July Auto Sales Finally Have Cadillac on the Comeback Trail -- a Really, Really Long One
Cadillac is starting to come back after missing its share of a boom in luxury cars and trucks since the late 1980s.
Cadillac sales more than doubled in July from the year-ago month, according to AutoData. One month doesn't make a trend, but year to date through July, Cadillac sales were up 45.6 percent to 79,704.
The best-selling Cadillac this year is the redesigned Cadillac SRX, a crossover SUV. That is, a vehicle that looks like an SUV, built on a car-like platform, so it rides and handles like a car. Before it was redesigned last year, the old SRX was one of the brand's slowest sellers.
Trucks have been central to Cadillac's long road to recovery. Cadillac was late to join the trend to SUVs, finally introducing the Cadillac Escalade at the tail end of the 1990s. Now that SUVs are no longer trendy, crossovers like the Cadillac SRX are helping keep the brand relevant.
The Cadillac CTS is the brand's best-selling car. It was first introduced in 2007. By that time, the brand was so closely identified with the Escalade that Cadillac needed to remind people that it sold cars, too.
Cadillac still has a long, long way to catch up with the best-selling luxury brands in the United States: BMW (BWMXY.PK), Lexus and Mercedes-Benz (DDAIF.PK). When parent Toyota (TM) first introduced Lexus in the late 1980s, it was aimed squarely at the European imports.
The European luxury brands dropped at first, but came back strong by 2000. They kept right on growing, while Cadillac and Lincoln from Ford (F) turned out to be the casualties. Cadillac sold more than 300,000 units in the United States back in 1986. The next time a luxury brand passed that milestone, it was Lexus in 2005.
None of the luxury brands is going to come close to that in 2010, with the entire U.S. market down from record highs in the early 2000s. BMW, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz are all on a pace to beat 200,000 this year, but their sales haven't increased percentage-wise nearly as much as Cadillac. Cadillac can aim for that league in the next couple of years, when demand recovers more strongly than it has so far.
Related:
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Photo: GM