1985 Cadillac Eldorado on 2040-cars

Auto blog

General Motors shaking up its marketing... again

One of the things that dogs the full comeback of General Motors is the instability of its marketing. That part of the automaker got yet another big shakeup today when GM confirmed what I have been tweeting for a few days - strong rumors that the Chevrolet and Cadillac ad accounts are walking to new ad agencies.
Cadillac, GM's luxury brand, is going into review from Fallon Worldwide, Minneapolis and the indications are that Campbell-Ewald, Chevy's old ad shop, will end up with most or all of it. C-E just announced that it was moving from its long-time home in Warren, MI to a new downtown Detroit office next to Ford Field, just blocks from GM.
The other shoe to drop shortly will be the shift of GM's most important brand, Chevy, from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco to McCann-Erickson of Troy, MI. McCann used to be the agency for Buick and GMC, as well as GM's corporate advertising, and has retained some pieces of business over the last few years. Sources have even told us that it was McCann that did a lot of the creative work on Chevy's new ad platform, Find New Roads. (Not to be confused with a former McCann tagline for Saab, "Find Your Own Road.")

Johan de Nysschen tells his side of the story

Automobile snagged time with ex-Cadillac, Infiniti, and Volkswagen of America boss Johan de Nysschen. General Motors decided to part ways with de Nysschen on April 18, 2018, after the German spent four years in charge of America's luxury brand. The longtime auto exec is a polarizing figure for enthusiasts, who seem to take a mostly negative view of his work at Infiniti and Cadillac. However, there's no denying de Nysschen is frank, and in the Automobile interview he puts an insider's perspective on a big bag of issues we can only speculate on. One of the biggest bombshells in the interview was that it wasn't de Nysschen's idea to move Cadillac to New York: "When I was recruited, I was informed that the company would relocate to New York," he said. Previous GM CEO Dan Ackerson had made the decision before hiring de Nysschen, then Ackerson let his new hire make the announcement. The big change came only two years after de Nysschen had taken over Infiniti after insisting Nissan's luxury brand move to Hong Kong. De Nysschen explained Cadillac's NYC move with the same rationale as Infiniti's Hong Kong move, so everyone assumed the new guy was doing his usual. He explains in the interview that after the move, "Folks who rooted for Detroit felt betrayed. Cadillac had an enemy." And that became a problem. He has nothing bad to say about GM or Cadillac, believing on the contrary that "GM is in a good position going forward." But he brought clarity to some of Cadillac's struggles. Among the issues was GM's "very vigorous" post-bankruptcy test for green-lighting a project. Another was the lack of specialization for the luxury arm. "Engines were generically developed with the Chevy brand in mind," he said, "and, then, 'Okay, well, yeah, it's good enough for Cadillac.'" That carried over into haphazard technology rollouts. "GM didn't have a specific technology roadmap aligned to particular brands," he said. "The process was, as they were developing new technologies, they would look at what product's launch date would be aligned with the maturation date and market readiness of a technology and go with it, whether Buick, Chevy, or what have you." De Nysschen worked to end such generalized approaches, which is how we get Cadillac taking the GM lead on technology and electrification.

Cadillac ATS Coupe spy photos show more sedate two-door

Remember when the Cadillac CTS Coupe debuted, and we were all like, "Oh hello there?" Well, don't expect the same thing to happen when the new ATS Coupe is unveiled - these brand new (overexposed) spy shots show a two-door that's decidedly more sedate than the angular yet curvaceous and all-around good-looking CTS Coupe. This isn't to say that the smaller Caddy Coupe won't be attractive - the four-door version is plenty pretty, to be sure - it just likely won't have that extra somethin'-somethin' to truly set it apart from the sedan.
Fine, then. We don't doubt that the two-door ATS will be just as enjoyable to drive as its sedan sibling, with a lot of the mechanical stuff likely carrying over unchanged. That includes the powertrain options, meaning buyers will be able to choose from the naturally aspirated 2.5-liter inline-four, turbocharged 2.0-liter four, or larger free-breathing 3.6-liter V6.
Look for the 2014 ATS Coupe to enter production in January of next year, meaning a reveal later this year (LA Auto Show, perhaps?) would be in order.