Cadillac Eldorado Coupe.
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For many years, 2 door Cadillacs were actually more popular than their sedans. Even the larger Deville models sold better as 2 doors than 4-door sedans. These days are of course long gone. And now even their 4-door sedans are oversold by their SUVs. However, the CT5 was still more popular than their older SUVs like the XT5, XT4, and XT6.
The Ultium EV platform is doing great for Cadillac. With the Lyriq quickly becoming their second most popular model behind the Escalade. And will do even better with the cheaper Optiq that just came out. GM is also working on 2 new Cadillac sedans based on the Ultium platform. Which is great news.
But a true 2 door coupe using the legendary Eldorado name would be even better. Even if not as popular. And it doesn’t need to be a huge car. The illustration above shows what a smaller new Eldorado coupe could look like.
Cadillac tried this before.
Back in 1986, the 11th Eldorado generation shared its new platform with the 3rd generation Seville sedan. Which was also the case for the previous generation. However, Cadillac had decided to drastically reduce the size of these 2 models. Which was almost OK for the Seville since its job was to compete with smaller import sedans, mostly from Germany.
But it was a disaster for the Eldorado. The second image above shows the 1986 model. It was a full 16 inches shorter than the previous generation. Which was itself much smaller than the one in the 70’s.
And yet, Cadillac tried to keep as many old-fashioned design cues. That means the new Eldorado basically looked like a 1970s American car the size of a Honda. Which was odd, and not what Cadillac buyers wanted. Sales went down from over 74,000 in 1985, to around 21,000 for the new, much smaller model.
A facelift was quickly ordered and came out for the 1988 model year. trying to make the Eldorado a bit longer by just a few inches (bottom photo). Sales went up to over 33,000 that year.
Mercedes is still making a luxury coupe. Just one. The new CLE is available as a coupe or convertible. At $58,000 to start, the 2.0 Liter 4 cylinder version, isn’t cheap. (almost $10,000 more for the 6-cylinder trim).
I think Cadillac could easily come up with a new smaller Ultium coupe about the size of the CLE, for even less money.
How about it…