Cadillac Catera spawns the CTS !
 

learn something every day ....

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Catera, the "Caddy that zigs" ... the car generally delivered on its promise of European-style handling. The launch advertisements featured Cindy Crawford talking to an animated duck-like creature known as "Ziggy", offered by Cadillac as follows — "Like Catera, he was hatched in Germany and has the sole mission of bringing fun to the luxury of Cadillac. He was one of six mythical, beakless, footless martins or "Merlettes" in the Cadillac Crest before we gave him big feet, a giant beak, and turned him around. He's quite a departure from his five brothers who have been part of the Cadillac Crest since the days of the crusades when the crest was the proud symbol of Le Sieur Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac Family."


Though the Catera generally received good reviews from the automotive press, sales did not meet GM's expectations. The car was often seen as too small to appeal to the marque's traditional luxury car buyers and failed to attract as many buyers away from European luxury brands as GM had initially predicted. Some compared the Catera's short and disappointing production run to the disastrous Cimarron of the early 1980s, although the Catera was a far better car in the opinion of most journalists and owners. The "duck's" disappearance from the company logo altogether in 1999 may have been a reaction to this failure, although they were also dropped to simplify the logo just before the company would launch its successful "Art & Science" design theme.

The Catera, due in part to reliability problems including initial tire wear issues caused by an "autobahn-friendly" alignment specification, and engine failures (for which a recall was eventually offered by GM) as well as a disappointing marketing campaign, was dropped after the 2001 model year. Consumer and automotive publications have generally reported the Catera's reliability improved significantly with the 1999 model year. Approximately 95,000 Cateras were sold in the United States in its five-year production run.

By the time the Catera was dropped, Cadillac would begin the company's current "Art & Science" design theme, and would skip a model year before unveiling the Catera's replacement, the American-designed & built Cadillac CTS, which would become a much more successful model.