Daddy’s Caddy?
David Palacios is not 60.
He does not play golf.
He does not drink martinis before dinner.
And he doesn’t hang out at the country club on weekends.
Palacios is a 30-year-old computer analyst who goes skiing in Europe, is easing meat out of his diet and belongs to three health clubs.
But he does own a Cadillac--a ’93 black Seville, to be exact.
“I always referred to Cadillacs as old-man cars, cars you could drive with one finger. Those older Cadillacs had that swaying feeling, like you were on a cruise liner.”
But knowing that the company had restyled the Seville, he gave it a shot--and echoed the sentiments of some “new” Cadillac owners:
“I needed the size for business, for meetings and entertaining clients.”
With the introduction of the redesigned Seville, Seville STS (Seville Touring Sedan) and Eldorado in 1992, the luxury-car manufacturer is gunning for a crop of style- and performance-conscious baby boomers armed with megabucks.
And the company is trying to evoke an image most people probably don’t associate with Cadillac--cool.
It seems an uphill battle. After all, the poster child for affluent boomers typically drives a Lexus, Acura, Infiniti, Mercedes, BMW, even a Range Rover. To this generation, the only hip Cadillac is one with fins. Cadillacs were cars their parents owned or flashy boats driven by big-gutted guys with pinky rings and fat wallets.
With that in mind, out came the Seville STS and the Eldorado Sport Coupe to woo well-to-do buyers in the 30- to 50-year-old range before they stepped into an import car showroom and signed on the dotted line.
What the company had working against it was image. In Los Angeles, especially, you are what you drive. And anyone who takes their mode of transportation seriously isn’t going to tool into the company parking lot in something that prompts snickers.
What it had working for it were cars technologically and stylistically ready to compete with the imports. These models are relatively free of showy badges and logos and less flashy than the big-daddy Caddies like the Fleetwood Brougham, with its cruise-liner feel. And each has a sticker price thousands less than many other lap-of-luxury cars (the ’94 Seville STS base price is $44,890; the Lexus LS 400’s base price is $49,900).
Cadillac is also benefiting from the growing buy-American sentiment.
“I wanted to get a luxury car, but I wanted to stick with an American car,” says John Rigoli Jr., 39, explaining what got him out of his Honda Accord LXi and into a ’93 Eldorado in “white diamond” last August.
“When I started looking, some of the other Cadillacs seemed more like my grandfather’s car,” says the president of Standard Service Co., a Walnut company that sells and services beverage dispensers. “When I saw the Eldorado, it didn’t seem as old-fashioned, but more stylish and sporty. . . . You want a Cadillac, but you don’t want to appear stuffy and pretentious. But with the Eldorado, some people who see it don’t even realize it’s a Cadillac.”
But the ultimate endorsement of the car’s hipness was from Rigoli’s 13-year-old son, who proclaimed it “cool.”
“When we’re going someplace he asks for the keys and then starts it. He puts his music on the CD--some rap stuff. He thinks it’s going to be his car when he gets his license.”
“It’s cool to own a Cadillac again,” proclaims 38-year-old public relations executive Joe Molina, who recently added an STS to his fleet of seven cars, which includes a Bentley.
“It wasn’t until the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when Cadillacs started losing it. The cars weren’t special. They lost their message.
“But I knew the car was capable of a cleaner look,” he says, adding that he became enamored of the STS’s “mean, stealthy” styling, high-performance engine and low, sexy rumble. His one criticism: “Their advertising’s got to change to get more of my kind in.”
Focus groups helped Cadillac zero in on what the target audience wanted: a high-performance, zippy car in a non-ostentatious package, things they weren’t finding in prior Cadillac incarnations.
“Initially we had to get the attention of the young, affluent segment,” says Peter R. Levin, director of advertising for Cadillac Motor Car, “and we did that by acknowledging their beliefs and addressing them head-on. . . . Up until now, they felt that Cadillac had not made a car for them. They gave us credit for being the prominent luxury-car manufacturer in the U.S. and for comfort. But when they thought about a sporty-oriented luxury sedan, they did not think of Cadillac.”
Changing a car’s image is “one of the toughest battles a car maker has to face, attracting a new audience to their products,” says Thos. L. Bryant, editor-in-chief of Road and Track magazine. “A car maker has a history, and Cadillac has a rich, long history. It has always been an American prestige car, appealing to wealthy, older buyers. To try to lower that buyer’s age, from 55 to 45, or even 40, that’s a major, major overhaul. Because people in their 40s have not grown up necessarily with the same concept as their parents of what a Cadillac means in this world. I think they had to (change their image), otherwise they were playing to a dying audience, forgive the expression.”
Local car dealers say that advertising isn’t the only lure for first-time buyers. Word-of-mouth and good reviews in car magazines have also helped boost sales.
According to AutoPacific, automotive marketing and product consultants, Cadillac sales nationwide were 213,200 in 1991, 214,200 in 1992 and a projected 208,700 in 1993 (in theory, the drop is due to anticipation of the new 1994 DeVille and DeVille Concours models).
U.S. sales of the Seville jumped from 26,700 in 1991 to 41,200 in 1992, and a projected 44,300 for 1993.
“Everything we’re doing these days is to try to draw different buyers,” says Chuck Harrington, a Cadillac spokesman. “There are two specific markets that we have to interest: traditional buyers and everybody else. . . . We have a somewhat unique challenge: We have to attract one while not alienating the other.”
It’s happening, the dealers say.
“But it’s not going to happen overnight,” admits Greg Ehlers of Lou Ehlers Cadillac. “I wish I had a lot of BMW trade-ins, but I don’t. I’ve taken a lot more in the last 15 months than I have in the last 15 years, but it’s still not as many as I’d like. No matter what kind of product you build, you don’t build it in one year. It takes five to seven years to change it. . . . I think to change the perception of Cadillac is not something that you can market or advertise. I think it will happen mostly through exposure and word of mouth.”
Meanwhile, proud Caddy owners are snapping up logo’d tchotchkes to go with their shiny new cars.
Andy Cohen, president of Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories, says during the past year and a half he’s seen more customers--and younger, too, 35 to 55--asking for Cadillac accessories.
“The big-selling items,” he says, “are our normal things, car covers, floor mats. But I am seeing people wanting to get something with the STS logo or the Cadillac logo on it. I haven’t seen that for a long time.”
