Cadillac leaves past behind

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A few years ago, Cadillac decided to move to a different neighborhood, predominantly German.

It had existed comfortably for many years in American suburbs and resort communities, rubbing rocker panels with Lincolns and, occasionally, Chryslers.

The neighborhood was populated mainly by older folks, some with money, but also by people willing to stretch their finances to drive the "Standard of the World."

It had worked for many years. Then the Germans, and even the Japanese, started picking away at Cadillac's customers, especially those who had advanced financially but not necessarily in years. Soon the venerable American luxury-car builder was being eclipsed by the Germans: Mercedes-Benz and BMW, and even Lexus of Japan.

As recently as 2003, U.S. buyers went home with 186,553 Mercedes-Benzes and 200,144 BMWs, compared with 151,298 Cadillacs. If you add in trucks, Cadillac came in fourth overall, behind Lexus. Lincoln was an also-ran.

Faced with the foreign competition, Cadillac branched out, first into trucks and, later, into performance-oriented automobiles that bore almost no resemblance to the floaty Fleetwoods and DeVilles of yore.

Its intention was to move in on the Germans and capture some of their buyers.

The first of the new cars was the CTS, with edgy styling and rear-wheel drive, reversing years of Cadillacs with front-wheel drive. Though a bit bigger, it was designed to compete with the 3-Series BMW, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, the Audi A4 and the Lincoln LS.

For 2004, Cadillac raised the ante with the high-performance CTS-V, with a 400-horsepower version of the same V-8 engine that powers the Chevrolet Corvette sports car. It comes standard with a six-speed manual transmission, heretofore nonexistent at Cadillac, and exhibits the same sort of hot-rod luxury persona as the high-performance M-tuned cars at BMW, the AMG models from Mercedes-Benz and the S models from Audi.

The folks at Cadillac also brought out the new XLR, a luxury two-seat roadster that competes with the SL Mercedes and the 6-Series BMW, and a luxury crossover utility vehicle, the SRX, which goes up against the ML-Class Mercedes-Benz, the Lexus RX330 and the BMW X-5.