2004 Cadillac Escalade - New Transmission And Brakes! Custom Trim And Wheels! on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: 1997 Cadillac Catera

GM's Cadillac Division was having a tough time in the early 1990s, with an onslaught of Lexuses and Infinitis pouring across the Pacific to steal their younger customers while high-end German manufacturers picked off their older customers. Flying an S-Class-priced model between assembly lines in Turin and Hamtramck hadn't worked out, so why not look to the European outposts of the far-flung GM Empire for the next Cadillac? That's how the Catera was born, and I have found a rare first-year example in a North Carolina car graveyard. Across the Atlantic, GM's Opel and Vauxhall were doing good business with prosperous European car buyers by selling them the sleek rear-wheel-drive Omega B (whose platform also lived beneath the Holden VT Commodore in Australia). Here was a genuine German design that competed with success against BMW and Audi on their home turf! So, the Omega B was Americanized and renamed the Catera. Opel wasn't a completely unknown brand to Americans at the time, since its cars were sold here with their own badging through Buick dealerships from the middle 1950s through the late 1970s (for a much shorter period, American Pontiac dealers attempted to sell Vauxhalls). Even after that, plenty of Opel DNA showed up in the products of U.S.-market GM divisions. The Catera was by far the most affordable Cadillac for 1997, with an MSRP starting at $29,995 (about $59,113 in 2024 dollars). Being a genuine German car, it looked much more convincingly European than the DeVille ($36,995), Eldorado ($37,995) and Seville ($39,995). Inspired by the ducks on the Cadillac emblem (they were really supposed to be martlets, mythical birds with no feet and occasionally lacking beaks), Cadillac's marketers went after youthful car shoppers with a whimsical animated duck named Ziggy. For the 21st century, the birds were removed from the Cadillac emblem in order to attract California buyers under 45 years of age. As we all know, the Catera flopped hard in the marketplace. What sold well in Europe turned out not to translate so well in in North America, especially when bearing the badges of such a historically prestigious brand. The Catera's engine was a 54-degree 3.0-liter V6 rated at 200 horsepower and 192 pound-feet. Just as had been the case with its predecessor, the Allante, no manual transmission was available.

2018 Lincoln Navigator vs luxury SUV rivals: How it compares on paper

The all-new 2018 Lincoln Navigator is an impressive, luxury-lined beast. However, while its Black Label interior stood out most during our first drive of the new Navigator, it also seemed pretty clear that much of this full-size SUV was superior to the competition in a number of fundamental ways. Its Raptor-sourced 3.5-liter V6 had class-leading power for one, and its third-row seat seemed as spacious and comfortable as its rivals' are cramped and barely usable. To search for your next new vehicle, try Autoblog' s Car Finder. Yet, I wanted to take a closer look at how the Navigator fully compares on paper to its competitors - especially the Cadillac Escalade with which it most directly competes. The below spreadsheet should tell the whole story, but as you can see, there's an awful lot of class-leading green highlighter in the Navigator's column. The cargo volume and third-row legroom numbers are particularly telling, with the latter actually going up to 42.3 inches when you slide the second-row fully forward. Now, a few things to note about the above spreadsheet. The GLS-Class is also available as the GLS 550, which boasts a 4.7-liter V8 that just comes up short to the Navigator with 449 horsepower but has to deal with only 5,578 pounds. Its $94,950 price tag is comparable to the Navigator Black Label. Much of the LX 570's information is also applicable to the Toyota Land Cruiser, which, badge aside, could certainly be considered a member of this segment given its feature content and still-hefty price tag. It has better ground clearance and approach/departure angles than its Lexus sibling, along with an as-indicated lower price. Much of the Escalade's information also applies to the GMC Yukon Denali, while the Infiniti QX80 is applicable to the Nissan Armada. Related Video: Cadillac Infiniti Lexus Lincoln Mercedes-Benz SUV Luxury Off-Road Vehicles consumer lincoln navigator

Cars with the worst resale value after 5 years

While the old saying that cars lose a massive chunk of their value as soon as they’re driven off the dealerÂ’s lot might not be entirely true these days, most new vehicles steadily lose value as they age and are used. iSeeCars recently released its latest study on depreciation, finding the models that lose value the fastest, and the list is packed with high-end nameplates. The vehicles that lost value the fastest over five years include: Maserati Quattroporte: 64.5% depreciation BMW 7 Series: 61.8% Maserati Ghibli: 61.3% BMW 5 Series Hybrid: 58.8% Cadillac Escalade ESV: 58.5% BMW X5: 58.2% Infiniti QX80: 58.1% Maserati Levante: 57.8% Jaguar XF: 57.6% Audi A7: 57.2% While sports cars, hybrids, and trucks dominated the list of slowest-depreciating vehicles, luxury brands accounted for all of the top ten fastest-depreciating models. iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer also pointed out EVsÂ’ lack of representation on the slow-depreciating vehicles list, saying that thereÂ’s a disconnect between what automakers are building and what people actually want. The average five-year depreciation for all vehicles in the iSeeCars study was 38.8 percent. ThatÂ’s an almost 11% improvement over 2019Â’s figures, but some vehicle types perform worse than others. EVs depreciated 49.1 percent over five years, while SUVs dropped 41.2%. Trucks only fell 34.8% and hybrids 37.4%. Brauer noted that all vehicles depreciate slower than they did five years ago. Even so, EVs are not the best choice if youÂ’re looking for a vehicle that wonÂ’t feel like a ripoff when itÂ’s time to trade in. On the flip side, used EVs can present a stellar value, saving thousands over their new counterparts. Charging times and availability remain concerns for buyers in large parts of the country, but a heavily depreciated EV could be the used car value youÂ’ve been looking for. The same wisdom applies to used luxury vehicles, as the list above indicates. While new-car buyers shopping for luxury cars are set to see big depreciation during their ownership, that means the used car market is flooded with inexpensive used luxury cars. High repair costs and costly maintenance schedules are real issues that used luxury models face, however. Green Audi BMW Cadillac Infiniti Jaguar Maserati Car Buying Used Car Buying