Cadillac Once Again Considering Entry Into Australian Market
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Cadillac has once again hinted at entering the Australian market. The brand’s global chief marketing officer, Uwe Ellinghaus, told Car Advice on the floor of the Geneva Motor Show that bringing Cadillac to Australia is still a long way off, but believes the brand could “easily flourish” in the country.
“I know that in Australia and in many other countries there are car lovers with an appreciation for the brand, and of course this is a great asset to build a viable strategy on,” Ellinghaus said. “(The) goodwill that the Cadillac brand has is such a good starting base that once we get proper volume commitment and a dealer network behind it we can easily flourish.”
Ellinghaus said Cadillac would not enter the Australian market until it has expanded in markets which require fewer engineering changes to the vehicles, lower initial investment costs and higher sales.
“We see the opportunity (in Australia) and we want to expand into as many markets as we can afford, but it’s also fair to say we have so much growth potential unexploited in China, even in the US, Canada, Russia, Dubai, Mexico… This is the lower-hanging fruit,” Ellinghaus said. “We have limited resources and great opportunities elsewhere that we need to make a very careful plan when to enter which market.”
Ellinghaus believes a Cadillac could fill the void which will be left when production of the rear-wheel drive Holden Commodore ends in 2017.
“This is exactly the spot of the market that I have in mind when it comes to Australia. I know about the appreciation that Australians have for high-performance vehicles, and these vehicles are high-performance vehicles.,” Ellinghaus said.
He added he sees potential for “almost all cars in the current portfolio”, but said the entry into the market would start with one or two models and grow from there. Car Advice believes a launch in Australia won’t come until the end of the decade at the earliest, considering the brand currently has no right-hand drive models.
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Much like Europe, Cadillac can’t rely on the cars in their line up alone to carry the brand. From the sounds of it, past Cadillac-Euro launches were especially brutal because the dealers were garbage. People know the cars are good, but if you show up at a dealership and have a shitty experience why would you want to buy a car from them that would then also link you to the dealer for future service on that car?
Did they not learn from the Opel experience??? It just won’t work here! Too many brands, even in the prestige market. Knowing GM, Cadillacs will be priced at the same amount as Mercedes or even a little higher like Jaguar. Anyone who can afford them will not buy them, they will buy Europeans because that is what they see as a prestige car.
Haven’t GM learned from the Opel debacle or from their bankruptcy? Are they really that stupid? Oh wait… they’re the ones planning on turning the Commodore into a front-wheel-drive, poorly made bucket of crap. They ARE that stupid!
This is so laughable it must be a joke. These guys are just looking for reasons to make November and February business class trips to Australia from Detroit. Surely they have more important things to focus on!! Mark Reuss please stop this silliness.