Who's the Cadillac of Hi-End Audio?

Now that this thread’s direction is more car related than audio, I thought I would add my 2-cents.

Being fat, happy and maintaining the status quo, it could be argued that the U.S. big-3 were initially blind-sided by the compact vehicle invasion from the Far East. However, many years passed before their luxury car lines (such as Cadillac) were pummeled by the Infinity, Lexus et al.

Given the length of time it took for this to transition, even the casual observer – let alone Cadillac Management -- could foresee the inevitable. The question is, why wasn’t G.M./Cadillac capable of improving their product’s styling, engineering, fit, finish, etc. to be competitive with the anticipated Japanese onslaught?

G.M. has employed educationally, some of the best and brightest engineers in the world, with commensurately hefty salaries. Why couldn’t they change? For the same reason why they’re still playing catch-up. Too many old, country club belonging ready-to-retire-to-the-Hamptons Executives. Why would they care to change, and undergo the headaches of doing so? Their current 6 and 7 figure salaries and pensions are guaranteed! They’re still suffering from too little, too late, as exemplified by the comments responders have made to this thread, and by reviews on the www, in periodicals etc.

Instead of designing and building exciting, attractive, well designed, and fun to own and drive vehicles as their competition, G.M Divisions such as Buick are resurrecting dead engineers (ala the Harley Earl ads), and touting “port holes” (the ancient Buick symbol). How sad!! The dying off of their buying base is as obvious as was the aforementioned inevitable Luxury car confrontation. Will they be able to equal, or exceed their competition before this happens – so far they haven’t! Moreover, it’s doubtful they will be able to, before irreversible harm occurs to their once highly revered name plates (Oldsmobile is already dead, which one’s next?) – not so bad for the million dollar golden parachute owing executives or retirees that “have theirs”, but too bad for the remainder of the workers, and the U.S Industrial Base in general!

Long and off the audio topic:
Ran across this post, and found my above comments about Cadillac more germane than when I wrote them. At that time, I had never shopped for a Cadillac.

After owing nothing but domestic automobiles, with the purchase of over 30 new G.M. vehicles, I finally went to a Manufacturer other than a domestic/G.M. one, and was absolutely amazed at how the rest of the world builds and sells automobiles.

From the mid-’70’s I had been purchasing G.M. vehicles with an employee discount, thinking that my deal was a good one, and up-front it was, but at the resale end, I was getting hosed.

Consequently, I did my homework on resale, and visited a Lexus Dealer.

After decades of G.M. Dealer treatment, my wife and I were in disbelief at how poor the buying experience, auto aesthetics, and build quality were, when compared to what we experienced at our local Lexus Dealer.

On our way home, I exclaimed that every G.M. General Manager and above, should be required to go through what we had the pleasure of experiencing, and perhaps they may have a clue why their buying base is eroding.

Yep, we compared a Cadillac to a Lexus. They were similar vehicles, and similarly optioned, the Cadillac was $6K more than the Lexus (there went my employee discount).

We actually drove the Cadillac three times over a couple week period, and the Lexus twice. We went to two Cadillac Dealers. The salesman at the first advised us that he was new to “this car selling business” (because of his age, we assumed perhaps a second career).

After we drove the Lexus, we went back to the same Cadillac Dealer and advised the salesman of how impressed we were with the Lexus and the sales experience. He stated that Lexus trains their sales personnel! Hello!!! we were shopping for a $40K+ Cadillac and we dealing with untrained sales personnel. On the other hand, our Lexus salesman was exceptionally knowledgeable, and wonderfully accommodating –head and shoulders better than we had EVER experienced. His Management were equally so.

At the second Cadillac Dealer, our salesman was a notch above the other Cadillac Dealer, but still not close to our young, but highly skilled Lexus salesman. However, upon entering the showroom, an unpleasant odor that permeated the building slapped us in the face – perhaps decades of stale cigarette smoke or ??

Moreover when my wife and I had occasion to use the restrooms, we were appalled by their maintenance -- our local 20 year old Movie Theater has more sanitary, inviting facilities (oh, the restroom visit was prompted by the wide selection of help yourself beverages the Lexus Dealer offered to all those who entered – both new customers and those in for service). Did either Cadillac Dealer do same –nope! In fact the only beverage I every received at a G.M. Dealer came out of the salesman’s own pocket.

What a great way for G.M to showcase their flagship car line! Poorly maintained, odorous facilities, staffed by untrained sales personnel. Yep, it isn’t your father’s Cadillac, but his cronies are making marketing decisions, manning the showrooms, and still primarily doing business as it has been done for decades – what a shame!

Granted, Cadillac’s have improved, but based on our recent experience, their vehicles are not on a par with Lexus, and based on what I’ve seen and experienced, they never will be! They just don’t have a clue – or the bean counters have too much of an influence on design and engineering; or their overhead is just simply greater than Lexus’, preventing them from putting the same level of engineering quality and support into their vehicles; or they simply don’t think they need to, or care to compete, on a head to head basis – I don’t know why, nor really care.

We did buy the Lexus, and have had a blast with it. In fact, a couple weeks after our purchase, in somewhat serious jest, I asked my wife if she would like to visit the Dealership (it’s about 30-miles from our home) it was such a pleasant experience. You can bet that thought never crossed either of our minds with our dozens of previous G.M new car purchases.

Time will tell whether we remain happy Lexus Owners; however, based on comments from friends and acquaintances since our purchase, it would appear that will be the case.

Oh, I almost forgot, since this has been so far off Audiogon’s main topics, I must mention that the audio in the Lexus is better than any G.M vehicle we’ve every owned. In fact, we have a year old G.M. vehicle with the upgraded Bose, and it isn’t as good as Lexus’ base system (not their Mark Levinson upgrade). In fact, every feature on the Lexus appears to be a notch above what we experienced on the Cadillac, or on our other year-old equally priced luxury G.M. product – go figure.