Cadillac is hoping to give its image a face lift in 1992, aiming its new models at younger buyers who once considered Cadillacs the type of cars only their grandparents would drive.
The campaign includes ads on Monday Night Football, and an unveiling for the auto on Wall Street.Unlike their luxury-oriented predecessors, the 1992 Eldorado and Seville are being touted as performance vehicles, geared to compete with Toyota's highly successful Lexus and Nissan's Infinti.
Industry analysts say Infinti and Lexus have developed niche markets among young, affluent buyers - the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. car market.
"The 1992 Seville and the 1992 Eldorado are the first cars Cadillac has totally redesigned, engineered, manufacturered and marketed since our reorganization in 1987," Cadillac General Manager John Grettenberger said at a recent briefing at an assembly plant in Hamtramck, Mich.
Grettenberger said the company expects sales of 1992 models to climb 11 percent from 1991 levels, with the Eldorado and Seville models contributing to the rise.
Cadillac, a division of General Motors Corp., the world's largest auto manufacturer, hopes to sell about 60,000 Sevilles and Eldorados next year. Officials said Cadillac has 27,000 solid orders for the cars, with the start of new model year set for Sept. 8.
Industry analysts say the cars have already won favorable reviews and could propel Cadillac into a whole new market.
"This is the first time they have a product that in any way competes with the Euro-Japanese group," said Joseph Phillippi, with Shearson Lehman Bros. in New York.
"These cars are designed and engineered to appeal to new customers, especially younger ones, who traditionally do not visit Cadillac dealerships," Grettenberger said.
The company has not only redesigned the cars, but its marketing and advertising strategy as well. It began airing the first of its "Until Now" commercials this week.
The spots, aimed at 30- to 40-year old consumers, show post-war baby-boomers remarking that until now, their interest in high-performance cars had been captured by Japanese and European carmakers.
The first of the spots aired during the Monday Night Football game on ABC television.
In a pitch to hot-shot traders on Wall Street, where BMW is as much a part of the vocabulary as LBO, Cadillac is stationing 35 new Sevilles and Eldorados outside the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, with live radio link-ups and camera crews to conduct interviews for future advertisements.
Phillippi said that despite the changes at Cadillac, the company must overcome lingering questions about quality that arose in the early 1980s, when Cadillac tried to shrink its most popular vehicles and ended up with a fleet of poorly designed cars.