Ooof.... Alpha platform can't catch a break.

[ifcar]

Why do you care what I care about?

To answer your question, cars are pretty boring these days, at least from an ideological/risk standpoint. GM Alpha cars included. As a data dude and someone generally into business and economics, I find the business of cars to be way more interesting than cars themselves.

And as far as the Alpha platform, I'm not quite sold on it being great for enthusiasts. You can't get the regular ATS with V6 and a stick and the turbo 4 is less than great. ATS-V should have got the LT1. Camaro generates great headline/bench racing numbers but is a packaging and daily driver nightmare. And CUE still sucks, no matter what the contrarians and GM fanboys say. "B-b-b-but it has great steering feel and chassis balance!" can't make up for all that IMO. I wanted GM to do better and I'm really disappointed. Not to mention our tax dollars bailed them out and were spent on this. You don't have to participate in these discussions if they make you uncomfortable.

How is the platform responsible for the powertrains or the dashboard controls?

[12,000 RPM]

It's not a discussion, we're all laughing at you and your insistence that Alpha is the worst thing ever

Post the quote where I said that.

And you specifically sound more scared than anything. Like I said this is all voluntary- if you don't want to discuss how the Alpha platform is bombing you don't have to.

As I said before, MQB and MLB cost several times as much to develop, and Alpha/Omeha are actually just evolutions of the old Sigma/Zeta platform.



Not to mention that this platform will likely soldier on with revisions and tweaks for another 15 years.



You have a vendetta against this platform for no logical reason.


GM is killing it right now, across all their brands. They've never been more competitive.


1B is pocket change considering it will underpin a product line that has higher profit margins than a basic platform.

I have no vendetta, I just find this to be an interesting case study. Also, it's funny to see you guys get all up in arms about it, and more specifically quite glorious to remind Mr. H how wrong he and his almighty analysts were. Keep in mind I haven't even touched the whole marketing fiasco with Melody Lee, their complete dismissal of non-millenials and the stupid ass Cadillac coffee shop in Manhattan

And if they are going to run this platform for 15 years I hope they can right the ship.... with ~15% sales declines each year it won't be long before sales drop to zero. And again their volume Cadillacs (CUVs) aren't even on this platform. All I want is for Mr. H to eat crow and for all you other chowderheads to say "yea they kinda messed up". Lotus had awesome cars for enthusiasts too.

[12,000 RPM]

How is the platform responsible for the powertrains or the dashboard controls?

The powertrain comment was a response to the enthusiast thing, and the dashboard was a clarification on why the Cadillacs specifically may be down in sales.

[2o6]

I'm not sure what the fuck you're wanting here.



Alpha/Omega is fine. Zeta and Sigma were old.


end of story.

[CaminoRacer]

Why am I scared?

I have no skin in this game at all. I just like fast/cool/good cars. And I find your obsession about Cadillac very strange. Do you have a secret passion for Sevilles and want to buy a 2017 model?

[ifcar]

The powertrain comment was a response to the enthusiast thing, and the dashboard was a clarification on why the Cadillacs specifically may be down in sales.

You were saying Alpha isn't great for enthusiasts and cited only factors that had nothing to do with Alpha.

[12,000 RPM]

Why am I scared?

I have no skin in this game at all. I just like fast/cool/good cars. And I find your obsession about Cadillac very strange. Do you have a secret passion for Sevilles and want to buy a 2017 model?

I like fast/cool/good cars too. Alpha cars are not bad but they should have been a lot better. Their failure to hit GM's targets demonstrate that. You can find w/e about me strange, it's of no consequence. But for someone with no skin in the game you sure seem emotionally invested.

[CaminoRacer]

Asking why you care about sales = emotionally invested?

Interesting. I'll have to try that on my girlfriend.

[12,000 RPM]

Asking why you care about sales = emotionally invested?

Interesting. I'll have to try that on my girlfriend.

No, being emotionally invested = being emotionally invested. I explained why I care about sales and you are still whining and trying to get me to stop talking about them. It's not working.

[CaminoRacer]

No please continue to talk about it. This forum can never get too many wackos rambling about random nonsense

[Soup DeVille]

It sounds like Sporty wants Cadillac to start making the 1991 Seville and Deville again.

Well, I wouldn't mind the names returning.

[Rich]

I feel that luxury will be defined by the level of autonomy shortly.  From that perspective I feel that Cadillac's push to driver focused chassis was a strategic error in product planning. Once fully autonomous cars arrive, it'll be too late to create an aspirational brand. 

Who knows what Cadillac has in the planning stages right now, but I feel that electric and autonomous cars should be the focal point for the luxury brands.  The silent cruising and not having to fill your car with gas/autonomous charging would be huge selling points.  Yeah, there'd still be a market for gas powered, human driven luxury cars to the old guys that don't want change, but I think that will be a dying breed in luxury customers soon.  Most money is in cities which have charging infrastructure and lots of traffic.  I feel luxury buyers in a city will want the luxury of not having to deal with the traffic.  And those that don't care much about luxury will just have autonomous car sharing from basic brands.

In the end, it's just about too late to try and create an aspirational brand as said by Lutz, and I feel it's true. 

C/D: What might save Lincoln?




BL: In the time left for the automobile as we know it, it won't be possible to make Lincoln a truly aspirational brand. The new Continental, while not as good as the concept, is a design language cribbed from Bentley. Which is fine, because if you're gonna steal, rob from a bank and not a grocery store. But cars don't matter much anymore—it's crossovers that count. Will Lincoln ever again inspire an image of superiority, where your friends say you bought a cool car just because they admire the brand? Probably not.

I feel that M-B is doing it right.  Having an international market and a lot of upscale cars (where's Cadillac's S class coupe rival?  Or even S class rival?) which shouldn't have been such a hard thing for Cadillac to do in that last 16 years of its revival, has put M-B at the top at the moment.  I think Cadillac has one last chance to pull it together with autonomy/electricity and high end luxury, but after that it'll be too far behind to be anything aspirational.  I actually think Volvo has a shot at leapfrogging Cadillac since they are on point for autonomy and their new SUV/car seem great.

Like a few here have been saying those of us that really enjoy driving will probably wind up in more sports oriented cars rather than luxury anyway.  Cadillac's driver focus and V products I think were out of date planning.  And even that bad planning was made worse by not offering a manual transmission with the V6 in the ATS.  If you're going after people that really enjoy driving, leaving the best engine without a stick is a huge mistake.

Their latest concept is already behind the 8 ball and it's not even in production.  What makes it better than the 6/M6 grand coupe? A7?  5 series GT? It has a twin turbo v8, which they have had for a few years already.  The curved OLED displays?  woooo... They may already be in one of the competitor's production models debuting shortly....

[12,000 RPM]

I think you are on the money with autonomous tech being part of luxury. I am also thinking with the success of Tesla in spite of itself that some level of electric integration into a powertrain, be it a full electric or a plug in hybrid with "commuter" range, is also the future. The Model S sells neck and neck with the S-Class despite not being anywhere near as nice for the money and being much more of a PITA to live with. Think about how cool it would be to driving civilians (i.e. non enthusiasts) for a car to pull up silently, drop someone off and pull off to park itself?

That gets into other bigger issues though.... if a car can drive itself, what's the point of owning it? While we transition now and autonomous tech matures ownership still makes sense.  But I'm pretty sure if a pay per ride system were convenient people would give up car ownership in a heart beat. Hell, I know I would, at least for a daily driver; I could then use my driveway to keep a full on track car or something of that nature.

But yea something is up at GM. The huge misses of the Camaro and Cadillac sedans demonstrates a weird and huge misunderstanding of the market. They know what gets good magazine reviews but they don't have a clue what actually gets people to spend $40-70K on something that isn't a CUV/SUV/Corvette.

[Rich]

That gets into other bigger issues though.... if a car can drive itself, what's the point of owning it? While we transition now and autonomous tech matures ownership still makes sense.  But I'm pretty sure if a pay per ride system were convenient people would give up car ownership in a heart beat. Hell, I know I would, at least for a daily driver; I could then use my driveway to keep a full on track car or something of that nature.

I think luxury is the biggest point in support of owning an autonomous car.  That you get to choose which wood veneer you look at, leather type and color, interior layout of the car you are riding in.  Without ownership the well to do individual is at the mercy of whatever shows up to give them a ride.

There are plane sharing services for the well to do, but the really wealthy people still own their own aircraft

[12,000 RPM]

I think there is a very healthy appetite and all new market for luxury autonomous cabs (for lack of better word)

For example if I'm just commuting to work I am OK to ride in something like a Corolla. But if I'm out on the town with wifey for a dinner date, or out with friends/family, etc, yea I will spring for the S-Class. I think that will hurt the concept of ownership of such cars- when every Tom Dick and Harry can afford to ride in a car, what's the upside of owning it? It's kind of like how in NYC the only people I saw driving S-Classes were chauffeurs. That has turned me off from wanting to own one. S-Class coupe or SL, definitely, but the S-Class itself? Hell nah. Image is ruined.

[Submariner]

Oh dear...

http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/cadillac/cts/cadillac-cts-sales-numbers/

http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/cadillac/ats/cadillac-ats-sales-numbers/

[MexicoCityM3]

Shame. It's a good car. Sorta proves BMW market research for where to go to has been right.

[12,000 RPM]

Its time to debut was ~1995-2005. Right car wrong time. I hope Cadillac wakes up to the current market because GM has the tools to succeed.

[CaminoRacer]

Nah fam I hope Cadillac keeps up the good fight. I want an ATS-V as soon as I can afford it.

[MrH]

Yeah.  I like the plunging Camaro prices too.  But I know I could get an ND miata for $10k cheaper and probably have more fun.

[12,000 RPM]

Nah fam I hope Cadillac keeps up the good fight. I want an ATS-V as soon as I can afford it.

Building cars that don't sell is not a good fight.

ATS/CTS should have been the SS. V8 only. 3 series size with usable back seat. No more than $50K with Magnaride.

[GoCougs]

Autonomous isn't too far removed from flying cars - will never happen.

BMW doesn't do anything really all that well - its cars are less fun to drive and luxury isn't really there. They sell on legacy. M-B has done the best overall of transforming itself. They still have major reliability problems but the product - esp. the new C Class - is spot on. Audi is second best. Acura is a disaster, Infiniti is not much better and Lexus is so-so.

Cadillac's primary mistake with both the ATS and CTS was of course pricing. Secondarily, it was segmentation. The base ATS was a turd. They should've taken a page from the Camaro segmentation - THAT'S the way to do things. Thirdly, power trains were sucky, esp. transmissions and not using the LT-1 in the ATS-V.

[Rich]

Autonomous isn't too far removed from flying cars - will never happen.

when's the last time you saw 10+ corporations throwing at least $1B each at something for it not to pan out?

[GoCougs]

when's the last time you saw 10+ corporations throwing at least $1B each at something for it not to pan out?

Hybrids and electric cars. ~15 years on and still the only such vehicle that has any sort of viable business case is the Prius (and to a lesser extent, the Camry hybrid), and each STILL has a sketch value and eco proposition vs. a ~40 mpg $18k Corolla. The happy reality is that the base Corolla can only get better where as hybrid and electric car tech is tapped.

Autonomous driving cars will never happen without hundreds of billions in infrastructure upgrades (standardized road design and markings the country over, particularly that to mitigate weather affects). So, I should amend my statement (which I've uttered before) - legit autonomous cars won't happen without catastrophic levels of infrastructure spending.

[SJ_GTI]

Hybrids and electric cars. ~15 years on and still the only such vehicle that has any sort of viable business case is the Prius (and to a lesser extent, the Camry hybrid), and each STILL has a sketch value and eco proposition vs. a ~40 mpg $18k Corolla. The happy reality is that the base Corolla can only get better where as hybrid and electric car tech is tapped.

Autonomous driving cars will never happen without hundreds of billions in infrastructure upgrades (standardized road design and markings the country over, particularly that to mitigate weather affects). So, I should amend my statement (which I've uttered before) - legit autonomous cars won't happen without catastrophic levels of infrastructure spending.

I will say this, on my new car the adaptive cruise control and lane assistance work great on roads that are clearly marked (highways), but on back country roads that sometimes do not have any lines or only have a center line it does not work at all.

I know the autonomous cars that are being tested have much more advanced sensors and what not, but if roads are not even marked it is going to be tough to program a car how to drive on it.

[CaminoRacer]

I will say this, on my new car the adaptive cruise control and lane assistance work great on roads that are clearly marked (highways), but on back country roads that sometimes do not have any lines or only have a center line it does not work at all.

I know the autonomous cars that are being tested have much more advanced sensors and what not, but if roads are not even marked it is going to be tough to program a car how to drive on it.

The Golden Gate Bridge, along with other bridges and roadways into major cities, has lanes that change direction depending on the time of day. I wonder how well autonomous cars would handle that?

[GoCougs]

That is why they'll never happen - being 99% reliable/effective is literally a billion miles away from being truly autonomous - imagine if jetliners were only 99% safe - you'd have thousands of crashes per day in the US. The gap will only close by decreasing the process window, which means standardization on what the sensors/cameras/etc. would be looking at. This is a very common conundrum in industrial automated guided vehicle and machine vision applications (which I do a lot of).

Some facets of "autonomous" tech - adaptive cruise control, emergency braking, land departure, etc. - are benefits but they'll never truly be autonomous on any sort of deployable scale.

[SJ_GTI]

The Golden Gate Bridge, along with other bridges and roadways into major cities, has lanes that change direction depending on the time of day. I wonder how well autonomous cars would handle that?

Oh yeah, the two main bridges into and out of Philly do this every day as well (and will also sometimes be rearranged during big events).

[12,000 RPM]

I'm sure some kind of communication protocol could be developed. That's a small hurdle. I'd be more concerned about stuff like construction zones.

Prius/Corolla is not the segment where hybrids make sense. That is the realm of diminishing returns. It's the ~40-50% jump in combined mileage in something like a Highlander or Accord where it makes sense, particularly when said efficiency can come with the same power/performance. I would rather something like a 250HP Camry Hybrid than a Camry 2.0T.

[Gotta-Qik-C7]

BMW doesn't do anything really all that well - its cars are less fun to drive and luxury isn't really there. They sell on legacy. M-B has done the best overall of transforming itself. They still have major reliability problems but the product - esp. the new C Class - is spot on. Audi is second best. Acura is a disaster, Infiniti is not much better and Lexus is so-so.

Cadillac's primary mistake with both the ATS and CTS was of course pricing. Secondarily, it was segmentation. The base ATS was a turd. They should've taken a page from the Camaro segmentation - THAT'S the way to do things. Thirdly, power trains were sucky, esp. transmissions and not using the LT-1 in the ATS-V.