Not sure about 3 decades and not sure about falling behind most or all of those areas across all models. I think that is a gross over-exaggeration.bill25 wrote:I think you are mostly right. I think if your brand was already not the highest tech, and already not highest performance, and starting to lose the looks battle, then you remove reliability, it is important.
People companies a pass on reliability because they shine somewhere else, be it tech, or performance, or luxury/prestige. Cadillac fell behind on most or all of these for about 3 decades. The performance came back in mid to late 00's.
Cadillac had good tech more or less continuously from the very beginning. The 70s alone brought fuel injection, ABS, airbags, trip computers, and all sorts of stuff - stuff that most people think arrived in the 90s). They added performance with the Northstar and the new-car characteristics of the engine were widely praised. For luxury I'd say they also always offered comfort and convenience, and the tradeoff was they were a LOT cheaper than the Europeans. If anything I'd say prestige was an issue ever since they were challenged by a triple punch of:
- European cars
- Japanese cars
- EPA rules that very much favored European and Japanese cars that were already being built or designed
We can look back at the 60s with rose colored glasses but there was no competition. It is easy to look back and say "I loved the 1967 coupe Deville" or whatever. But when you actually look at the product, it was not that fast despite the massive cubic inches, with ludicrous fuel consumption, and was a ponderous, lumbering vehicle. It was the same thing a 1987 Brougham was, except the Brougham had a much better weight/size to interior space ratio (and thus fuel economy and handling) due to GM's major investment for the 1977 B/D-bodies, which was actually a big success for them in general.
On the sport/euro track, they were adding sport trims to the new FWD stuff in the late 80s! Go watch old Motorweeks - it's all documented. Then they got more serious in the 90s with the STS. Then the Catera. And finally the CTS which connected all the dots (also the XLR for 2003, and there was a V soon after, which was a bit of an oddity but far superior to the old, FWD Eldorado though it was more an Allante replacement). They didn't decide to abandon comfort cruisers all at once. It was over decades! And it was for a reason - same reason they canceled the B-body in the 90s. Not enough people wanted a traditional American fullsize luxury sedan, and certainly not a coupe. GM mostly stopped adding tech to their fullsize RWD cars because they knew who was buying them. Their FWD stuff, meanwhile, got the technology and more modern interiors. A 1990 Brougham was actually available with an Olds 307 with a 4 barrel carb. That tells you everything you need to know. The Oldsmobile division (one that was mostly pointless since probably the early 90s) outlasted the Eldorado nameplate by 2 years. Times sure do change.
The fullsize American luxury vehicle was prestigious when that was the best thing you could buy. They do not get credit for being better than non-competitors at that time. For the most part, aside from a few bad engines, the later cars (i.e. late 70s and later) were technically superior (a result of actual competition or other pressures). I'm talking about better packaging, better handling, better fuel economy, better tech, better safety, better corrosion resistance, much longer maintenance intervals, and moving into the 90s, better performance.