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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Not a fan of that butter yellow color, but I actually rode shotgun in a Cimarron once through the mean streets of Brooklyn, being piloted by an Italian brunette with curly hair named Enza Dolce and at least from the passenger’s seat IIRC it actually wasn’t awful at all. I dunno if GM put a bit more sound insulation or something in it vs. whatever Chevy (or whatever) it was based on, but it was sorta comfortable compared to the usual 4-cylinder steeds around back in those days.
If any car needed a crucified Barbie doll as a hood ornament it’s this one.
Thomas, I think you drank too much Cimmaron flavored kool-aid. This example may be in beautiful condition, but it is an objectively terrible car in nearly every measure. I could not imagine a worse decision than to plop down 5K for this unseasoned lump of tofu.
Let’s think about this:
Unimpressive but stalwart GM 60-deg V6. Not heavily stressed, parts are still not hard to find. If you aren’t in a hurry, it’s fine.
Very end of the pre-facelift chassis generation: the majority of the bad bugs were sorted. The J6 chassis went under a lot of models and stayed in production until the mid-2000s, you can have some confidence that if anything was terribly wrong, it wasn’t the chassis. Not fabulous, definitely not bad.
Same with the transmission. Install a big fluid cooler to keep it as happy as possible and it, too, is a pretty straightforward piece of equipment.
Nobody else will have one.
The price is really very low for a car that has covered less than 500 miles per year since it was new. You won’t be the first owner, but the previous owners haven’t left much of a mark. This is a very fresh ride for very small money.
Even if it had zero miles, I can’t imagine anyone paying $5k for a Cimarron. My grandfather bought a brand new Cadillac every year, until he reached about 70 years of age. I used to get Cadillac brochures every year and try to guess which model he would buy. The Cimarron was such a disappointment to me. Thankfully, he stuck with Coupe DeVilles and never bought a Cimarron.
The Gold keys! I remember going to the Caddy dealer to have them cut for my ’87 Sedan DeVille. They should bring that back – Gold keyfob?
I agree that a really low-mileage car for around $5k is pretty good these days, but even if this were a Cavalier, you’ve got to be that 1 enthusiast who really wants it. The nondescript design looks like a random car generator drew it; at least K cars had the quirky vertical C pillar. And I’d still be okay with it, but the photos of the interior swayed me away again. That dash is a mess! It’s like one of those ’70s dashboard disasters, but in an ’80s luxury car.
This is the sort of car internet hipsters have convinced themselves is cool and what they want, only to be utterly horrified the moment they set off behind the wheel.
I think the horror is the point of buying this car in 2024!
It is horrific to think that a corporation like GM thinks so little of the public that they’d try to pass this off as a Cadillac.
Horror movies work because getting scared, grossed out, etc., is entertaining.
I also think that there’s a moral to a lot of horror movies, and a lot of subtexts going on, and there’s a moral/subtext to the story here:
This car is about honesty and dishonesty.
Thank you, liberal arts education…
We (and your colleague Mark Tucker) have talked about the questionable future of nostalgia with respect to this particular car already on Opposite Lock. Feel free to engage with our not a cult…
Badge engineering ≠platform sharing.
Exactly this.
I remember the QC manager at a company I worked for having a new one. He looked so proud but I think he somehow knew it was a stretch. I would much later buy a Cavalier for my daughter on the assumption it might be a good car because after all it was part-Cadillac, but I wasted every cent of what I paid, what a piece of garbage. 5K miles never without some repair being required and we gave up on the POS.
Redemption? Never. It’s still a Cimarron. I do like the gold keys, if they were real gold, they would be worth more than the car. Wait, what am I talking about? As it stands, they are still worth more than the car! Ha ha
Pristine examples of otherwise unremarkable cars always manage to elicit in me some sort of eagerness to own them.
Not today.
By my rough estimate, this thing takes up about 75 square feet of parking. Just imaging how much value that real estate could have generated over the years if put to better use than preserving this. Even a garden shed would have been better (and probably better built).