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South Dakota dealer filled to brim with classic cars

Other than the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Mount Rushmore, South Dakota isn't generally a hot topic, but that just means that cool stuff can hide in the open waiting to be discovered. Case in point: the classic car dealer Frankman Motor Company that operates three locations in Sioux Falls, SD.
Unearthed by the folks at Bring a Trailer, Frankman is a treasure trove of vintage, American iron. Their collection is full of the type of vehicles your irresponsible but cool uncle would show up with when you were a kid. Even better, these cars are priced at a level a working man can afford.
If you are lusting about a cruiser then Frankman has a 1956 Cadillac Deville Hard Top Sedan (pictured right) with 82,896 miles for $12,975. It's painted a color called Cascade Grey, but looks more like a pastel purple in pictures. While it needs some repairs to the accessories, the Caddy runs and drives, which is all you really need.

Junkyard Gem: 1993 Cadillac Allante

The General's Cadillac Division had lost much of its status as a world-class styling and engineering innovator by the 1980s, while younger rich Americans signed on the line which is dotted for European luxury machines packed full of futuristic technology. Something needed to be done to win back the hearts of those buyers, and that something was the Cadillac Allante two-seater. Here's a final-model-year Allante, complete with one of the very first Northstar V8 engines, found in a Denver yard. The overhead-valve Cadillac V8 engine of 1949 shook up the automotive world, and the double-overhead-cam Northstar V8 of 44 years later had a similar effect. Finally, a high-revving, smooth-running modern V8 to compete with those pesky European and Japanese carmakers! Only the Allante got the Northstar at first, with other Cadillac models following soon after. After the underwhelming power output of the pushrod HT4100 V8s used in the 1987-1992 Allantes, the upgrade from 200 horses to 290 helped boost sales of the '93 to the highest annual figure ever achieved by the model: 4,670 cars. Unfortunately for GM, production costs of the Allante proved to be murderous in the long run. Shortened Eldorado frames were loaded onto specially-fitted 747s in Detroit and flown to Pininfarina's new Allante factory in Italy. After Pininfarina built the bodies, they got loaded onto the 747s, flown back to Detroit, trucked to the Hamtramck assembly plant, and given running gear there. GM called this system the "Allante Air Bridge" and it cost plenty. The cars looked both futuristic and Italian, which they were, but the Allante's price tag stood at heights far above those of the rest of the Cadillac line: $59,975 in 1993, or about $108,500 in 2020 dollars. You could buy a rear-wheel-drive BMW 850Ci with a 282-horse V8 and manual transmission for a mere 10 grand over the Allante's cost that year, or a Jaguar XJS convertible for just $56,750. The Allante had front-wheel-drive and a not-so-modern four-speed automatic transmission, which hurt sales among the enthusiast types who flocked to Cadillac showrooms for the CTS-V a decade or so later. No European machine of 1993 could top the Mars Base appearance of these vertically-arranged, all-pushbutton HVAC/audio controls, though.

Mark Reuss: GM can't afford product 'misses,' has 'thought about' CT6 V-Series

Mark Reuss is a busy man. He oversees General Motors' global product portfolio, an all-encompassing task for a company that sold more than 9.9 million cars and trucks last year. When GM launches a well-received product, like the road-going rocket ship that is the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 – he gets credit. When the company stumbles with the slow-selling Chevy Malibu or grapples with fallout from the decade-old Saturn Ion and its flawed ignition switch, he gets blamed. GM owners, the press and sometimes the federal government, demand answers. Bob Lutz famously held the job before Reuss. So did Mary Barra, who's now GM's chief executive. There's a New GM, but the lineage is connected to a long history. When he's not thinking product, Reuss, an executive vice president, also runs the purchasing and supply chain for the company, which is still one of the largest industrial empires in the world. We caught up with Reuss on the floor of the New York Auto Show, where GM had just rolled out two crucial new products: the 2016 Cadillac CT6 and the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu. Speaking with a small group of reporters, Reuss delved into a variety of subjects, including the new Malibu, Cadillac's future (he thinks the ATS-V is going to "flame the M3 and M4"), and other topics. On fixing the Malibu: "We can't miss. We can't have those kinds of misses [like the previous generation] on our cars and crossovers and trucks. We can't do that. If we do that, we give a reason for someone to go buy something else. It's that simple. "On a car like the Malibu we have a chance to really fix all of that, which we have, and then lead. Then you've got a real opportunity there. So that's what we've really been focused on here – to fix those things." He later added: "We need that car here to transform Chevrolet desperately because it's the heart of the market. And when you think of Chevrolet, people will come back and think about what we did with the [new] Malibu and the Cruze... It's hugely important to us." On Cadillac: "If we go out and try and out-German the Germans, it's probably not going to work. We've got an opportunity here generationally where there's a lot of people younger than me that have parents that drove BMWs and Mercedes, and I think there's an opportunity there for those people to drive something different than what their parents did, and I think that's always been an opportunity in the auto industry if you look at the history of it.