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Cadillac’s new CT6 will not be the brand’s flagship, the new Ford Mustang did not influence the soon-to-debut new Chevy Camaro, and the small-block V-8 is not going anywhere. So said GM executive vice president Mark Reuss in a discussion with reporters at the New York auto show.
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Reuss described the company priorities thusly: “to grow Cadillac, and get Chevrolet back in the car game, really feed Buick and GMC, get Opel straightened around, and get our international operations profitable.”
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At New York, of course, much attention was focused on Cadillac what with the unveiling of the CT6. After explaining that a long-wheelbase version is not in the cards, Reuss said that the CT6 “is not the flagship,” adding that “there’s a car above this.” He would not, however, take the bait in referring to that higher-level entry as a production version of the swoon-inducing Elmiraj concept.
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What about a dedicated sports car for Cadillac? “The brand’s got to be ready to do something like that. Right now it’s not. I don’t think doing a car like that is going to change the brand image today, either.”
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Asked where is Cadillac in the process of rebuilding its reputation, Reuss was blunt: “Year one. I think we’re talking to ourselves if we think that we’re on the consideration list of people, in volume, in the luxury segment. So let’s get real about it, and keep hammering, and keep building great cars and trucks, and people start to notice and want to try something different, and that’s our opportunity. There’s a whole generation out there whose moms and dads drove BMWs and Audis and Mercedes, and they didn’t drive Cadillacs. We need to get on that consideration list with great cars and trucks. In that sense, from a product-development standpoint, we’re more than year one. From a brand standpoint, we’re year one.”
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From a product standpoint, however, “we’re halfway there, because we’ve filled out half the portfolio that our competitors have.” While Cadillac will be adding more models, it sounds as if those might not extend to the very bottom of the luxury segment. “We’re not going to fill out some of the lower-end things with the depth of some of our competitors just to match them,” Reuss said. He makes the point that since GM has small, high-mpg models in its other divisions, Cadillac doesn’t need to field low-volume compliance cars in the way that other luxury brands might have to.
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On the subject of low-volume niche products, don’t look for Reuss to ram through pet projects. “I think a big fundamental way to think about how the company’s different these days is we had single advocates—no matter what the market data said—who would push a program into production. And some would be okay, and some would fail.”
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Sounds like we’re talking about, oh, say, Bob Lutz. “I look at the [Pontiac] Solstice and [Saturn] Sky, and some of those cars—and I owned a Solstice, so I’m not talking out of school—but the car was OK. It was very pretty, it was very nice. But those are not moneymaking cars for us. And by the way we didn’t sell that many. I think gone are the days of someone in my position pushing product on people and trying to sell and rally support on them. We’ve got to be customer-focused.”
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To that end, the sweet, rear-drive Chevy Code 130R concept coupe [pictured above] is dead. This despite Reuss’s previous enthusiasm for the project. “We looked at that and we looked at our competitors who were doing things like that and what the market told us was that was not a good idea. The volumes of those things were terrible.”
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- Visual Wizardry: Cadillac to Debut HD Rearview Mirror/Display Screen on CT6 Sedan
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- Cadillac CT6 Full Coverage: News, Photos, and More
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Asked whether the 2015 Ford Mustang set a bar for the new Camaro, Reuss was more succinct: “No.” He then added, “We did the car way before the new Mustang came out.”
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What about the small-block V-8? Are its days numbered? “No. Don’t see it happening.”
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via Agya
