Cadillac Seville Sls 1995 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

GM’s move to Woodward is the right one — for the company and for Detroit

Back in 2018, Chevy invited me to attend the Detroit Auto Show on the company dime to get an early preview of the then-newly redesigned Silverado. The trip involved a stay at the Renaissance Center — just a quick People Mover ride from the show. IÂ’d been visiting Detroit in January for nearly a decade, and not once had I set foot inside General MotorsÂ’ glass-sided headquarters. I was intrigued, to say the least. Thinking back on my time in the buildings that GM will leave behind when it departs for the new Hudson's site on Woodward Avenue, two things struck me. For one, its hotel rooms are cold in January. Sure, itÂ’s glass towers designed in the 1960s and '70s; I calibrated my expectations accordingly. But when I could only barely see out of the place for all the ice forming on the inside of the glass, it drove home just how flawed this iconic structure is.  My second and more pertinent observation was that the RenCen doesnÂ’t really feel like itÂ’s in a city at all, much less one as populous as Detroit. The complex is effectively severed from its surroundings by swirling ribbons of both river and asphalt. To the west sits the Windsor tunnel entrance; to the east, parking lots for nearly as far as the eye can see. To its north is the massive Jefferson Avenue and to its south, the Detroit River. You get the sense that if Henry Ford II and his team of investors had gotten their way, the whole thing would have been built offshore with the swirling channel doubling as a moat. This isnÂ’t a building the draws the city in; itÂ’s one designed to keep it out. Frost on the inside of the RenCen hotel glass. Contrasted with the new Hudson's project GM intends to move into, a mixed-use anchor with residential, office, retail and entertainment offerings smack-dab in Detroit's most vibrant district, the RenCen is a symbol of an era when each office in DetroitÂ’s downtown was an island in a rising sea of dilapidation. Back then, those who fortified against the rapid erosion of DetroitÂ’s urban bedrock stood the best chance of surviving. This was the era that brought us ugly skyways and eventually the People Mover — anything to help suburban commuters keep their metaphorical feet dry. The RenCen offered — and still offers — virtually any necessity and plenty of nice-to-haves, all accessible without ever venturing outside, especially in the winter, but those enticements are geared to those who trek in from suburbia to toil in its hallways.

What will the next Presidential limo look like?

With recent news that the Secret Service has begun soliciting proposals for a new armored limousine, we've been wondering what the next presidential limo might look like. The current machine, nicknamed "The Beast", has a design based on a car that's no longer sold: the Cadillac DTS. If General Motors gets the job again, which wouldn't be a surprise considering the government still owns a chunk of the company, the next limo's shape would likely resemble the new XTS (below, left). But Cadillac hasn't always been the go-to car company for presidential whips.
Lincoln has actually provided far more presidential limousines throughout history than Cadillac. In fact, the first car modified for Commander-in-Chief-carrying duty was a 1939 Lincoln K-Series called "Sunshine Special" used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the last Lincoln used by a president was a 1989 Town Car ordered for George H.W. Bush. If President Obama wanted a Lincoln today, it would likely be an amalgam of the MKS sedan and MKT crossover, as illustrated above.
And what about Chrysler? The only record we could find of a President favoring the Pentastar is Nixon, who reportedly ordered two limos from the company during his administration in the '70s, and then another one, known today as the "K-Car limo," in the '80s after he left office. Obama, however, has a personal - if modest - connection to Chryslers, having owned a 300 himself before he took office. A 300-based Beast (above, right) would certainly earn the U.S. some style points.

Junkyard Gem: 1998 Cadillac Catera

Every so often, during the last few decades of the 20th century, the suits running each of the big Detroit automakers would eye their European subsidiaries and decide that some car from the other side of the Atlantic could be making dollars over here in addition to pounds or francs or Deutschmarks over there. Chrysler didn't do so well with Simca 1204s or Plymouth-badged Hillman Avengers in the American marketplace (though the Simca-based Omnirizon did very well). Ford USA moved quite a few Capris and Fiestas during the 1970s, then bombed with the Merkur Scorpio and XR4Ti. General Motors tried, over and over, to get Americans to buy Opels (some sold by Buick dealers, others actually badged as Buicks), and I still see the occasional Kadett, GT, or Manta in junkyards to this day. For the 1997 model year, still stinging from the not-so-great sales of the Turin-Hamtramck-built Cadillac Allante, GM took the Omel Omega B and applied Cadillac badges. The result was the Catera, and I found this silver '98 in a Denver self-service yard recently. The Catera had a lot going for it, with a rear-wheel-drive layout and a modern V6 engine that made more power than the BMW 528i's straight-six that year. It should have been able to compete with European luxury sedans in North America because it was a European luxury sedan. Unfortunately, you couldn't get a manual transmission in the Catera, "traditional" Cadillac shoppers thought the Catera lacked a sufficiently massive presence, and younger Cadillac buyers flocked straight to the Escalade starting in 1999. After 2001, the Catera was no more. I still find Cateras in junkyards, nearly 20 years after the last ones were sold, so they appear to have held together pretty well. This one was in nice shape until the end, with all the original manuals still in the glovebox. Even the Catera ballpoint pen remained with the car for its whole life. As we can see in the owner's manual, Cadillac marketed the Catera as "The Caddy That Zigs." The idea was that younger car shoppers would become as Cadillac-obsessed as their grandparents had been. Inspired by the ducks in the Cadillac logo, the Catera marketing team created Ziggy the Duck to pitch this car. Things didn't go so well. The Catera listed at $29,995 in 1998, about $47,600 in 2020 dollars. That made it an affordable alternative to the BMW 5-Series or Acura 3.2 TL, but total Catera sales came to fewer than 95,000 cars over five model years.