Blake Noble

RIP Chicagoland's hopes and dreams. He barely knew you.

I see your side of the argument. The reason the Cimarron is repetitively chosen is because it's such an easy target to pick; you can find a million different ways to bash the exterior, powertrain, etc. The same can also be said for the Pontiac Aztek (which I will cover in the future; the next installment, however, is going to be the Chevrolet Beretta/Corsica). I'm seriously thinking about making a blog for these articles so that I can expand the scope of the series to non-GM cars. That was another factor that made me chose the Cimarron for this article; since this is a GM forum, I tend to stick with GM cars. And GM, god bless 'em, has made a garden variety of $h!ty cars in their 100 years in the automotive industry. This is probably what I'm going to go to college for first: automotive journalism. Then, perhaps, automotive design if the American auto industry can correct itself. I'd actually love to work for Ford.

"False Light" - Isis

Who needs a rifle and bullets? EXCITEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!! can also take down two deer with one shot. And you know a good old fashioned bottle of Mothers will bring that right on out. http://www.car-accidents.com/2006-Auto-story/2-26-06.html

Wait, I forgot to mention the kicker with this one: a mailbox did that. And the damage to the mailbox? It was just tilted over and that's it. Mailbox: 1. Buick: 0. http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/acciden...y/12-18-03.html

That's somewhat surprising. I know the biggest douchebags alive usually own these types of lots, but one was pretty serious about trading me a 2000 Firebird for my truck. I didn't go for it because both airbags had been popped.

I should post some photos I took at the Louisville car show two Fridays ago. And I took photos of cars that were non-GM too, like the 2010 Mustang.

Except for the Camaro, all of the F-Bodies I've found were at buy-here-get-raped-here lots and three out of four times, they seemed to willing to take any offer thrown at them. With the economy in such rough shape, I believe these places are feeling the crunch worse than anyone.

I found "plan B" yesterday: there's a 1999 Pontiac Firebird V6 five-speed in Somerset in black, with T-tops, and 111,000 miles if my memory serves me right -- exactly the way I want a Firebird. The $h!ty buy-here-pay-here lot that had it wants $4,995 for it, but I know it isn't worth that. I'd say they have around $2500 in the car and it needs the door lock assemblies for both the driver and passenger side doors, a new driver's side taillight, and a bezel that goes around the shifter. And, as luck would have it, I know where there is a black, five-speed Firebird sitting in a junkyard for me to pick parts off of. Any advice on what the car might be worth? I'm expecting a phone call tomorrow, and if I don't get it, I'm calling the dealership in LaFollette Tuesday to ask one last time where the Camaro stands. Depending on what answer I get, I might pursue the Firebird in Somerset.

You know that is going to buff right out to a nice 'n purty shine, yep.

Photo 2 has been touched up as well. Is there something gruesome in the photos that they don't want us to see?

QUOTE (Josh)Kid Rock, Kirk Maltby, Uncle Kracker. Those are the ones I've hung with.......recently lol Working at a telecommunications place I can't really say who I've "hung out with or met" but there have been some pretty famous individuals. I've also spoken to Mr. Lutz personally as well as Gary Cowger and have been in the same room as Richard Wagoner. The last three names mentioned are the ones that matter the most to me however. I thought something smelled a little funny when I clicked on the link to see the first page of this thread. Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker? I actually forgot how horrible Josh's taste in music was; is he positive he lives in Michigan and not Mississippi?

QUOTE (CadillacKing3)Dick Vitale at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk ... How did you resist the urge to just violently rip his vocal chords out of his neck?

His friend was decapitated? Well $h!.

Sometimes I look at our driveway and wonder why we chose an Aura over a Charger.

Yeah, that's a bit annoying. I love a good bait-and-switch, classic douche move right there.

A few bricks are being shat.

Torque-steer?

Walt isn't the only one who's had to deal with G6 issues -- when we had ours, it was constantly in the shop for problems with the steering system. GM's electronic steering system is true junk. And our Impala before that, well, I'm certain the transmission was ready to buy the farm before we traded it off. Our Aura has been reliable so far, however, knock on wood. And I'm disappointed that my Sonoma is beginning to deteriorate at only 118,000 miles. GM's never going to build 'em as good as they built my '72 Cutlass again.

There's two red Jettas just like BV's rolling around Berea.

Uh, wow, I guess? First, all sources show that the Cimarron did not receive a V6 engine until 1985, not 1983 as you stated. It did get a five-speed manual in 1983, as you said, but I didn't make mention of that in my article. Second, the whole mission objective of this series is to roast the $h!tiest cars in automotive history. The Cimarron is one of them because of the damage it dealt to the Cadillac brand. It isn't meant to undermine Cadillac's regained reputation, that's an absurd accusation.

+1 Want me to bring you some Turtle Wax or NuFinish? Your pick.

I know what forces are at work here ...

Worst Car Showcase Presents: The Cadillac Cimarron Cadillac, since the dawn of its inception until the late 1970s, branded itself as the “Standard of the World.” Everyone who was anyone the world over aspired to own one; owning a Cadillac was a cornerstone of the American dream; lusting over those characteristic sharp lines was just as natural as lusting over a centerfold model in Playboy. Cadillac cars were at the top of the automotive food chain with their vast, vault-like interiors and massive, powerful engines and no other luxury car could ever come close. However, after OPEC formed and the 1970s gas crunch marched its way upon America’s shores, Cadillac’s image slowly began to tarnish. Compared with the luxury makes from Germany, Cadillac offered too many cars that had too much flash and that burned through too much gas. Cadillac’s first attempt at a smaller model, the Seville, was successful, but it still was a dinosaur of a car. Then Mercedes-Benz shook the whole game up with the predecessor to today’s C-Class in 1982, the venerable W201, better known as the 190. Cadillac scrambled to create a competitor using what they could to create a premium small car and decided on GM’s J-Body platform, better known as the Chevrolet Cavalier. In a nutshell, the Cimarron (and the other J-Bodies, for that matter) would soon be recognized as the supreme epitome of automotive rebadging, a figurehead that would eventually highlight everything that was wrong with GM in the 1980s by the end of that decade. You see, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, GM figured that it could develop more cars at cheaper costs if they just applied brand-specific front and rear-ends, suspension tuning, and maybe an interior for one or two of the cars being developed if there was a small bit of money left over. In reality, the cars wound up having more differentiation under their cloned exteriors, where it didn’t seem to much matter to most consumers, and GM still spent almost the exact same amount of money in R&D costs. I’m curious to know what GM executives were smoking and shooting up during that period of time. So, in order to make the standard, junky, dreary, crude and rude Cavalier adhere to the “Standard of the World” standard, Cadillac threw on a mildly different grille with the Cadillac script tucked shamefully away in one corner, draped different kinds of cloth on the seat frames and door panels, developed a shock absorber system that would make an attempt to prevent the thrashy, buzzy four-cylinder engine from waltzing around the engine bay like Michael J. Fox, and threw out an “Astroroof” option to buyers not available on the Cavalier … or the Pontiac J2000 … or the Buick Skyhawk … or the Oldsmobile Firenza … or the Opel Ascona … or the Vauxhall – well, you get the idea. Cadillac also made power windows, locks, air conditioning, and power steering standard. Thus, since the Cimarron came with features that were honestly unremarkable as standard equipment back then as they are now, Cadillac felt the upward push in base price was justified; the Cimarron carried a burdening base price of $12,181 back in 1982 (somewhere in the ballpark of $30 grand in today’s dollars), double that of any other J-Body. Curiously, there wasn’t any sort of upgraded engine in mind for Cadillac’s “Cadvalier” at launch: the Cimarron still used the standard Cavalier’s anemic, horrible 88-horsepower four-cylinder engine – which was Cadillac’s first since 1914 – and its clunky, unintuitive four-speed manual transmission – which was another first of sorts for Cadillac since it hadn’t made a manual transmission available on any of their cars since 1953. And, for an extra bit of dough, you could have sprung for an optional three-speed automatic, a tried and true slushbox that made an already horrible car a painfully slow nightmare to drive. Performance figures, such as not-to-sixty times, will go on unmentioned here, but let’s just say the foot-powered Flintstone-mobile could absolutely slaughter you in a drag race down the quarter mile. And Cadillac knew what a massive, steaming pile the Cimarron was, and blatantly disowned the car during the first two years of its life like the proverbial red-headed step-child it was. Early examples of this crap-mobile were branded as the “Cimarron by Cadillac,” and dealers were told not acknowledge the car as a Cadillac and tell customers that it was not, of course, a Cadillac, as if that was fooling anyone. Traditional Cadillac buyers didn’t accept the car with warm, loving arms, either: only 25,968 examples were sold its first year. That’s a far cry from the 75,000 examples Cadillac was so terribly confident they could sell when these little monstrosities first hit the dealer‘s pavement. Sitting back and reflecting on things, it’s actually quite remarkable when you realize that the folks at GM kept this thing in production all the way up until the 1988 model year, as the car seemed to be initially doomed as the Titanic on its maiden voyage upon its debut. Caddy did make something of an effort to make the Cimarron a little more than the other J-Body clones, but it just wasn’t enough: a 2.8 liter V6 engine finally became an option in 1985 (but then again, it was an option on all of the other J-Body cars as well) and then became standard in 1987, just one year prior to its demise. As for addressing the “me-too!” appearance, Cadillac would eventually give the Cimarron an upgraded grille and aerodynamic headlamps, a poor excuse of a fix. In the end, the 1980s were not a good time for Cadillac. The folly of both the Cimarron and the V8-6-4 engine almost drove the prestigious brand to bankruptcy and forced consumers to write the Cadillac name off of their shopping lists. According to popular automotive culture, current Cadillac product director John Howell has a photo on his wall with a caption that sums everything up best: “Lest we forget.”

I called the guy with the SVX (there wasn't a price on the for sale sign, just a number) and he said he wanted $4,500 for it, but wasn't set on a price just yet. I'll check back with him Monday for you to see if he's made up his mind.