I worked on 1-18's when they were still under warranty. We NEVER had less than 2-3 in the shop a week. All with leaking seals, which took out the bearings.

Learned early in life to dislike them.....

They couldn't fix the problems.

Our 1974 Sedan de Ville is the last good Cadillac until the 1990s. Literally.

GM was going down a very bad path in that period.

Cadillac Motor Cars through the years and the only one from that era which was put together with care and effort at getting it right is the '74. I've spent more time under a German friends' imported '75 Eldorado Convertible than I in the seat behind him.

Did some individual functions work better over time? Of course. That the 500 put out only five brake horsepower more in '74 than the 472 is just a hint of how bad things were.

Doesn't change the facts on the ground and we've owned enough, driven enough family members and worked on too, too, far too many of that era to even bother with pretence: Cadillac and GM in general were not paying attention to build quality in that era.

I could write 1000s of words on everything which was right on our '89 Fleetwood Brougham de Elegance and MILLIONS on what was wrong.

Again, just because an individual system was improved in many cases doesn't change the facts. Goodness - the arm rests on the doors of our Sedan de Ville are still pliable. The '89 had cracks in them and they were hard as rock by '2003.

I think you're right. I did a lot of in-house-last-minute translation and some original work for B/S/H in Gingen and Munich in the late '80s through the 2000s and (of course they weren't B/S/H in the '80s) and they were keenly aware of how far advanced the Americans were in many areas. And, of how awful their quality control was.

It's how Germany managed to leverage their higher prices into people buying their products internationally. You knew, if you bought a Bosch, that it was going to pay for itself over time.

Frigidaire took the extra hit of those awful WCI products bearing their name. Lots of people bought (once) a 'Frigidaire' made (is that even the right word for what came out of White Consolodated in those days, 'made'?) by WCI which failed in short order. They didn't get upset with WCI, they got upset with Frigidaire. Brand name was taken down from the same ranking as the best of the best to cheap trash in less than one product cycle.

Scary.