Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac
Upon his arrival in America, La Mothe adopted his title after the town of Cadillac, Gironde in southwestern France. The city of Detroit became the world center of automobile production in the 20th century. William H. Murphy and Henry M. Leland founded the Cadillac auto company and paid homage to him by using his name for their company and his armorial bearings as its logo in 1902. Various places bear his name in America, in particular Cadillac Mountain in Maine and the town of Cadillac, Michigan.
List of automobiles with negative reviews
The Cadillac Cimarron was a hasty attempt for Cadillac to compete with smaller European luxury cars from manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Facing time constraints, Cadillac simply marketed a fully equipped Chevrolet Cavalier with upmarket trim for twice the price of its other J body siblings. The Cimarron was included in "Time" magazine's list of "The 50 Worst Cars of All Time," was named the 8th worst car of the Millennium by Car Talk, placed 4th on Autoblog's list of "The 20 Dumbest Cars of All Time," and is included in the books "Automotive Atrocities! The Cars We Love to Hate" by Eric Peters and "Crap Cars" by Richard Porter. Automotive critic Dan Neil said of the Cimarron, "Everything that was wrong, venal, lazy and mendacious about GM in the 1980s was crystallized in this flagrant insult to the good name and fine customers of Cadillac. ... This bit of temporizing nearly killed Cadillac and remains its biggest shame." Autoblog wrote, "It was a re-badged Chevy – a bad Chevy at that – and everyone knew it. Engineers at GM who were ordered to carry out the brief hated working on it. A few, we are told, even took early retirement to get out of it." In "Automotive Atrocities", Eric Peters wrote, "In the 1920s and 1930s, Cadillac was a respected peer of Bugatti and Rolls-Royce, the 'standard of the world' among luxury cars. By 1982, GM's premiere division had reduced itself to pawning off tarted-up Chevrolet Cavaliers, hoping no one would notice – at least until after the buyer's check cleared." "Forbes" placed the Cimarron on its list of "Legendary Car Flops," citing low sales, poor performance and the fact the car "didn't work, coming from a luxury brand." CNN Money described the Cimarron as "in all important respects, a Chevrolet Cavalier. It also added thousands to the price tag. In all, it was neither a good Cadillac nor a good value. Today, GM executives will readily admit that this was a bad idea." "Car and Driver" said a subsequent Cadillac product director kept a picture of the Cimarron on his wall captioned, "Lest we forget." "Popular Mechanics" named the Cimarron as one of the 10 cars that damaged GM's reputation, describing GM's attempt to market the Cimarron as a domestic alternative to the BMW 3 Series as "pathetic": "There's nothing wrong with the idea of a smaller, more athletic Cadillac. But it was a terrible idea to rebadge the Chevrolet Cavalier and attempt to pawn it off as a true Cadillac.[...]Not surprisingly, practically no one fell for it and the Cimarron never sold well." "The Truth About Cars" named the Cimarron as one of the "deadly sins" that led to GM's downfall; author Paul Niedermeyer wrote of it, "Yes, as if there was ever any doubt, GM truly jumped the shark with the Cimarron, and it led the way for what was GM’s most disastrous decade ever, the eighties. Only GM could have such utterly outsized hubris to think it could get away with dressing up a Cavalier and pawning it off as a BMW-fighter, without even touching the engine, among other sins [...] the Cimarron was a dud, from the get-go. GM managed to fool some 25k buyers the first year, but sales steadily drooped thereafter. The damage it did to the Cadillac brand was incalculable. But the Cimarron was just one of many wounds of the ritual suicide Cadillac was putting itself through during those dark days." Edmunds.com ranked the Cimarron as the 8th worst car of all time.