Cadillac Cimarron

[Dave@Moon]

Cadillac did not produce the Cimmaron because they thought it was a great idea. They were forced to add it to their line because of CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy). Federal legislation required that the average fuel economy of all Cadillacs sold not exceed a certain level. Since Cadillac could not get their then-current product line down to that level, they had to add a rebadged Cavalier to their line, in order to bring the average down.

And, it is true that Cadillac did not market it as the Cadillac Cimmaron. They knew it wasn't a Cadillac, so they called it the Cimmaron by Cadillac.

This isn't true. All C.A.F.E. standards are promulgated based on "manufacturers", not brands, divisions, etc. With one caveat*, all GM/Ford.Chrysler/Nissan/etc. vehicles were lumped together for C.A.F.E. certification, and still are. In fact if it were true, Lincoln would have been in big trouble for decades. They've almost never offered a single car that met C.A.F.E. individually, let alone meeting the standards as a fleet. The Versailles only met C.A.F.E. for the first 2 years until the standards got too tough, for example.

*That caveat is regarding captive imports. When the standards were first issued the U.A.W. was successful in requiring separate calculations for a given manufacturer's "domestic" (75% or more North American sourced) and "imported" cars. This has yet to affect Cadillac or Lincoln.

[5219]

My understanding was that the Cimarron was partly the result of the dealer network pushing for a smaller car that would give them a product to sell if fuel shortages returned and the big car became unsellable again.

Remember that they had gone through this twice in the seventies-the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 had cost the dealers a lot of sales. This was followed by shortages following the Iranian revolution in 1979.

I recall one GM press release that said that Cimarron would not be sold through dealers that already had an import line. I wonder how long that idea lasted?