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My First … and Last … Cadillacs |
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Musings
By Harold Katz
Having spent the first 25 years of my life in Detroit, I found Michael Moore’s piece (CityWatch-December 5) most interesting and accurate in my opinion.
All my young life I dreamed of the day that I could afford to buy my first Cadillac Fleetwood, I finally reached that point here in Los Angeles and had a fair experience with it until a bolt fell out of the transmission in Big Sur and I drove the entire portion of the trip in second gear as it couldn’t shift into 3rd gear. The result was I almost blew the engine and with 60,000 miles on it I sold it to our home cleaning crew for $300.
I went out and bought a Cadillac STS (or SDS or letters to that effect, it was the expensive one). It turned out to be a nightmare. It was constantly in for service. It was a pain in the neck.
There were many problems but the one that broke the camels back was the air conditioning. It went out four or five tim es durin g the first seven months. Then I was driving to Las Vegas on a Sunday for a three day stay and the air conditioner went out again. I was about 140 miles West of Vegas and it was 113 degrees outside.
I called Cadillac service and explained the problem. They told me to keep the air conditioning system off. I told them I wanted them to pick up the car at the hotel and leave me a loaner, I was not going to get up at 6:30 in the morning to drive to the dealer. I told them to contact Martin Cadillac and check the history of my air conditioning. The gentlemen said that would be no problem, they would pick up the car at the hotel, and to call when I got there.
When I checked in I called them, the gentlemen who said he would have the car picked up told me that if the car was drivable his boss said I had to drive it in. I told him to tell them if they made me do that, I would never again buy an American car, let alone a Cadillac. He said I had to drive the car in.
Since then, I bought at least eight Toyotas for the family and I have driven Lexus’ and Infinity’s and I have not and will not buy an American made car. My cars have never seen the inside of a repair shop except for oil changes, batteries, tires and brakes.
One of the conditions of a bail out of the Big Three is that all top executives should be fired and the new management must immediately improve the quality of their automobiles to match the quality of the Japanese cars that are manufactured in the United States.
Michael Moore got it right.
(Harold Katz is a Westside activist and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)
CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 100
Pub: Dec 12, 2008
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