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This '59 Cadillac is now on display at Toyota's museum in Japan

The Toyota Automobile Museum is different from a lot of other automaker collections in one very interesting way: It doesn't focus solely on Toyota's own automobiles. While the home team is certainly well represented, the love is spread to plenty of non-Toyota brands and vehicles that are significant to automotive history. And that permanent collection now includes the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz convertible you see here. Yes, the '59 Caddy has the biggest tail fins ever, which makes it measurably significant. You still wouldn't expect to see it in a museum in Japan, though. After updates to the facility and its exhibits finish early next year, the 67-vehicle collection will also include such greats as a Renault 5 (known here as the Le Car), a '64 Ford Mustang, an Audi Quattro, a first-gen Honda Insight, and a Lotus Elite. Someone over there has good taste. You can visit the Toyota Automobile Museum the next time you're in Nagakute City, which is right outside Nagoya. We're booking our tickets now. Related Video: Cadillac Toyota Automotive History cadillac eldorado

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.

Will attaching the electrodes re-animate Cadillac?

This announcement last week from General Motors —"Cadillac will be GM's lead electric vehicle brand"— followed quickly by the surprise reveal Sunday night of a Cadillac EV crossover, leads one to wonder whether this is a case of GM pulling out the defibrillator and hoping a full-on jolt of electricity will revive Cadillac from its ongoing diminution in the market. In 2018, Cadillac U.S. sales were 154,702 vehicles, which was down from the 156,440 it had sold in 2017. And the 2017 sales were down significantly from the 170,006 vehicles delivered by Cadillac in 2016. And that is down from the 175,267 sales of 2015. Sure, part of Cadillac's problem — one shared by some other OEMs — is that its sedans aren't selling. But if we put those to the side, realize that in 2018 sales of the venerable Escalade were down by 2.2 percent. Admittedly, that rig is a little old in the grille, and it's suddenly gotten strong competition from the Lincoln Navigator, so a sales decline isn't too surprising. But the XT5, the compact lux vehicle that was launched in 2016 as a model-year 2017 product, had an 11.3 percent decline in a segment that is doing nothing but growing. This is not promising. Although the argument at GM HQ might be that Cadillac can reinvent itself as a Tesla fighter, one of the things that isn't often noted about Tesla vis-a-vis other OEMs is that while sedan sales are generally down, Tesla, which had an estimated 2018 sales volume of 197,680 (according to Cleantechnica.com), made its numbers primarily with the Model 3 and Model S, both sedans, as it has just the Model X crossover. So it isn't just about vehicle architecture. It is going to take more than an electric SUV to change Cadillac's performance. But here's where circumstances can fall in Cadillac's favor. Scale can be highly beneficial to Cadillac versus Tesla. The Chinese market, even though it is weakening of late, will be largely predicated on "New Energy Vehicles," which means electrified and fully electric. And while Tesla only just now broke ground on a factory in China, LMC Automotive reports that as of December 2018, SAIC GM is already well-established there and is the third-largest vehicle manufacturer in China (behind SAIC Volkswagen and FAW Volkswagen). Cadillac is going to be able to take advantage of GM's global efforts in developing EVs, so soon the Cadillac showroom could be filled with an array of luxury EVs that may make even Tesla loyalists take another look.