There is a book I read a few years ago by the former chairman of product development at GM. Anyway he came back to GM in the early 2000s and prior to that the company (according to him) were designing cars mostly with statistical data... AKA - what designs supposedly had the largest mass appeal.
The problem with that is the result tends to be very bland design. Yes - if one looks back to the 50s-70s you will see a lot of rather attractive cars designed by car designers using decisions based on aesthetics. But when looking at cars from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s even there was an awful lot of just outright boring, totally uninspired designs with the occasional halo product.
As a child of the 80s, even as a kid I thought an awful lot of the domestic car brands had some really dull looking cars. But at the same time a lot of the Japanese cars looked so futuristic. A lot of them had the whole planular, origami type understated exterior styling. Many of those cars still look great some 30 years later.
We've come full circle and now GM in particular seems to be back in the business of designing cars for the sake of pleasing aesthetics. The Cadillac lineup is a perfect and evolving example of that. Each new model release seems to be pushing the brand further and further upwards into desirability and sophistication, which is such a far cry from where they were in the 90s, making these big bloated things with soft couch-like seats.
The car in this review was made more or less right in the middle of that era at GM where cars were designed by numbers and it shows too. It's a totally fine car. There is nothing offensive about it. But then again there's also nothing memorable, interesting or even exciting about it either. That's why it's a car among many from the era that you really don't hear anyone gushing about or lusting after. Thank God that at least back then the muscle cars were sort of allowed to be their own thing. Otherwise there's not much from that era I'd really want to consider as a future classic.
9th Mar 2017, 18:35
There is a book I read a few years ago by the former chairman of product development at GM. Anyway he came back to GM in the early 2000s and prior to that the company (according to him) were designing cars mostly with statistical data... AKA - what designs supposedly had the largest mass appeal.
The problem with that is the result tends to be very bland design. Yes - if one looks back to the 50s-70s you will see a lot of rather attractive cars designed by car designers using decisions based on aesthetics. But when looking at cars from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s even there was an awful lot of just outright boring, totally uninspired designs with the occasional halo product.
As a child of the 80s, even as a kid I thought an awful lot of the domestic car brands had some really dull looking cars. But at the same time a lot of the Japanese cars looked so futuristic. A lot of them had the whole planular, origami type understated exterior styling. Many of those cars still look great some 30 years later.
We've come full circle and now GM in particular seems to be back in the business of designing cars for the sake of pleasing aesthetics. The Cadillac lineup is a perfect and evolving example of that. Each new model release seems to be pushing the brand further and further upwards into desirability and sophistication, which is such a far cry from where they were in the 90s, making these big bloated things with soft couch-like seats.
The car in this review was made more or less right in the middle of that era at GM where cars were designed by numbers and it shows too. It's a totally fine car. There is nothing offensive about it. But then again there's also nothing memorable, interesting or even exciting about it either. That's why it's a car among many from the era that you really don't hear anyone gushing about or lusting after. Thank God that at least back then the muscle cars were sort of allowed to be their own thing. Otherwise there's not much from that era I'd really want to consider as a future classic.