1964 Cadillac Fleetwood Vintage on 2040-cars

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Lincoln hijacks Cadillac's 'Dare Greatly' tagline

Talk about comedy - not even 24 hours after Cadillac teased its CT6 while inviting us to "Dare Greatly" during the Oscars telecast, Lincoln was doing the same but on Google. An anonymous tipster informed us the day after the Oscars that typing "dare greatly" into Google returned two ads before the search results. When we checked it over the course of a few hours, the first ad was always for Cadillac and either read, "Cadillac - Dare Greatly - Only those who dare drive the world forward," or, "Cadillac - Dare Greatly - It's not the critic who counts, it's the man in the arena." (On a side note, come on, Cadillac - "the man in the arena?" Well. It's a quote. Suppose that's all right, then.) The second result was for Lincoln and read, "Dare Greatly - It's not about making a statement, it's about doing what you love," with the associated URL being www.lincoln.com/dare+greatly. The first time we clicked it, it went to the Lincoln homepage showing the 2015 MKZ Hybrid. The second time, we got a page saying that the Lincoln site wasn't available; the Lincoln site was fine, the link didn't work. There's no reference to the Google joke at the Lincoln site - this was just about getting eyeballs. The English have the perfect phrase for Lincoln's provocation: "You've got some cheek!" We think it cunning, dastardly, and funny, and there's no doubt it worked - they knew people would flock to search the term. One of our competitors, Autotrader, said that within an hour of the first of four Cadillac spots airing during the Oscars, car searches for Cadillac vehicles climbed 53 percent from pre-Academy Award coverage levels. Searches for Cadillac cars were up 120%, they said. If this is Round One of our homegrown scrappy old-timers going at it, we're all for it. News Source: Google Marketing/Advertising Cadillac Lincoln Luxury

General Motors shaking up its marketing... again

One of the things that dogs the full comeback of General Motors is the instability of its marketing. That part of the automaker got yet another big shakeup today when GM confirmed what I have been tweeting for a few days - strong rumors that the Chevrolet and Cadillac ad accounts are walking to new ad agencies.
Cadillac, GM's luxury brand, is going into review from Fallon Worldwide, Minneapolis and the indications are that Campbell-Ewald, Chevy's old ad shop, will end up with most or all of it. C-E just announced that it was moving from its long-time home in Warren, MI to a new downtown Detroit office next to Ford Field, just blocks from GM.
The other shoe to drop shortly will be the shift of GM's most important brand, Chevy, from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco to McCann-Erickson of Troy, MI. McCann used to be the agency for Buick and GMC, as well as GM's corporate advertising, and has retained some pieces of business over the last few years. Sources have even told us that it was McCann that did a lot of the creative work on Chevy's new ad platform, Find New Roads. (Not to be confused with a former McCann tagline for Saab, "Find Your Own Road.")

We really want to use an eCrate to restomod an old GM car. Here's what we'd build

You hopefully saw the news today of GM's introduction of its Connect and Cruise eCrate motor and battery package, which effectively makes the Bolt's electric motor, battery pack and myriad other elements available to, ah, bolt into a different vehicle. It's the same concept as installing a gasoline-powered crate motor into a classic car, but with electricity and stuff.  This, of course, got us thinking about what we'd stuff the eCrate into. Before we got too ahead of ourselves, however, we discovered that the eCrate battery pack is literally the Bolt EV pack in not only capacity but size and shape. In other words, you need to have enough space in the vehicle to place and/or stuff roughly 60% of a Chevy Bolt's length. It's not a big car, but that's still an awful lot of real estate. There's a reason GM chose to simply plop the pack into the bed and cargo area of old full-size SUVs. Well that, and having a rear suspension beefy enough to handle about 1,000 pounds of batteries.  So after that buzz kill, we still wanted to peruse the GM back catalog for classics we'd love to see transformed into an electric restomod that might be able to swallow all that battery ... maybe ... possibly ... whatever, saws and blow torches exist for a reason.  1971 Buick Riviera Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski: If you’re going to build an electric conversion, why not do it with style? ThatÂ’s why IÂ’m choosing a 1971-1973 Buick Riviera. You know, the one with the big glass boat-tail rear end that ends in a pointy V. Being a rather large vehicle with a big sloping fastback shape, IÂ’m hoping thereÂ’s enough room in the trunk and back seat to pack in the requisite battery pack. That would likely require cutting away some of the metal bulkhead that supports the rear seatback, but not so much that a wee bit of structural bracing couldnÂ’t shore things up. The big 455-cubic-inch Buick V8 up front will obviously have to go. Remember, this was the 1970s, so despite all that displacement, the Riviera only had around 250 horsepower (depending on the year and the trim level). So the electric motorÂ’s 200 horsepower and 266 pound-feet of torque ought to work as an acceptable replacement.   1982 Chevrolet S10 Associate Editor Byron Hurd: OK, so the name "E-10" is already taken by a completely different truck, but let's not let labels get in the way of a fun idea.