While Bring A Trailer is often the go-to place for finding top-of-market pricing on just about every collector car, every so often a deal pops up. Case in point: Someone got a solid gold deal on a pristine 1987 Cadillac Cimarron, and the car itself is captivating enough to make you wonder if the Cimarron actually deserves its reputation.
See, the Cadillac Cimarron gets a bad rap because it is, in essence, a fancy Chevrolet Cavalier. Everyone from Forbes to CNN Money has slagged on this compact as an egregious example of badge engineering, for the Cimarron joined the J-Car program just 11 months before the Chevrolet Cavalier was supposed to hit showrooms, so it shared a whole lot with that cheap Chevy including the bulk of its interior and exterior.
Hang on — why is it a bad thing that this is a J-Car? Cavaliers and Sunbirds stuck around far longer than they had any right to, collectively putting up with onslaughts of teenage overconfidence and cyclic neglect until they were all either wrapped around telephone poles or rusted into a fine mist. There’s a good chance most luxury cars aren’t as durable as a Cimarron. Not that you’d subject this example to anything undue, it’s just nice to know that it shouldn’t be a headache to run.
Oh yes, with just over 15,000 miles on the Carfax, this Cimarron isn’t just pristine, it somehow escaped the horrors of northeast winters despite originally being delivered in Massachusetts. Sure, there’s a little corrosion on the brake lines, but the underbody looks properly mint. Granted, low mileage definitely accounts for some of it, as may a move from Massachusetts to Missouri, but how often do you see Cimarrons this clean?
Looking inside this low-mileage Cimarron, it almost feels hard to not take it seriously because interior trends people may have made fun of decades ago is now coming back into fashion in upscale cars. A dashboard wrapped in soft vinyl? Check. Finely-etched aluminum trim? Check. Jazzing up the footwell with silver accents on the pedals? Check.
Under the hood, you’ll find a 2.8-liter V6 making 129 horsepower. Isn’t it amazing that we used to need 2.8 liters and six cylinders to make only a handful more horses than the 1.6-liter naturally aspirated four-banger in a Nissan Versa? Granted, with this Cimarron featuring a three-speed automatic, V6 torque is much appreciated. Hey, you’ll get to where you’re going in style.
Perhaps even more captivating than the beautifully beige paint, the low mileage, or the incredible condition of this Cimarron is the documentation and trinkets it comes with. Not only does its original window sticker display a price of $16,911 including freight in 1987 dollars (some $46,823.82 adjusted for inflation), it bundle of pamphlets includes its original gold keys! Yep, Cadillac gave owners a set of gold-plated keys, and if that isn’t a baller move, I don’t know what is.
In some ways, re-badging a Cavalier as a Cadillac was almost ahead of its time. Sure, it’s far more overt than the link a BMW X1 shares with a Mini, but in an age of platform sharing, is it really unprecedented for a luxury car to share its bones with a regular car? As the functional gap between regular cars and luxury cars shrinks ever smaller, perhaps the Cimarron was a portrait of where the industry at large was going.
Oh, and we haven’t even reached the best part yet — someone paid $5,100 for this Cimarron, and in today’s car market, that’s a steal. Where are you getting a 15,000-mile anything for $5,100, let alone a Cadillac? Whether through ironic cool or through the lens of the current car market, the. Cadillac Cimarron deserves a shot at redemption. If you want to blend in, drive a BMW or an Audi or a Mercedes. If you want to stand out, drive a Cimarron.
(Photo credits: Bring A Trailer)
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Luxury cars were huge money makers for the manufactures back then.
Until…
Lexus, Acura and Infinity came along.
After they made their way to America’s garages, Mercedes and the rest of the players, had to lower their prices and as a result, quality.
Now this is the piece of pure Americana that I would love to see owned by Adrian.
It’s just like the one I spun out on I-39 at 60 MPH, except with a six.
I’m not sure I can really ever learn to appreciate the Cimarron, even one as nice as this one is.
However, I can appreciate the condition it is in, as parts of Missouri are just as bad for rust as the New England area. This one escaping without any appreciable surface rust is commendable.
I am loving cars like this popping up now. There are a fair amount that run around regularly on Woodward.
There is a first-gen Honda Prelude, a third or fourth gen Corolla and…a Pontiac 6000 STE AWD, among others.
How these cars exist in pristine condition today is beyond me.
Grandma parked it in the driveway, passed away and no one had the heart to get rid of it. I remember when they came out, nothing memorable about them…
I bike or bus to work, but am considering a Civic type R. If I buy it the miles will stay low until the kids move out and I resume road tripping. If they leave the dog or my wife loses interest, I might not even add those miles.
There’s a collection of Cadillacs in Brookville, PA that was acquired over the years by an optometrist. He has 2 Cimarrons in his collection. I think he needs his eyes checked for having those, but the rest of his collection is very cool. His little museum is in an old car dealership and only open to the public a few weekends a year, but well worth seeing in person.
Counterpoint – the fact that J-cars were cockroaches mean you were stuck with the miserable things for that much longer. Absolutely, utterly, miserable heaps of poo, even if they would run badly for longer than many cars would run. Ladling on faux-luxury and charging twice as much and then some did not improve them in any way.
Absolutely no thanks.
No thank you. 🙂
Also, is that washer fluid in the coolant tank?
$5100.00 for this is 100% correct.
You are buying two things here:
BTW, while the car is insulting, it is not a Tempo/Topaz, which were the worst, most depressing cars ever known to man. The Tempo/Topaz says “you’re not even worthy of trying to BS you into thinking you’re getting some kind of nice car, like the Cimmaron. F–k you, here’s what you get…”
Not saying they were great shakes or anything, but Tempo/Topaz paved a path for Taurus/Sable. Essentially, it was Ford doing european Ford over here for middle America. I don’t see them as depressing as much as directional. Also worth noting that there was no Lincoln version of Tempo/Topaz.
There is no car on earth that is as sad, soul-sucking, and awful as the Tempo/Topaz. Did they pave a path for the Taurus/Sable? Yes, in the same way that someone who gets thrown in prison vows never to return….
Agree. It was my experience with a rental Tempo that turned me off of Fords for life. Unfair I admit, but that Tempo gave off a sort of philosophical stink that I couldn’t forget.
Agreed that 5100$ is actually a good deal for something like this.
And also agreed about the Tempo/Topaz. I’m not a fan of the “fake it till you make it” vibes of the Cimmaron. But it’s definitely better than the “I hate my life and want to die” vibes of the Tempo/Topaz.
I don’t know. The Tempo all-wheel drive was pretty cool.
The Tempo/Topaz were cheap and unimpressive. The Cimarron was not cheap, and also unimpressive.
My grandparents had that exact Cimmaron in that color. A squirrel once got caught in the grill and died. They sold the car with the squirrel still in the grill.
How much was a Benz 190e back in the day??? $46,000 in todays dollars they have to be out of their mind. Thats probably double what a crapalier with ac and automatic would go for
Hold onto your hat – in ’89 the base price of a 190e was *$34K*. 2X the price of one of these. $88K today. Cimarrons were more than double the price of a base Crapalier, IIRC.
I had an ’88 MB 300TE – MSRP for that car was over $48K in ’88. $125K+ in today’s funny-money for a car with plastic seats, only one power mirror, and 188hp. And IMHO, worth every single dime, because that car in it’s day was soooo much relatively better than the ’14 E350 wagon I own today that it isn’t even funny. Mercedes used to be *expensive*, they are relatively much cheaper today, but unfortunately, they are also BUILT much cheaper today.
Frankly, I’d prefer a Citation
Make that Citation an X11 and I am right there with you. Still a terrible car, but at least they were actually fun.
Only if it also has Cessna in its name. As much shade as the Cimmarron gets thrown at it, the ones with the V6 and updated styling arent half bad. Way bigger shitboxes in 80s GM land like the Citation, Chevette, diesel full size cars, hell the rest of the 1987 Cadillac lineup minus the Brougham. Thats a pretty sad state of affairs at Cadillac when I rank the Cimmaron 2nd in their lineup for 1987
Ok, this Cimarron or an equally pristine ’87 K-Car LeBaron?
It’s too bad Ford never did a badge engineered Tempo for Lincoln, to really round out the competition.
That’s because they had the Topaz.
Having a Mercury version of a Ford never stopped FoMoCo from also offering a Lincoln version. See Thunderbird/Cougar/Mark IV-V-VI-VII-VIII of the 70s through early oughts.
Or the Taurus/Sable/Continental, Crown Vic/Grand Marquis/Town Car, or Granada/Monarch/Versailles.
The LeBaron. With the turbo they were faster. And they were comparatively spacious compared to the cramped little J-car. And had rich Corinthian leather…
And who knows, with a bit of chance, you might even end up with John Voight’s!
Chrysler TC by Maserati for sure.
I suspect you could probably pretty easily get decent 90s/00s Cadillac/Oldsmobile for five grand and it would actually be luxurious.
Well, no, not a Cadillac. Sitting by the side of the road while your Northstar pukes it’s gaskets is NOT luxurious.
I’m not a fan, but if it were cheaper I’d be interested for the pureness of the ’80s GM on display. But that is way too much. It’s special, but it isn’t THAT special.
What a silly car.
The S-Class knockoff grille makes it worse.
My parents bought a new Volvo 240 instead.
Anyone saying nope needs to get over themselves. Enough time has passed that this is in a similar realm as the Aztek and has come full circle to the point that these are a quirky nostalgic throwback that you just don’t see anymore, and we all saw what the reaction to the Aztek at Car Week was like.
I would proudly take this to shows. Screw the haters. This would be a hit at a Radwood or the Malaise Daze show.
Put in the Dream Cruise with a huge Calvin Chevy sticker pissing on the Ford logo, and you’d be king for a day.
Better yet, Calvin peeing on a Lincoln logo.
I would love to know if that community actually exists
There it is.
https://bringatrailer.com/member/jwcunningham65/
This is a car he wanted as a teenager/young adult? The Fiero he won I get, this one not so much.
*ponders*
No, I’m quite comfortable not taking it seriously. Yikes.
I contend these time capsule cars are a steal. Yes it will take some refurbishing but after fluids, belts, hoses, and a brake service I bet this thing is good for 50k miles. That is 50,000 miles of driving a reasonably comfortable interesting car. All for around $6k. Buy it, drive it.
Thomas – just, like, no. This lazy, brass-necked middle finger to the Cadillac badge is personified by those exposed screw heads on the gauge cluster. That’s fine in a base Cavalier but unforgivable in a car costing today’s equivalent of 46-fricking-thousand. It didn’t help that the V6 wouldn’t show its face until ’85.
If – and this is a big if – GM had led with that sort of engine instead of the wheezy four-banger with a Rochester carb, it may have provided enough differentiation from the workaday J-Cars to begin a defence of this pile. That they didn’t even attempt a veneer of interior plush (there’s those exposed screw heads again) compared to the Cavalier et al is the final nail in this particularly cheap – but not inexpensive – coffin.
Exposed torx screw heads were a thing back then – I suppose they were intended to show how “hi tech” a car was, along with the digital dash and “Fuel Injection” badges that were so common at the time.
Plus there were nicer J-Body interiors than the Cavalier and they still used the cheapest, worst one with fake wood plastered to it.
I don’t recall any J car with fake wood-
Just fake aluminum.
And fake luxury.
Nope, nope and more nope.
Nope. Although that’s a reasonable case to make for the Cimarron, it remains a car that I would not be seen in. For reliable transportation, I’ll take a 115000 mile Civic over a 15000 mile Cimarron any day. (The gold keys are kinda cool, though.)
The fact that odometers had only 5 digits for so long is an interesting topic.
“of course it won’t last that long, why would we put another digit in there? think of the money we’ll save!”
FOURTY SIXTHOUSAND?? I can respect the Cimmaron to a certain extent. I always thought it was a very handsome and well appointed J-Car, but at 46 fucking thousand they deserve all the ridicule they received. I’m a pretty staunch GM apologist, but I don’t blame people for never wanting to buy another one of their products after they pull shit like this.
To be clear, that’s the equivalent in today’s micro-bucks. For comparison, the MB 190e that this car pretended to be competitive with in GM’s fever dreams cost the equivalent of damned near $90K today.
People don’t realize just how f’ing expensive luxury cars used to be back in the day. Today, the premium for a premium car is rather small – but to be fair, the difference in what you get with one is a lot smaller too today. There was really no comparing even the most gussied-up J-car to the least MB of the day, but reality is that the cheapest A-class of today is not wildly better than a loaded GM whatever.
I understand thats after adjustment for inflation, but 46 grand can get you a whole hell of a lot of automobile these days. I just don’t like the audacity of charging that much for a cavalier. Even looking at a base-ish model Regal in 1984, you’d be spending about 35 or 36 thousand today. A far, FAR better car than a J-body.