When Cadillac turned the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in
Brookline into its own version of a "Caddy Shack" on a rainy, late summer
evening, the star of the show was the lovingly restored 1930 V-16 Phaeton owned
by Rhode Island collector Dick Shappy.
Shappy's car – a reminder of Cadillac's storied past – wasn't there
as a nostalgia item. Instead, it was proudly displayed as an
icon of hand craftsmanship, starting with the $8,000 Lalique eagle hood
ornament radiator cap.
The message of the night: "You're going to find more hand craftsmanship in future
Cadillacs."
In recent years, the Cadillac brand has been a bright
spot in an otherwise dismal new century so far at General Motors.
The Escalade caught the fancy of the "gotta have one"
crowd, and the marque's Northstar engines have become a symbol of quality,
performance, and reliability. Along the way, Cadillac has changed its market,
appealing to a younger buyer.
All for the good.
The not-so-good includes two complaints – a matter of
arts (interior design) and letters (model names).
Once, it was easy to tell a Seville from a DeVille from
a Fleetwood from an Eldorado. Now a newcomer to the brand has to decipher the
CTS from the DTS from the STS and the SRX and the XLR.
The other issue has become an almost universal
complaint: How can a GM division with so much styling acclaim and so much under
the hood keep producing such pedestrian interiors?
Dick Shappy's 1930 Cadillac V16 All Weather Phaeton.
Cadillac is finally doing something about its interior
decorating, but the confusing letters remain.
"We are going to keep the focus on eye-grabbing design
and tremendous performance," said John Howell, product director for
Cadillac.
"But the second phase of our renaissance, if that's
what you want to call it, will feature hand craftsmanship," he said. "Because
the Cadillac brand was formed around craftsmanship and tradition, we want to
raise the bar for luxury."
To that end, the Cadillac people had two SUVs on
display at Larz Anderson: a 2006 SRX and a 2007 SRX. The 2007 was a sport
model, featuring a mesh screen behind the grill and polished 4-inch exhaust
tips, but the real difference was inside. After all, as a driver, does one
spend more time looking at a vehicle from the outside or from the
inside?
If you said inside, and are buying or looking at a 2007
SRX, you'll find some remarkable improvements.
Where the 2006 SRX has the basic molded plastic
dashboard and door panels that aren't all that different from what is found on
a compact Chevrolet Cavalier, the 2007 features leather.
More than that, it's hand-sewn, French-stitched, and
hand-assembled. In addition, Cadillac has an elegant but simple center stack
for instrumentation, as well as a hidden storage compartment behind a wood
dashboard panel. The transformation is akin to gutting a home and completely
remodeling the interior.
The interiors are done in a three-step process of cut,
sew, and wrap. Even the "door" for the passenger-side air bag is hidden. The
leather is level over the opening but perforated in back so that if an air bag
deploys, it would come right through the leather, Howell said. "We want
technology without complexity," he said.
"Back in 1904, [Cadillac founder] Henry Leland
proclaimed, `Craftsmanship is a law, accuracy is a creed,' " said
Howell.
The handcrafting isn't limited to the interior
accoutrements. The supercharged Northstar engines in the STS-V and XLR-V models
are hand-assembled and signed by the builder.
Meanwhile, the cut-and-sew approach to luxury interiors
will expand through the Cadillac lineup.
Still, as nice as Shappy's 1930 V-16 Cadillac was, the
company isn't going back to that scale of hands-on craftsmanship. After all,
only 4,076 of those V-16s were built, between 1930 and 1940.
