How The Cadillac Escalade Proved GM Could Learn From Its Mistakes

Several decades ago, Cadillac made the decision to hastily rebadge a mainstream GM product as its own cooking as a sudden reaction to new competition, resulting in a machine that looked an awful lot like a less expensive model. In profile, it was almost identical to its mainstream equivalent, and it even launched with the same powertrain as its more common brethren. Can you guess how the market reacted? Yeah, it turned the Escalade into a cultural phenomenon that’s now arguably bigger than the Cadillac brand itself. Wait, you didn’t think I was talking about the Cimarron, did you?

It’s weird to think that the iconic Cadillac Escalade launched using more-or-less the same formula as the infamous Cimarron, but a few critical choices helped make it not just a success, but Cadillac’s largest modern cultural touchpoint. Did General Motors learn from its mistakes? I reckon it did.

Welcome back to GM Hit Or Miss, where we zoom in on the chaos of General Motors’ pre-bankruptcy product planning strategy of throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks to see what stuck to the wall like a wad of epoxy and what’s simply made a mess on the floor.

Return Of The ‘Lac

Back in 1997, GM had a problem, and that problem was called the Lincoln Navigator. The full-size SUV market was heating up, and the Navigator was a shot across Cadillac’s bow. We’re talking about a full-size luxury SUV with available rear air suspension, automatic four-wheel-drive, leather, wood, a substantially different appearance than its Ford Expedition sibling, and that all-important Lincoln badge. Cadillac had nothing, and 1998 was shaping up to be a rough year for GM’s luxury brand, one of the rare times it would actually lose the domestic luxury sales crown to Lincoln due to the sheer success of the Navigator.

General Motors didn’t have time, but it was working on the GMC Yukon Denali, a leather-lined, plastic-clad variant of its full-size SUV. With a Cadillac grille, extra wood and leather, standard OnStar telematics, and new center caps, the first Cadillac Escalade was born posthaste, and it didn’t exactly make the most graceful impression on the press. It came dead-last in a five-SUV Car And Driver comparison test, with the magazine writing “pass the dramamine” about its ride quality and this about its cabin:

Guess what? The public didn’t hugely care that the platform dated back to the 1980s, or that it didn’t have automatic climate control, or that body control was largely theoretical. More than 50,000 first-generation Escalades made it to driveways across America, and thanks in part to a complete redesign after just two model years on the market, the Escalade continues to be America’s first word in luxury SUVs, laying cultural waste to the Lincoln Navigator. It paid off, but a similar gamble worked out very differently for Cadillac less than two decades prior.

Missing The Mark

Back in the early 1980s, as everything was getting downsized, GM had a brainwave: What if it took its incoming corporate compact car, ritzed it up, and badged it as a Cadillac to compete with compact luxury cars from Europe? It’s a sensible idea, but the execution of such a product had enough issues that its name is now infamous. I’m speaking, of course, about the Cadillac Cimarron. Originally, pre-launch reception of Cadillac’s take on the Chevrolet Cavalier was mixed-to-positive. Some people were actually excited for it, not the least of which were dealers wishing for a gas crunch option. As Popular Mechanics wrote in January of 1981:

The Cimarron was developed in response to Cadillac dealers who were hit hard by the turn-around toward small cars in the latest fuel crunch. The dealers wanted a small, fuel-efficient car like the BMW, and they wanted it fast. The crash program of development that followed has been called the fastest move of its type ever at GM, made possible in large measure by the generous use of predeveloped J-car systems.

At the time, the concept of an American competitor to the BMW 3 Series was obvious. The fuel crises of the 1970s were right at the front of drivers’ minds, and the smallest thing Cadillac offered at the time was the Seville. A predominantly V8-powered sedan clocking more than 200 inches stem-to-stern was a world away from the 177.5-inch, four-cylinder 3 Series of the time, and there was loads of room to expand the Cadillac lineup.

Sure, the Chevrolet Cavalier wasn’t the most refined car of the early 1980s, and Cadillac swooping in at the eleventh hour meant that the Cimarron had to make do with much of the same coachwork as its more affordable brethren, but initial reviews were actually positive. Here’s what historically Detroit-skeptic Car And Driver had to say when it tested a 1982 Cimarron:

With a little polishing here and there, the Cimarron could actually make it as a world-class small sedan. (Not even Audi gets everything right the first time around.) But even as is, the Cimarron is a pretty nice piece of work. And for a Cadillac—well, it’s just plain amazing.

Unfortunately, despite selling a respectable 132,499 units over its lifespan, the Cimarron quickly became a punchline. It was so commonly derided that when Car And Driver did a story on the Europe-only Cadillac BLS, the magazine noted that top Cadillac product man John Howell kept a picture of a Cimarron in his office captioned “Lest we forget.” So why did it fail but the Yukon-based Escalade succeeded? Both were rather hastily rebadged mainstream products presented to an upscale audience, but while one is now often regarded as a punchline, the other is an even bigger name than the brand that makes it.

The Pros Of Getting In Early

In theory, a small luxury car was the right direction for Cadillac in the early 1980s. However, part of the problem was that the Cimarron was trying to appeal to a base already set in their ways. By the time it launched in 1981, it was up against some stiff competition. A BMW 320i customer wasn’t likely to set foot in a Cadillac showroom, and Cadillac buyers historically weren’t drawn to small cars. As a result, the Cimarron fought an uphill battle from day one, a battle it ultimately lost. It likely didn’t help that throughout its production run, it always kinda looked like a Cavalier.

In contrast, when the Escalade launched in 1998, the luxury SUV market in America consisted of just a handful of models, all of which were relatively crude. The closest equivalent to a full-size luxury sedan in technology and performance was the P38 Range Rover, but beyond that, the Lexus LX 450 was a rebadged Toyota Land Cruiser, the Lincoln Navigator was somewhat obviously a re-worked Ford Expedition, and the original Mercedes-Benz ML was really a midsize body-on-frame SUV and a closer competitor to the Land Rover Discovery than it was to the Range Rover.

When it came to the really big machines in the segment, they were all fairly crude, and the benchmark really was just leather, woodgrain, and chrome. It didn’t really matter that the first-generation Escalade was just a hastily rebranded Yukon Denali built as an impulsive reaction to the Lincoln Navigator because the benchmark in the segment really wasn’t high. Cadillac just had to get its foot in the door and go from there, because the SUV boom would do much of the work.

See, the rules of cool had changed because we were looking at completely different buyer demographics. Back in the early 1980s, the sort of person buying an expensive, well-appointed compact sedan likely had suspiciously white teeth and a degree they were proud of. For the yuppie set, sophistication was the law of consumption, from European sport sedans to designer clothing to classical music. A stock market crash in 1987 took some of the sheen off of spending big, but only for so long.

By the late 1990s, conspicuous consumption was back, but it was totally different this time around. Instead of signalling to the world taste alongside affluence, the mission now was to be as showy as possible. Discreet watches were out, diamonds were in, McMansions were the move, and the currents of the extreme era fuelled aggressive displays of wealth. In this context, the Escalade was cool, and the quick-to-arrive sequel cemented the model’s status.

The 2002 Escalade, launched early in 2001, looked substantially different to a Yukon or a Tahoe, rode on the then-new GMT800 platform, offered plenty of toys, and was flashy and upscale enough to attract the sort of clientele that would thrust it into the spotlight. The resulting appearances on red carpets and “MTV Cribs” episodes turned the Escalade into an enduring cultural phenomenon that continues to generate big sales and profits.

The Escalade is obviously a hit, and it shows that General Motors was, in fact, capable of learning. It got in early on an emerging segment with no obvious hierarchy, quickly went to work on substantial visual and mechanical improvement, and played to the culture of the time. This expensive SUV may have launched with the same formula as the Cimarron, but by learning from the past, GM didn’t end up repeating it.

Top graphic credit: Cadillac

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