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Cadillac could 'flourish' in Australia, says marketing chief

Cadillac might have its best product mix in recent history, and GM's luxury brand is looking to expand. In fact, it might even be making a trip Down Under, at least according to the company's global marketing chief.
Uwe Ellinghaus spoke with Australian site Car Advice at the Geneva Motor Show and said the brand could be quite successful there. "[The] goodwill that the Cadillac brand has is such a good starting base that once we get proper volume commitment and a dealer network behind it we can easily flourish," he said, though he warned that the plans are still in their earliest stages and years away. First, Cadillac will expand in markets with the highest possible sales, like China and Russia.
Ellinghaus said that the most likely models for Oz would be the SRX, Escalade and CTS; the latter would probably act as a replacement for the Holden Commodore. GM's Australian arm is ending local production in 2017, and there have been many rumors about what is happening to the big sedan. However, Ellinghaus admits exporting cars from the US to Australia is going to mean higher prices. In addition to the expense, Cadillac doesn't currently build any right-hand-drive models. It would likely take until the end of the decade before the Aussie models could be ready.

Cadillac's new ad campaign to tell you how to get lucky

Cadillac is set to launch a new ad campaign this fall, as it attempts to maintain the momentum established by new models like the ATS. The campaign comes from an agency called Rogue, and according to AdAge, will lean on American values. It's called, "Work Hard. Be Lucky."
The campaign is fairly self-explanatory, just from the tagline. It's meant to make a Cadillac seem more attainable to the average, aspirational buyer. It does kind of pander to that American idea that everyone's hard work gets rewarded, but as ad campaigns go, that's not a bad thing.
Somehow, it doesn't roll off the tongue quite like "The Standard of the World." As AdAge points out, Cadillac's advertising over the years has lacked a real coherent theme, although we'll admit to enjoying the most recent campaigns, particularly the around-the-world jaunts with the ATS. It's unclear if the "Work Hard. Be Lucky." theme will evolve into an actual tagline for the brand, with Caddy spokesman Dave Caldwell telling the advertising mag, "It could very easily end up being a line of copy along with other lines; we don't really know yet. It's an open question as to how dramatically it will be featured."

Cadillac ATS was almost front-wheel drive

"We were going to do a front-wheel drive Cadillac compact off of Delta because it was going to be less expensive," Doug Parks, General Motors' vice president of global product programs, told the Automotive News during the Detroit Auto Show in January of this year. That sentence, referring to early ATS discussions more than five years ago - a period when the automaker, and the industry, was struggling - reveals that Cadillac's highly acclaimed rear-wheel drive compact sedan almost never happened.
Parks revealed that that automaker actually built a 2.0-liter test mule, on GM's Delta platform (shared with the Chevrolet Cruze and Buick Verano) and tested it in Europe. While the prototype was "pretty darn good," according to Parks, the team realized that in order to compete against Mercedes-Benz and BMW it would have to invest in a new rear-wheel drive platform.
The resulting all-new Alpha platform would eventually underpin the Cadillac ATS, and many would argue that its balanced rear-wheel drive chassis is its single most important attribute. Thankfully, the Alpha's goodness won't stop with the ATS. The upcoming 2014 Cadillac CTS and the future Camaro will also share its architecture, meaning the Cimarron will remain a distant memory.