Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see the latest vehicles!
Options
the Mink Test
This discussion has been closed.
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
Everything else I've owned had around 150K or less when I got rid of it.
But whatever, I don't see any reason to "mythologize" American V8s as if they were some kind of precision Swiss watch made by little old men in Detroit.
Their beauty is, in fact, in the remarkable ability of mass production to spit them out like cookies and have them run very reliably vis a vis 60s European cars with all their precision and fussiness.
Those 60s V8s were even better than Rolls Royce V8s in terms of reliability. Their limitations were, of course, cost (they weren't made of fancy alloys and used bushings and snap clips instead of bearings and machine bolts in certain areas), quality control (haphazard at best in Detroit) and old technology (why make overhead cams and small engines when Americans were buying every big pushrod V8 that came off the assembly line?).
The downside of these wonderful engines is that they didn't fit very well in the 1980 world like they did in the 1960 world.
Yeah, I wanted to see how long I could keep you guys going. Cadillac is complete S, utter garbage worthy only of artificial reef construction. And if you peel the emblems off- there's a Bowtie right underneath it- it's true, I saw it in a restoration shop once! And all that crap about the Master of Precision- what a load! Obviously just a play on the phrase 'Mass Production' alluding to some long-forgotten janitor or something- LOL! Everyone knows criminals, 3rd-world 'sweat-shoppers' & the mentally impaired "design" and slap together Cadillacs, mostly with baling wire, bondo and recycled bi-metal cans. And the engines are mostly made of painted dirt. 3/4ths of the switches on the dash aren't even connected to anything! If they sold more than 15 cars a year and didn't have to falsify 100 years of sales figures and invent a non-existant reputation for 'Standard of the World', people might find this out and be PISSED!
I only have one more question.
How can those beers taste any good when your heads are buried so deeply in the sand?
I can hardly think of higher praise than my statement that I thought they were better than a Rolls Royce V8 of similar vintage!
ndance, stop teasing!
(did you get that from the www.molestedcars.com website?)
Cadillacwise, you know that Northstar engine really is beautiful...it's a shame they don't build a Lincoln LS equivalent (smallish with RWD/std. trans). It would make a cool 2 year old car after the requisite 50% depreciation.
Point being: Quantity alone does not automatically determine quality.
I listed many reasons & specific practices by Cadillac with regards to their past engineering, yet they were ignored or outright contradicted without any supporting data- driven only by vague perceptions. These practices are not fabricated, they are not exaggerated... yet here they are not accepted.
And the Rolls comparison is no compliment- powertrain-wise Rolls has traditionally been a dinosaur- years behind other luxury (and non-luxury) makes. Quiet, yes, and that's about it- technology-wise they hung back a good 10 years from contemporary tech, sometimes many more. Cadillac is traditionally an innovator, Rolls is not.
ndance- here's one back atcha:
Are we proving anything here with regards to the topic at hand?
In the 60's, I'm taking it wealthy mink wearing people were common Cadillac buyers.
I realize neither really improves the technology of the vehicle, but I don't know if things are any different today.
. Chevrolet
. LS1 + whatever that 6 speed is called
. no cup holders
. manual windows, seats, locks, trunk, no alarm
. no cladding, spoilers, wings, etc.
. 4 door, sort of medium sized BMWish body
. no cd player
. no abs
. 4 wheel disks
. simple dash
. say, $25k or so
. live axle is probably fine
The last decade or so has seen the U.S. devolve into a nation of Cadillac drivers. Overweight, gaudy cars, filled with 'content'. This sort of thing is fine for specialty cars, but when all cars (except for the cheapest economy cars/trucks) are filled with stuff that, to me, just represents more road-hugging weight and long term reliability problems, I get left out of the loop.
Your junkyard post also agrees with what I've been saying---99% of all 4-door sedans will be in the wreckers, no matter who makes them. Very few people restore 4-doors, not worth it.
Read the posts, then complain, okay?
------------------------------------------------------------
ndance: I think what we are seeing is another version of the Great American Dream---that luxury can be enjoyed by the middle class, not just the well-to-do. Of course, this isn't really true, but there are these relatively simple-to-produce/provide "trappings" of luxury and refinement going into middle-range and even entry levels cars, as a new marketing tool.
The old saying is "You can't sell anything to a happy person". So first you have to make a car owner despise his roll up windows, lack of a/c, cloth interior, etc., and then get him to pay a bit more for something "better".
You can see how well this has worked if you read around the Town Hall boards. Cars that are without these "amenities" are often thought to be "low-rent" or "low-tech".
You yourself by espousing a return to practicality and functionality in cars (even if you put performance at the top of your list) run the risk of being branded a fearful technophobe without an E-ticket to the future.
It's all pretty amusing to watch.
Cadillac engines WERE designed to run at redline for many hours- they were tested at WOT for long durations during R&D and their tolerances and precision allow this as well. There is no design flaw or cost-cutting or deficiency, no- not even a 'snap-ring', that would disallow this. Cadillac blocks have a 20% nickel content and tensile strengths up to 70,000 PSI. No other GM-division's engines were so spec'ed.
>>"I also said that a Cadillac V8 was more reliable than a Rolls Royce."<<
And I replied that is absolutely NO compliment. #1: Rolls' are not built in relative quantity as, driven nearly hard or far as, or maintained as poorly as just about any other make. Their reliability is therefore for comparison's purposes: unproven. I'd rather stake my reliability dollars on a (insert any other low-priced car here). #2: Rolls' design & engineering keystone is 'obsolescence'. Roll's has never been the engineering target of an other manufacturer with the exception of NVH levels. Their powertrains specifically have remained unchanged for decades at a time, and are usually years behind the average vehicle's technology level.
If your premise is that a 60s Cadillac engine has better metallurgy or is more carefully assembled than a 60s Chevy or Pontiac engine, I wouldn't contest that as I have no knowledge of it being otherwise, and the proposition seems like a reasonable one at any rate. Sure, why not?
If however you are saying that a 60s Cadillac engine is built more precisely and assembled more carefully than a 60s Benz engine, or runs at closer tolerances, then the evidence gets very dicey.
For one thing, having taken quite a few engines apart, I can tell you with no doubts in my mind that a Cadillac V-8 looks externally and internally like a Vermont Wood Stove next to a Benz engine, and this alone puts me in a state of skepticism regarding the presentation of a Cadillac engine as a precision unit of equal sophistication.
It's like handing me a Timex and a Rolex and telling me they are essentially the same because they both say the same time.
In the life of an average 60s car, all this may not even matter, but craftsmanship still shows regardless.
Plus, most of those power assists are pretty reliable today - at least on the Hondas that I have owned.
Cadillac finally got the idea with the STS, but it still wasn't good enough to compete with the Benz 300 & 500 series, and the LS400.
Last STS I drove extensively was a '93, and back then I thought it was at least 5 years behind Benz and Lexus in development.
So Cadillac might be closer in 2003. Haven't driven a new one.
Anyway, I think the gap has narrowed from a couple years ago...CTS and STS can be seen by many as C and E class competitors. However, there's no other real matches.
With disc brakes though, even smaller cars really need a power assist in order to safely stop. Unless you're a body-builder with very strong leg muscles!
Now to be fair, most larger cars back then were equipped with power brakes. But IIRC, disc brakes were a $25-30 option, while the power boost was around $100. If they made all that stuff standard, they'd have had to raise their advertised prices and, well, we all know how cheap Detroit can be.
FWIW, the fact that disc brakes were optional, but seldom ordered, speaks volumes to the fact that by and large, the American buying public just didn't care. They cared about how big it was, how cushy it was, and how fast it could accelerate, but not how fast it could stop.
Here's something that puzzles me with the newer cars, though. On some trim styles of the same model line they offer 4-wheel discs, but on some they still have drums in the rear. For example, the Taurus/Sable wagons have disc brakes in back, but the sedans have drums. And with the Stratus/Sebring sedans, the V-6 models have 4-wheel discs, while the 4-cyl have drums in back.
Wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to just make them 4-wheel disc, across the board? I can't imagine that they're really saving much in manufacturing costs by offering it two different ways. And I really don't see how a disc brake setup should be any more expensive than a drum brake. If anything, it actually seems LESS complicated to me! It's much easier to change the pads on a disc-brake car, there are fewer springs and little BS-parts in the assembly, and just by design, disc brakes are self-adjusting, so you eliminate those annoying little adjusters that the drum brakes had which didn't work half the time.
About the only thing I can think of, in the argument for simplicity these days, is that rear drums are inherently designed to function well as an emergency brake. Just pull the handle or push the footbrake, and a cable pulls the leading shoe against the drum. It's not easy (or maybe not even possible) to make something mechanical like that to cause a caliper to push out and and press the pads against the rotor, so they have to design a miniature drum setup in the rear wheels, which acts as an emergency brake. And supposedly, if you rarely use your emergency/parking brake and the system gets muffed up, it's alot more expensive to fix than the old fashioned drum setup, where at the most the only thing screwed up is a couple of cables.
.... of course I would hate missing out on flying Caddy hub caps when hitting an on ramp too fast with almost 20 foot of DeVille sailing around a tight curve!! :P
Besides, all you'd be getting is a smaller car that eats just as much gas as your Caddy and is 3X more expensive to repair.
I think Benz performed the $100 bill test on all 450SLs, to see how well they stuck to the upholstery :P
Since the tune up and carb rebuild I get 13.8 MPG
(before that it was under 9 MPG)
my '06 Escape Limited (V6) only gets 17.4 MPG
For a little more than 3 1/2 MPG it's not worth parking the yacht unless the top has to be up - it has too many blind spots.
As for the Caddy's worth - it was rough compared to the SL.
That offer was before almost a grand in electrical, new exhaust, water pump, a complete tune up, carb rebuild, a bunch of body work & paint, as well as new tires and a LOT of detailing :sick: .
It was almost tempting!
My '67 Catalina has a habit of ditching its right front hubcap. I finally got fed up enough that nowadays I put it on at car shows, but then pop it back off and put it in the trunk when it's time to drive it home!
They were good cars, the 560SLs....
In the end, I think he sunk a couple grand into it during the few years he had it, and finally sold it to someone he knew for about half of what he paid for it. The tranny went out soon after that.
How much is a tranny rebuild on one of those things?
I still almost regret not buying that mint 560SL that was a perfect match for my W126. But of course, that third car would have been a silly move, and I wouldn't have bought the C43 if I had three cars already/
I'm guessing that to some people who aren't knowledgeable, they might also look at a price like that and think that they're still getting a luxury car at a cheap price, especially when they see how much a new one is!
I know that's one way my buddy justified paying the $16K or whatever he did for his '78 Mark V. His rationale was that car was about $20,000 brand-new, which equates to $60,000 today. So in his mind he thinks he's getting a $60K car on the cheap!
I wonder if that type of rationale is common? I think one trap I fall into sometimes is when I start thinking that it would be cheaper to go out and buy a nicer version of a car I have rather than fix mine up. However, that still doesn't justify over-paying for the nicer version! :shades:
At the same time, some people think vintage = worth a fortune. If a new SL is 90K, a nice vintage one must be worth a bit, right? Some people assume that about my fintail...if a loaded new E-class is 60K and a S-class is 90K, a shiny old MB with fins and chrome must be worth 30K anyway, right? People have actually told me that.
Funny thing too...according to my 1976 NADA and KBB guides, a 74 450SL had a MSRP of $15450, and a 73 at $13340 - so that guy paid more than original MSRP!