Cadillac has been around for a long time and over that span, it’s built a great many cars. Some we’ve loved and some we’ve hated but there’s a special vitriol for those that were greatly disappointing. We asked you which Cadillac was the most disappointing in history and the results weren’t really close whatsoever.
In our initial QOTD, we proposed a number of Caddys that we felt were objectively disappointing. The ELR, the Catera, and the SRX each got a call out. We thought though that perhaps the Allante with its storied build process, connection to Pininfarina, and lackluster performance would take the win.
In a clear case of telling you that I was born in the mid-80s without telling you I was born in the mid-80s, the Cadillac Cimarron had completely slipped under my radar. It was so unloved and disliked that by the time I personally loved cars, I can’t remember it coming up a single time. You lot however, have heard about it far too much it seems.
More: That Time Motorweek Said The Cadillac Cimarron Hit Audi And BMW ‘Right On The Head’
No less than at least 12 of you commented that the Cimarron deserved the top award here. Just counting up the top four comments alone, which all cited it as the winner, there were 35 upvotes and not a single dissenter. In fact, it’s so lopsided that db commented “This QOTD should have asked what is the top two worst vehicles from Cadillac as the Cimarron was so obviously the runaway winner, er loser.”
Why and how is the Cimarron such a bad car that it’s so widely considered the most disappointing Cadillac ever? Mostly, it seems to come down to badge engineering gone wrong in your eyes. “It was such a cynical exercise in badge engineering on a car that had no business being called a Cadillac,” says Six Thousand Times.
Dale H echoed those sentiments saying “It was nothing but a rebadged Cavalier, weighed down by more extras than the body was designed to carry.” And then Super Rob put the nail in the coffin by bringing his grandma into it. “My grandmother bought one, and it lived down to its reputation,” he said.
So there you have it. None of our guesses were correct and that’s OK because now we all know as a collective that no Cadillac on earth has ever disappointed people like the Cimarron.
