Cadillac CTS Coupe

I have been critisizing the design of Cadillac CTS for years.

It is simply ugly and just it does not look impressive.
People says it is because of high gas price…. but still people by Mercedes S class.

This it the coupe version… what’ a hell…. I guess GM designers really like Toyota Prius or something.

This laxury coupe looks like Prius to me.

It is thick, tall, long front overhang, tail is unnaturally lifted up…. it is just ugly….

1. First thing I did was… modified the angle of B-Pillar which is tilting forward.
This is extremely important for coupe as I talked in Acura NSX.

2. Then, the waist line is too high and side windows are too small. This is typical for
modern Cadillac and it is creating funny interior space.

3. Front and Rear windscreens are lifted up. Again this is typical for modern Cadillac
and badly spoil the space utility.

4. Lower down the rear boot and bumper which looks ugly and restrict rear vision.

5. Doors are looking dull and flat… it just makes it look fat.

6. Americans are bad at designing RWD. Long front overhang make it look like
FWD and completely spoils whole design.

That was how things were moved and this is the result….

Isn’t it much better?  The overall length hasn’t changed.

I really don’t like the interior of CTS. It is just unnatural.

1. Huge front windscreen is nearly touching on my forhead.
2. Waist line is too high and side windows are too small.

3. Rear windscreen touches to head of rear passengers.

4. High rear boot restrict rear vision.

As usual, all I did was, make the interior space more natural and it dramatically improve the body design as well.

Spending over $50,000 and the what you get is the ugly body design and cramped interior… what’s the point?

2013 Buick Riviera Concept

Buick has been known as a brand for pre-WW2 generation.

There is a joke says

There are 2 type of Buick owners…..

1. Old person bought from dishonest sales person.
2. Young boy got from his grand farther……

Actually… it is a kind of true…

Buick used to be a luxury car for working class people. It was a bit like today’s AUDI
or something.
But, what about now? They are only meaningless re-budged Opel. They got rid of well-known brand and brought new names to confuse consumers.

Riviera was a luxury 2 door coupe especially known as a twin brother of Oldsmobile Toronado in late 60s.

It was purely stylish and respectable 2 door coupe.

The previous and last model of Riviera retired in 1999. Over a decade after, they brought back a valuable name….

As I see, it is very early version of concept car. It looks a bit like Aston Martin or something…. well, at least Buick is trying to do something….

But what I don’t understand is….. why the front grill is mounted that low??? Does it look any good?

I don’t think so. It just looks like uneducated teen wearing pants down.

This is the one I modified by using Adobe Photoshop.

All I did was lifted up the grill. If you compare, you will notice that made a big difference.

All I did was moved the grill to where it supposed to be.

On the original one, grill is not located to where it supposed to be and that makes your vision will endlessly float around between headlamps.

In this case, the styling will never look impressive.

On the modified one, your vision will go straight to the grill, then look around and come back to grill again.

How to attract vision is quite important point of industrial design.

Still there are lots of things to do on this design. But I am happy to see this because it is telling me that Buick is trying to restore their brand image.

They are trying Cadillac to be international…. in that case, Buick should be Luxury cars for American people.

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Cadillaac Eldorado

It is not bad….but It just looks like “Seville Coupe”.

When Cadillac Seville went through drastic change in 1992, the 2 door coupe Eldorado came out as well.
Although the Seville was bigger than the previous model, it was much more sporty and quite exciting looking.

Then, this is Eldorado……well….it looks just like “Seville Coupe”……with a bit more dull looking…..

Vertical tail lamps make it look more traditional compare to Seville.

But, believe it or not, none of the body panel is the same as Seville. This design is specially made for Eldorado!!

American Luxury coupe had been popular because they used to be quite good-looking although they were not as practical as 4 door sedans.

But, in this case….I just can’t see what was the point of having 2 door coupe which does not have any character.

This model was quite well designed and Average age of Cadillac owners dramatically dropped.

In early 90’s there were still American coupe existed…but none of them were popular and then, disappeared by the end of the decade.

Designers should know this…..

Coupes are easier to design because they can be less practical and less rear passenger friendly.

To sell coupes….they need to be Beautifully designed.

Thanks to the “Aerodynamics” and “Safety standards”…..what designers can do is limited compare to old days and 90s was the time all the coupe lost its style due to those reasons.

Today, all the luxurious coupe in North America are made by German or Japanese.That is partly because Big 3 are not really keen about this market.

Eldorado was not polular….but it did not mean the market disappeared. Maybe the market was smaller than before, but biggest problem was….Eldorado did not have advantage against Seville. That was all….
Then, the market was taken by Imports now…..That was haw American big 3 are keep loosing their own market.

 

Cadillac Sixteen….Last real Cadillac design

Cadillac Sixteen was a concept car which was introduced in 2003.

It had  V16 engine which had been absent since 1940.

Particularly, I don’t think it is beautiful design….but there are quite a few good design composition in this design.

First of all….the line of C-Pillar and shape of rear door glass ( also a part of C-pillar) is amazing.

I don’t like the extremely long front end…..but the overall design is quite well done.

I would say it is the last Cadillac which had good traditional Cadillac design.

Then, what we got in the market is……CTS, STS, DTD…..and latest XTS.
They were showing the future design of Cadillac by Sixteen….but what we got after Sixteen were just crappy Lego toy like design which completely destroyed the traditional culture of Cadillac and trying to be tasteless cultureless Lexus or something.

They have good designers….but they can’t do good job. That is the major problem on Cadillac.

Cadillac has always been Prestige cars and nothing else. It is impossible to be sporty car or BMW 3 series. Before they try lots of unsuccessful new projects, they should make best prestige cars instead.

What GM is doing is exactly same as Harley Davidson trying to make 250cc spot bike.

This is my Photoshop project which I modified Cadillac Sixteen to make more realistic.

I’d like this kind of Cadillac rather than XTS which lools like Prius or something.

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