And Now, a Caddy for the Youngsters
Cadillac’s corporate crest was lifted from the coat of arms of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the French aristocrat who founded Detroit. It shows six black ducks swimming to the left, which isn’t too bright because everyone knows Lake Erie is off to the right.
Monsieur Cadillac’s logo has been mildly redesigned to promote the 1997 Cadillac Catera. Now, only five black waterfowl are paddling to the left, while a red duck is making a fast break in the opposite direction.
It’s Cadillac’s coy but significant way of saying Catera is leaving the flock. That this sedan is a brazen free-thinker and a rebel with the vital cause of reviving a company growing moribund on faded laurels.
It’s also Cadillac’s pronouncement that when Catera (say cat-AIR-uh, not caterer ) goes on sale next September, it will represent a permanent, dramatic and inevitable break from an 88-year addiction to cars of ponderous luxury and shapes synonymous with American sumo.
Compare the parent, this child and their eras.
Proportions and power: While Cadillacs traditionally are full-sized and powered by V-8s--and most recently by the mighty 300-horsepower Northstar--the Catera is mid-sized and pulled by a 200-horsepower V-6.
Tonnage: The Fleetwood, in absolute denial of its name, weighs 4,500 pounds, or more than two tons. The Catera rolls about 1,000 pounds lighter.
Thirst: The Eldorado averages 16 mpg and trembles visibly when more than five miles from the nearest gas pump. The Catera delivers 23 mpg.
Pricing: Today’s Cadillacs cost between $35,000 and $45,000. Catera is expected to come to market just north of $30,000.
Stretch: The Eldorado is 19 feet long; Hobie makes sailboats shorter than that. The Catera stretches only 16 feet, which is the length of a Toyota Camry.
Construction: Cadillac sedans are designed domestically and built at United Auto Workers plants in Hamtramck, Mich., named for a colonel in the Revolutionary War, which is about as American as you can get. Yet 80% of the mechanical heart, luxurious soul and handling crispness of the Cadillac Catera will be from the Opel Omega four-door assembled in Russelsheim, Germany, around a British engine and a French transmission.
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Cadillac remains the nation’s most popular luxury car and comes close to outselling Acura, Lexus and Infiniti combined. Spokesmen say the company will not turn its back on 210,000 annual buyers of its large, soft and comfy.
But Cadillac cannot ignore that its senior buyer base, average age 62, is dying off. Literally. It’s also an industry truism that while you can always sell a young person’s car to a senior citizen, you won’t have much luck pitching a Cadillac to Brad Pitt.
Mercedes, BMW and Audi are finding younger and more female buyers for down-priced, smaller, friskier sedans and coupes. Acura, Lexus and Infiniti have always had entry-level cars in their lineups. There are plans for a Jaguar cub, and even doughty Rolls-Royce is sketching an incredible shrinking sofa.
So Cadillac is joining the fray with Catera--a name that means nothing beyond its obvious alliteration and Teutonic connotation, attached to a car that could mean everything to the future of Cadillac.
Just how meaningful is reflected in the rare campaign centering on four hand-built Catera prototypes that will spend the next 12 months in national full-dress rehearsals for car critics, auto show audiences, dealers and focus groups.
Most new cars enter the public glare eight weeks ahead of production. Some are not available to media executioners until the vehicle is actually in showrooms.
But Cadillac sees the need for a full year of nods and curtsies by Catera as one path to generating a loud buzz for the car, while earning customer feedback for final-hour tweaks. It’s also a wise way of dissipating thoughts that any small car from Cadillac must be a vulgar reprise of the rouged, overdressed, tarted-up Chevy that was the 1981 Cadillac Cimarron.
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Let it be known that the Catera is infinitely more car than the simper that was Cimarron. It is a thorough machine borrowing heavily, and sagely, from the mechanical and performance gene pool of an award-winning European favorite. It’s also quite overbuilt with a surplus of everything--brakes, suspension, gearing and steering--as a basic service to German drivers who would rather run rainy autobahns at 130 mph than hear the full dirt on Steffi Graf’s dad.
It’s still a Cadillac--with enough headroom for Palm Springers in Stetsons, ultra-soft seating, more trunk room than the Mercedes’ C-Class, all the snootiness of leather upholstery and faux wood accents, plus automatic headlights, electrochromatic dimming mirrors, double cup holders, remote controls for the sound system and other touches of Detroit froufrou. Including an air-conditioned glove box to keep candy bars cool in a Scottsdale summer. We did not make that up.
Yet the Catera is also a European performance sedan--with swift and snarly acceleration and a determined squat when driven hard and wrenched with brio. Low-end torque is impressive and extends well beyond mid-range to meet the passing and maneuvering demands of the most frantic freeways.
All road surfaces are traveled with the purposeful thump, thump of a fine, taut suspension soaking up lumps and chuckholes and isolating the cabin from road shudders. Very Mercedes-like.
The car also carries the sense of being a single unit. Not a new, first-year vehicle anxiously searching for homogeny. But a proven product delivering design maximums as the mechanical blessing of years of careful evolution. Which is very European.
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As our test Catera was hand-assembled and one of quads, we overlooked first oversensitive, then insensitive sensors. Also neurotic electricals fried from earlier testing, and a sound system that reduced KMPC to a whisper when only four blocks from the station.
Yet there were few flaws, visual or operational, with an interior that was familiar, contemporary and luxurious without being standoffish.
But we suggest Cadillac do something to dull the top of the dash and kill its massive reflection the length and depth of the windshield. Nor were we thrilled by a button atop the gearshift that switches the automatic transmission from normal to sports mode. For the hand that touches the center-mounted shifter--and always when moving from P to D--also strokes the button that puts gearbox and shift points into boy-racer mode.
We’d also like a softer leather with more grip covering the steering wheel. As it is now, the surface feels rather like a sun-dried lizard.
Styling is a major difficulty with the Catera. Front and rear overhangs are proportional, and wells are nicely filled by 16-inch, low-profile tires. But the short, sloping bow and raised, blocky stern form a shape that falls somewhere between Audi and Asian generic.
Cadillac calls it a “clean, international design.” That translates to most of the sheet metal coming from the Opel Omega with a black chrome grille, badging and a full-width tail lamp assembly among the Cadillac cues.
But it clearly isn’t a Cadillac shape, and that’s certain to shock as many as it delights. Maybe worse, in two days of driving and parking the Catera around car-conscious Southern California, not one question was asked, not one curious gaze stirred.
Forced into an opinion, with a hand hiding the badging, most people guessed Lexus or Infiniti. When told Cadillac, they appeared betrayed.
We just hope that doesn’t mean Cadillac’s ducks have decided to fly south.
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1997 Cadillac Catera
Cost
* Base price: $33,000, estimated. (Will include two air bags, automatic dual air conditioning, anti-lock brakes, automatic transmission, traction controls, wood trim, power seats with memories, alarm system, remote locking, twilight sentinel and daylight running headlamps, tilt steering. Options include power sunroof, leather seats, CD changer, chrome spoked wheels, three-channel garage door opener.)
Engine
* V-6 developing 200 horsepower.
Type
* Front-engine, rear-drive, four-passenger, mid-size luxury sedan.
Performance
* 0-60 mph, as tested, nine seconds.
* Top speed, electronically governed, 125 mph.
* Fuel consumption, average, city and highway, 23.5 mpg.
Curb Weight
* 3,770 pounds.
1997 Cadillac Catera
The Good: Daring, quantum leap into mid-size motoring for big daddy Cadillac. Sensible blend of German engineering touched by luxuries of parent. Could be affordable, should be reliable, definitely is a competent car for enthusiastic touring.
The Bad: European styling may not be every American’s cup of joe.
The Ugly: That name.
