2000 DeVille Fails to Meet Cadillac Standard

Harley-Davidson, once pitiful, eventually rose tall and reshaped itself into a global vogue. Andre Agassi swore, snarled and clawed his way back to being the best. Chrysler under Iacocca, Jaguar under Ford, Bill Clinton and Hugh Grant under public scrutiny--all fought off receivership, unreliability and ridicule.

But Cadillac can’t seem to get out from under or even partway back to a reputation that went beyond American icon to a proper noun in Webster’s as “something that is the most luxurious or highest quality of its kind.”

There exists no such listing for Lexus.

Yet as sales of smooth and expensive cars are bounding, Cadillac purchases are down for the year and sinking lower by the month. Escalade, cloned from the Chevy Tahoe, is one of the nation’s worst-selling sport-utility vehicles. Catera, Stateside sibling of the Opel Omega, continues to get thumped as an undesirable alien, an unstylish, underpowered, embarrassing attempt by Cadillac to tug Americans away from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi.

And when Cadillac turned to marketing through Cindy Crawford, a cartoon duck and a Caddy that zagged, it was clearly desperation time in Detroit.

Now comes the 2000 Cadillac DeVille, the company’s latest push to attract younger buyers without knotting the knickers of its more mature loyalists. Cadillac hopes to achieve just that through youthful styling of a smaller, better-handling car stuffed with high technology that translates to a surplus of active safety.

Let Pat Kemp, brand manager for the new DeVille, have his say: “The styling is contemporary but not flamboyant, because people we spoke to said, ‘Make it clean and make it efficient.’ We have given the car [an optional] nine-CD navigation system, Night Vision that ‘sees’ five times farther than normal [human] vision, a StabiliTrak control system, and [this is] not technology for technology’s sake . . . but to make life easier.”

On paper, the three-car DeVille series--a $39,500 base version and better-loaded DHS and DTS models starting at $44,700--is a six-passenger luxo-cruiser that has it all.

There’s its mighty and reliable Northstar engine, one of the world’s most sophisticated and smoothly powerful V-8s. In addition to StabiliTrak for taming skids, the more athletic DeVille DTS (for DeVille touring sedan) comes equipped with a variable road-sensing suspension for dampening roll in spirited cornering and dip during hard braking.

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Let’s look harder at the DeVille DTS, our test car, the fullback of the bunch, blessed with a 300-horsepower Northstar engine while other family members must settle for the stingier 275-horsepower version.

It has seats that heat and even massage weary backs as you drive. A tri-zone climate-control system manages the weather for left-front, right-front and back-seat passengers. Puddle lights. Almost two dozen storage bins and pockets. Rain-sensing windshield wipers. A leather-wrapped steering wheel that tilts and telescopes. Side air bags for rear passengers.

Name it. The DTS has it. And every electronic asset and creature convenience is a clean, deliberate match for offerings from the competition.

But the car is not. Not overall, not as a satisfying package.

There is no doubt that level handling and rich pace stamp the DTS as the deftest, flattest Cadillac ever. But although shorter, narrower and stiffer than the Concours it replaces, this is still a big car plagued with imprecise steering and a vast interior. This diminishes a driver rather than making him or her integral to the machine. There’s simply no rapport here. The car is a fat, indifferent, silent butler.

Remember, this is supposed to be a luxury vehicle. Our DTS was delivered with a leather key fob but no remote for doors, trunk or panics in parking lots. The “wood” trim certainly wasn’t, and it looked about as expensive as vinyl loafers.

Some may even dismiss Cadillac’s much-trumpeted Night Vision. For when the system is installed, Cadillac’s famed wreath and crest go on the hood because the center of the grille houses this Cyclopean lens for night work.

The system certainly functions well, and a heads-up image on the inside of the windshield does register far objects as fluorescent blobs to be duly noted. But we do wonder how many times you’ll need to avoid a bull moose crossing Wilshire Boulevard. Or you could justify the purchase by moving to Montana.

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There isn’t a car lover alive who wants to see Cadillac fail. Not after those magnificent V-12s of the ‘30s, the town cars, the fins, the Eldorado convertibles. Not after a century of being the standard, not a standard, of the world.

How sad to read a final analysis by Jay Koblenz, editor of Consumer Review, whose 2000 Car Buyer’s Guide says this of the new DeVille: “Still trying to compete where it can’t.”

Paul Dean can be reached at paul.dean@latimes.com.