riredale

There was an article about Cadillac's fall and recent attempts at rebirth in yesterdays WSJ. Article is behind a paywall, but I copied and pasted a graph from that article here, showing relative percentages of luxury brands over the past few decades.

Currently Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes tie at about 15% each. Audi is at about 10%, and Cadillac and Acura are 8% each.

Some observations: First, a stunning fall for Caddy, which in the mid-80's had a third of the market. Secondly, from the mid-80's to the mid-90's Acura did very well at about 13-15%. Finally, from 1995 onwards Audi has mounted a slow but steady climb.

EDIT: Doggone it, for some reason I can't upload the image to my post. You can instead see it here:

http://www.inventics.com/luxury.jpg

Toys4RJill

Yup. GM has had market share loss for something like 40 years in row. I think there is just one year in recent times where there was no market share loss

Many people know to “stay away” from GM.

mmarshall

It is not necessarily because of having to "stay away" from GM. With the Saab, Hummer, Pontiac, Saturn, and Oldsmobile Divisions gone, the Holden and Opel-sourced products soon to be gone, and existing sedans from several divisions being axed, GM simply doesn't have that wide a choice left for customers who DO want to say with them. It is now basically Chevy, Buick, and Cadillac...if you consider Chevy Trucks and GMC to be pretty much clones.

Stroock639

luxury cars used to not have to be well built and reliable, until toyota changed things with the LS, the germans responded by making their cars better built and GM didn't

Toys4RJill

So true ^^^. GM also has their past reputation that they carry with them every time they try to sell or advertise one of their models.

Wandl

What? No mention of Lincoln??

I did test drive the CT6 recently and while it was good (I really REALLY liked the Super Cruise), the long-term ownership put me off. Consumer Reports regularly puts Cadillac (and Lincoln) towards the bottom of the pack for reliability; get in a 5-6 year old Cadillac and it doesn't age very well.
That said, no surprise BMW & MB are top dogs in this fight. I read an old statistic somewhere that 75% of BMW deliveries in the US are leases, assume MB would be very similar...wonder what the Lexus figures are...

tex2670

Look at the graphic--the steepest decline is before GM shed all those brands.

GM, along with other American brands, widely ignored QC issues in the 1980s, and during that time, the stigma of buying a foreign car dissipated. Then, in the late 80s/early 90s, when the Japanese entered the lux market with high-quality alternatives, it's only logical that Caddy would take a bigger hit than Euro brands. And then Euro brands quickly realized that they needed to take Japanese brands seriously, but were in a better position than Caddy was to compete--because they already had products that were more competitive with the Japanese vehicles--not chrome laden land boats.

Exactly. Germans upped their game on QC, but the underlying product was already what more buyers wanted then Caddy offerings.

mmarshall

A lot of Americans still wanted chrome-laden, velour-seated land boats in those days, QC problems or not. I agree, though, that Roger Smith and Lee Iacocca failed to deliver quality. Iacocca talked (and double-talked) Chrysler "quality" and anti-Japanese rhetoric in TV commercials, but the vehicles simply did not match the rhetoric. Ford also failed, but to a lesser extent....Henry Ford II was more of an ironclad dictator, and was able to micromanage the company down to the smallest detail. GM, unfortunately, at the time, did some of the most unreliable vehicles of all.....some of them, you couldn't trust to get you across the street.

Toys4RJill

Keep in mind that Roger Smith made big profits (maybe even record) for their shareholders at the expense of the consumer....And you are seeing these harmful effects come back to haunt GM today.....the declining market share is just part of it.

pbm317

Johnhav430

imho oversimplification. There is no info as to how many units this market represents. It's been mentioned here before, if we go far enough back, there really wasn't leasing, so then there was financing and buying outright. The implication is a luxury car means disposable income. One would think the market is much larger today than in 1985, due to leasing and $0/$0/$0/$0. Take BMW according to the graph. Let's say they went from 10% to 15% market share. I would say fire the marketing department. But if the market has doubled in size, being a small co. how many cars can they produce? 15% doesn't sound too bad.

Look at the numbers on iPhone. Only the USA behaves the way it does. It may seem like everyone has iPhone or something else, but that's not really the case. The market share is over 1/3, but the USA is the only place it's that high. Because the USA can and will spend the money. Even China is higher than Europe, but not even close, not even, to the USA.

As far as harping on Caddy, most of its delta on the picture is 1990 to 2000, It's been almost two decades since 2000.

Toys4RJill

Market share is an excellent indicator for this discussion. GM has been losing market share for something like every year, for 40 years, except one year I think. I believe GM at some point was the largest and highest revenue company in the world. There was also a time when what was good for GM was good for America.

Honestly, I do like many of there products. There Cadillacs are better than Lexus in my opinion and their Corvette is stunning. There trucks are very appealing. I love the Regal. BUT, they burned me so many times and my family in the past. Watching the plants closures is mean and hurtful.

So to hell with GM....I would never ever recommend their products.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

I don’t get the graph. If that’s share of the LUXURY car market, then how come the numbers don’t come close to adding up to 100 anywhere? If instead, it’s share of the OVERALL car market, there’s no way in hell Cadillac had almost 35% at one time.

if the former, and they don’t add up to 100, who is making up all the rest? There’s only 6 brands, which at the end probably average around 12% ea.? That’s 72% which i guess is possible if you add uh, volvo? Lincoln, bentley, range rover, jaguar, etc., but seems like they wouldn’t sum to 28%.

Toys4RJill

Its just "Top Brands" Not the whole luxury car market.

Johnhav430

But let's say the luxury market is 19X today what it was in 1990, like Amazon since 1998. A car co. like Audi or BMW would not be able to meet demand if they maintained their respective market share. They are small car cos. So if BMW increased by 5% and the market is 4X? Impressive. But the chart does not say anything. The only reason Porsche wouldn't be off the charts is the ability to get one--many are willing, fewer are able.

GM ownership is awful. The dealer mentality is like stepping into 1981. Awful.

edit: 1 year to replace a captain's chair under warranty. They think it's ok, par for the course, have many reasons, nobody is accountable.