luxury market dropped to 22% in 1990 and then fell 20% in 1999; during the same decade in 1998, for the first time after almost 60 years, Lincoln outsold Cadillac.

With the start of the 21st century the sales of Cadillac declined constantly even phased/sold out brands like Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Saturn, Holden, Hummer, Vauxhall, Opel & SAAB by GM in last 20 years did not assist costumer brand recognition among all GM products, at the end of 2021, the brand’s share in US luxury car market dived down to less than 7%, selling only 117,994 cars last year, just behind every luxury brand. But this Symbol of American Luxury brand received a boost from an unexpected source (not from the US government) it came from Communist China. Just before COVID unlike in the states, Chinese GM division have sold more than 2.9 million vehicles last year, 50% increase annually. If GM had aggressively ( like its foreign competitors in the US) pursued export market (as they did in China) for Cadillac brand in other developing markets like India and South Africa; also if they had presented Cadillac brand wisely along Opel/SAAB/Vauxhall in Europe, Holden in Australia, and Daewoo in Korea probably Cadillac brand would be the most recognizable luxury brand in the world as it was before.

So to all my friends out there, remember don’t brand your products just locally think regionally and ultimately globally.

Author By: Reza Djalili
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