The fact that a 35 year old cassette plays so well in a 35 year old delco head unit is impressive.

The most impressive thing about this is the lack of rust on a 35 year old J body.

That widow impression was way too spot on. Also Jerome totally had another family in Vietnam.

As someone who owned an 84 Cavalier, I can confirm that this is absolutely the same car with different badges and leather seats. GM seriously did not give a shit in the 80's, and then had the nerve to wonder how Toyota and Honda surpassed them in the 90's.

All through elementary and middle school, my best friend's grandmother "always wanted a Cadillac" but couldn't afford it. When her husband died, she finally bought her first Cadillac with the life-insurance money in 1984. I about fell off my chair laughing after you said "widows" as the first category for Cimarron buyers.

A friend of mine was shopping for a used car back around 2000. The salesman said, "I have just the car for you", and directed us to a lemon yellow Cimarron. I must admit that, body-wise, it was pretty flawless. It was definitely the "widow" car. This thing even had matching yellow floor mats. My friend wasn't knowledgeable on cars, but my first words were, "Oh God, no." The salesman saw my face and knew this wasn't going any further.

The “don’t run the engine in the red part of the tachometer” tells you everything about the people who bought these

"affluenza ridden peasants thirsty to drink from life's pimp cup" Sometimes you turn a phrase so well I have to rewind multiple times just to appreciate how good it is

Best part about the Cimarron: No worse than a Cavalier. Worst part about the Cimarron: No better than a Cavalier. More disappointing than bad.

Mercedes S class 1987, "When a Mercedes was a Mercedes." Cadillac Cimarron 1987, "When a Cadillac was a Chevy."

My dad had the 5-speed manual Cimarron. He adored it. Everyone else hated it. Really reliable. Far more reliable than the 5 Northstar STS he bought after it. He then sold it to my uncle. My uncle gave it to his son. I learned how to drive stick on a Cimarron.

When I saw this vid come up, I was like, "Yesssssss...." I knew this would be gold. I'm familiar with the reputation of this car through automotive folklore. Cadillac had a bad reputation in my family. My dad bought a used 1978 Fleetwood sometime in 1988, as he had just become a realtor and it was a good people mover for showing houses in style (kinda). It had a massive engine (it was the 425). Damn thing could nearly chirp tires on the highway. But it had seen a rough life by the time he got it, and it was as reliable as a politician. In 1990 he traded up to a 1988 Fleetwood. You'd think, "Well then, that would have been a quality and reliability boost eh?" Mmmmmm... no. By 1992 it had what was described as a floppy piston (that's my recollection as a kid). He took it to the local GM dealer. They said they'd take a look (it would take a few days). Meanwhile they gave him a Pontiac Firefly as a courtesy car, after they had originally agreed that if he bought this car, as a realtor he would need a mid-size sedan as a loaner for when he got oil changes or any work done. So that was strike one. His office was right down the road, so when they called him to say it was ready to go, he drove onto the lot and did what I probably would have done (he had already lost some trust with these guys), and check the tires. He had marked them to see if they even moved the car from where it was parked. It hadn't moved. Someone probably got in, started it, shrugged, and said it was fine. I kinda doubt they had handheld diagnostic devices back then. You generally had to pull the car into a bay and do it there. So into the service department he marched. Our neighbour, a Brit with the stereotypical name Mick, worked there. Super great guy. He only worked on foreign and exotics (I one got to sit in a 1976 Lotus Esprit that was parked in his driveway - that was rad). He saw my dad coming in hot and quickly exited stage left (I don't think he even worked there for much longer, mostly out of disgust). My dad chucked a wobbler and probably ruined the day of a few people. That became strikes two and three. Side story on the Firefly "courtesy" car: While stewing in the driver seat of that go-cart with doors, he drove to the Ford dealer. There was a 1992 Lincoln TownCar parked on the lot. It had 100 or so km's on it. Basically brand new given that some new cars on a lot will get test driven enough times to get to that point. Well, this wasn't that. It had been owned by an elderly guy who probably drove it to church a dozen times and then he up and passed away, so the car returned. This of course meant it had to sell at a discount, and my dad was there for it. The dealership, looking at his Firefly situation, offered to let him use the TownCar as his surrogate courtesy car (that's such a hilarious power move, by the way). He would buy that car shortly after. It became the car he owned the longest out of any car, and he had gone through many. I think he had it from 1992 until 2006 when he traded it for a 2005 TownCar. I don't normally write comments this friggin' long, but I thought it was a fun story to tell.

As someone who works in the car business, that conversation with Janet was painfully real. How dare you lol

OMG! I remember my neighbor bringing home his new "Caddy Cimarron" and he was soooo proud.....but my sister had just bought a new Cavalier that looked suspiciously just like it, it was hilarious! It was so hard not to laugh every time we saw it...... Happy Belated Birthday Roman!

I'm old, but I remember this car like it was yesterday. My good friend's family owned a Cadillac/Oldsmobile dealership in eastern PA. His mother got a brand new Cimarron every year starting in 1983 through 1988. I recall quite well all of the rides to his house on the buttery leather, impressed by the Cadillac badge, looking forward to time in his pool with his older sister looking after us. What caught me off guard was when my aunt picked me up in her brand new '87 Cavalier and the 10 year old me came to the realization that GM was full of shit.

"scale model of hopelessness" - possibly my favorite RCR line ever.

I love these bad 80s cars, they’re just so weird.

My grandma had one of these. My grandpa bought it for her birthday back in '88. He passed in '92 from a heart attack. But, my grandma is 82, and still going. One time, when we were sitting in the garage, she told me how often she would take the car for a ride around the lake. Then, she walked over to her current car, (2015 Chevy Trax,) and she opened the trunk. She pulled out the last remaining thing from that old Cadillac: one of the floor mats. Now, she uses it as a trunk mat to put boxes of plants on top of, when she visits my grandfather's grave.

Has there ever been a feature in ANY car with as cool a name as "Twilight Sentinel"? Other than that, I like the look of this car. It looks cheap but clean, like it's wearing a Burlington Coat Factory suit that was fitted by their in-house tailor.

My parents drove Devil's back then, I remember the dealership tried pushing this thing. My mother could NOT stop laughing, then went on to tell them they had escaped Buick and Oldsmobile and weren't going back!

This intro hit so hard! Nailed how depressing the car was!

Respect to John Manoogian at Cadillac for designing this thing in only 9 months out of a Cavalier whilst only being allowed to alter front fascia and taillights. “Rare Classic Cars” did a good video about the Cadillac Cimarron and why it failed.

I cannot get enough of the audio on the tape. It's such a perfect time capsule of what corporate America believed spoke to 51st and higher percentile. It also syncs so well with a lot of the audio cranked out by Disney at the early years of EPCOT Center (a different obsession of mine) which again was such a target of the 51st+ er's.

Damn that bit about the widow is so true. I’ve worked as a bike shop salesman and they’ll go on and on and on about stories like that and you just have to be like “mmmm uhuh yeah…anyway let’s move on”

Yeah I’m gonna need the full Gold Key cassette uploaded. Holy crap. That’s rare.

To be honest, if you were giving away a 1987 Cimarron I'd be way more likely to enter than for a Corvette. Thank you for your superb content as usual, Mr. Regular!

The late ones like this with a V-6 weren't terrible, and the suspension was firmed up a bit. I had a housemate in the mid 90's who had one and loved it. On the other hand, I had a h.s. friend who had a 1st or 2nd year model. Those had a very loose suspension, and a wheezy 1.8 4-cyl, made in Brazil I think. He had a lot of problems with it and it was very low on power.

I owned a 94 cavalier for a few years, 4cyl auto, four door, actually a very reliable car. I put over 200,000 miles on it in four years, and it had nearly 200,000 on it when I got it. Not fast but the AC always worked.

My grandmother's hairdresser had one of the last model years with the digital gauge cluster. Believe it was a hand-me-down after her mother went permanent horizontal. I can still remember Tom Petty playing on the speakers one Saturday morning when Lindy came to pick us up for grandma's weekly hair appointment. Just something strange about the car perfectly matched the vibe of her hair salon's purple neon lights and ambient hair spray smell. The rear leather seats were slippery and hard as hell on the outside, yet had lots of soft cusion lol.

14:22 - The GM “cup holders” in the glove compartment may be the most useless feature ever designed into a car. Classic GM. Think of a useful feature, then do it poorly.

I saw one of these in a junkyard and wanted to steal the Cadillac badge off the trunk but when I opened the trunk an angry raccoon was in there and it attacked me, I've never slammed a trunk faster in my life. happy belated birthday Roman!

I think I found my dream car. It's the embodiment of mediocrity and haplessness, the kind of car that not even people were interested in scrapping during the Cash for Clunkers program.

My first car was an 88 cimarron. My grandpa bought it new, drove it for about 10 years and then it sat for a year or two before he "sold" it to my dad for $1 for my first vehicle. I had fond memories when I was young riding around in that car, and loved driving it. It was red with the... "adult film" red leather interior, and the sound system was actually really good. Only problem I had with it was the fuel pump and one of the windows didn't always go all the way back up so you had to push up on it while you held the switch to go up.

Happy belated birthday Roman!!! The perfect automotive example of the aggrogence of America exceptionalism immortalized in steel & plastic. Is there a Razzy award equivalent in the auto industry? Cadillac Cimarron, most likely to have an existential identity crisis. Love you guys!

I worked for a BMW dealership in the 80s. We would occasionally get these things as a trade-in, usually with very low miles. GM made such little effort to disguise the Cavalier. It's amazing that anyone bought one of these.

Been waiting for this one for a long time! As someone who thinks of badge engineering and "aspirational goods" as bougie bullshit, thinking the whole concept of luxury brands as obnoxious, I love this car. It is GM/Cadillac unintentionally parodying their own nonsense. Making it plainly clear what Cadillac, and luxury brands, really are. Trying to make cars feel more valuable (and accordingly charging more for them) by putting a different name on them.

I had a friend who swapped his cavalier front end and rear end with a Cimarron. It was kind of cool.

The Cimarron, or that time GM slapped Cadillac badging on a Chevy Cavalier and expected it to go against BMW, Volvo, Mercedes and Audi.

My glorious Cimarron fever dream is a late model with the aero headlamps and a 5-speed manual, onto which the arse of a Cavalier wagon is seamlessly grafted such that it looks factory-built. I would drive that to every Cars & Coffee I could and make up a new fake origin story for every venue.

I love that no matter how long I watch your videos even through all these years they are never boring and always have some nice story’s and deep looks into why people like the cars they do. Thank you Mr.Regular and Roman for being awesome and for spreading the PA sense of humor not many get to see

Its amazing how different the same basic platform can be between markets. In the UK and Europe we got the J-Body as the Vauxhall Cavalier MK2 and the Opel Ascona C. We never got an outright "luxury" one (just a high trim Cavalier) but we did get the SRi which got 130bhp from a 2.0 four cylinder 8v unit (though the 1.6 and 1.8 models were much more popular). The later MK3 Cavalier/Vectra A got more rounded styling and both the 2.0 16v Red Top (150bhp) and a 2.5 V6 (170bhp).

When I was a kid, the adults played at this club called Club Cimarron. I was quite Cavalier to their activities at that time, but this video single-handedly put things into perspective, 25 years later.

I am curious, in those shots you take of many cars where the car is just cruising along slowly while traffic whips by.... have you guys ever had to deal with road rage? I assume most people notice the camera car and keep control, but I know many people that cant control themselves, especially these days.

This would have been the perfect car for someone like my father in the 80’s. Wanting to live the complete yuppy lifestyle, but not really quite having the funds to do it correctly. Incidentally he was looking at one of these for a work car in the mid 90’s, an ‘85 model, but ended up getting an S-10 pickup instead, because that’s what you cross shop a Cimarron with.

Ok it was not a great idea, but as European i really like seeing a 4.5m long Cadillac. Its shape looks more proportionate than the usual Cadillacs, but this is my opinion based on the fact that here a 5.5 m car is considered a wheeled cruise ship.

I love you for this one line alone "It's GIF, GRAPHICS INTERCHANGE FORMAT!"

I will always thing of this as a missed opportunity. Imagine if GM had threw in the Cavalier Z24 engine, transmission, suspension, brakes, tires and priced it the same as the Z24. Would it have been damned as being a halfhearted attempt to go after the three series? Probably. But it would've been better than what it was.

My uncle had one of these. Even when I was 10 years old, I could tell that driving this tarted up shit box meant his life had peaked a lot lower than he had hoped. He’s dead now. Not because of the car, more the alcoholism. Which also tracks for a divorced middle-aged salesmen.

The crack at Penndot got me dying, quality review as always. Happy birthday Roman!

Words can’t describe how excited I felt when I saw this drop

I actually think the Cimarron has really nice styling.

I think this little caddy is charming, it also appears to be well looked after and clean. (other than some rust on the trunk)

When I think of Roger Smith's GM, this is exactly what I think of.

Wow actually never seen 1 of these in the wild. And i was a tech 4 years. GM in the 80s was crazy. The c4 got a targa top but had no reinforcement fot it as the execs requested it so late. Craziness. Also guy in passenger seat looks like James from AVGN

I always wondered what might have been if GM had chosen the A-body platform as the "small" Cadillac. Called it the Calais even.

I was a teen in the 80's and I can confirm that none of us youngsters back then would have bought a Cimarron. We all knew it was just a rebadged Cavalier and would not have been dumb enough to fork out the extra dollars for such an obvious scam.

We never had this in Europe. But…we had Opel Ascona which is the same exact car with smaller engine, different front/rear fascia and interior. It was basically Europe’s Chevy.

When I saw this video come out, my eyes lit up. I had to watch it now. I’ve been waiting for RCR to review this car...

My dad owned a tow company and I was born in 1992. My mom had 1 of these till I was about 3. It was free and almost new bc somebody got it impounded and my mom took it. She put a z24 body kit on it over time and never had a license till she was in her 40s but still drove everyday. She finally got a ticket and had to get her license after being pulled over bc the muffler fell off. She traded it for a ASTRO van

My dad used to be a GM mechanic. This car is one of the reasons he became a Ford guy.

If I did a Top Gear esque cheap car challenge through the US I would definietly consider getting a decent condition Cimarron. They seem comfy and are dirt cheap. Alternatively I'd also pick something Eagle related from AMC, if not just an Eagle outright.

I'm really loving that you're trying some new stuff. Loved the Kunkleman bit. Keep being awesome!

TAPE:- "If your cimmeron is equipped with the butt buster 9000 - you can attach this also to the passengers seat so they too can feel maximum enjoyment of being shafted!"

I knew an old couple that had a stick shift version! I believe the transmission was made by Isuzu. It was geared pretty low and had some pep. I remember we raced it against an 80's square-body Maxima and was surprised it was faster. It was literally the color of legal paper, and hilarious.

Mr. Regular, please please post an unabridged recording of this tape, both sides if applicable. It needs to be preserved.

I legit thought that when the 80s music started it was going to be an elaborate fake by the editing team, but nope. It's real and that's mindblowing.

I like how the commercial states that the car is “functional”. Boy that’s something to aspire to. To bad it didn’t live up to this claim.

The mid to late 80s really were and are the future

It's crazy how many variants of the J type there were. The Mk2 Vauxhall Cavalier was about to be replaced in the UK by 1987, and in the USA they were making a Cadillac on the same platform. Would love to get hold of one of the Pontiac variants with a Trans Am style front end and graft it onto a British Cavalier, for reasons of Smokey and the Bandit. Great video, and car 😁

I remember this car when it debuted even though I was a kid. Even though I knew it was awful. Originally it had 88 hp. I didn't know they ran quite as long as they did. since that time no platform has been shared by Chevy and Cadillac until the Escalade

I used to attend the “Snowbird Nationals” in South Florida in the early nineties. There was a racer running a 1987 Cimarron and 1987 Seville in the Stock Eliminator class. The Cimarron was running mid 14s and the Seville was running high 13s in the 1/4 mile.

Part of the reason I love this channel is that I get the same feeling of anticipation that I get watching a False Swipe Gaming video. How BAD was the Cadillac Cimarron ACTUALLY? "Unfortunately..."

For a pimped up Cavalier, the Cimarron actually seems like a nice car, especially nowadays with the fuel crisis hurting land yacht owners. (Not like these are economic anyway.) The Cadillac Cimarron could be a great budget luxury car for younger enthusiasts and others.

Happy birthday Roman! I've been listening to your documentaries on the podcast while transporting lately, Fordlandia and the Saab one were amazing. Cheers guys.

I have a Cadillac ATS, which I love, and I can probably thank how bad this luxury shitbox was for how good my ATS is. I am sure that the Cimarron was in the back of their minds when they were designing the first small Caddy in like 3 decades.

My grandmother had the Buick Skyhawk coupe version of this car. I absolutely loved it because of how it looked with the covered headlights whose doors spun down underneath the headlight assembly versus popping up. No power steering, no clock in the radio, no air conditioning, no rear window defroster, a 4-speed manual transmission. Interestingly, the one option it did have was cruise control. I always thought it was the best looking out of all the J cars. It was my first car as well, and I would get 37 miles per gallon in it. I miss it. Despite its cheapness, it was a good and durable little car.

Only GM coud take an Opel Ascona, turn It into a Cadillac and somehow end up with a downgrade.

That beginning was spot on to every safety video I’ve ever watched at Ford

Back in the early 80s Chrysler made a budget Limo they called the Executive which was basically a stretched front wheel drive LeBaron with a glass partition between the driver and passengers in the back seat. If Cadillac stretched the Cavalier body 2 or 3 feet to give more interior legroom and added a turbo to the engine to give it more power it might have stood out more than it did, but it's a Cavalier no matter how you look at it.

That tape is really something else, its amazing

I had a 6 month old 86 1/2 Cimarron. It was a 4k mile dealer demo... we got a great deal on it and I was 17. It was a nice car... navy blue, silver cladding navy leather and cloth seats. By 1986, this wasnt one of the worst cars ever made but maybe just the worst Cadillac....

My Grandma bought a Cimarron brand new back in the day. She actually loved that car, but she had to trade it in on a new Cadillac or she would disappoint the rest of the mall-walkers in the Chicago suburbs

To me what’s most interesting about the Cimarron is that it showed you how gussied up a Cavalier could be. General Motors hated to spend a dime anywhere it could avoid it so although a Cavalier could be ordered pretty loaded up, the vast majority of them were poverty spec, with just blanks where all of the options should be… No trunk release, no tachometer, no cruise control. This can be an enjoyable car if you look at it as a fully loaded Cavalier.

Now these are the videos on this channel I look forward to the most

Automotive shingles .. haha, how do you come up with this stuff!?! love it!

It looks like the kind of car you'd run over with a Rhino tank in GTA San Andreas.

Moved to Gallup NM 20 years ago. Neighborhood I was in was built in the early 1950s and was the first development in the little city of 20,000. Next block over from my house was a Cimarron in chocolate brown with a tan lower body and windows too tinted to see what the interior color was. It had the aluminum wheels and proudly advertised the 3.0 V6 on it's trunk lid. It was sitting in front of a house where the residents remembered WWII as the event of their high school years. I lived there 4 years and patiently waited for it to come up for sale. It moved just enough to prove that it was driven but was so clean you could have set up computer chip manufacturing on the hood. Sadly I was never blessed by seeing a "for sale" sign on it.

My dad bought a used one in the late 80's as a commuter car, he commuted about 35 miles to work every day. He liked it for what it was, an inexpensive beater with comfortable amenities. But it was always kind of a joke of a car, we called it the Cadlette.

They made them with a manual transmission?! I'd be all over that! (Yeah, I'm one of those guys)

The first car handed to me was a 1990 Cavalier--no A/C, no tape deck, no passenger side mirror and for a very short while not even a heater core or blower motor. Even at 17 I recognized that humble J-body for what it was--a generically engineered lump of mediocrity that was only designed to move its similarly uninspired occupant from A to B. Even with the Iron Duke I-4 and 3-speed auto that thing would overheat and ping like a bitch under fairly modest load. That car was not designed for the 2.8L underhood at all, yet Z24s of that generation have them and were reliability nightmares. That said... mine lasted me a good 4 years in college and 40k miles over the 85,000 already on it. It had been fairly well cared for and wasn't a bad runabout for what it was--the passenger room was generous for a compact car and the all-metal body was sturdy enough for teenage abuse. It still needed to be torn apart to solve its HVAC issues in true GM fashion when we first bought it, and again at 117k. When the ignition finally shit the bed we hotwired the thing so my dad could drive it for four hours back from college and to a scrapyard. Long story short... I can't imagine that J-body serving as an aspirational vehicle in any way. But I could see owning one of these Cimarrons solely for kitsch's sake. Just don't ever drive the damn thing unless you want acid reflux. This was Generic Motors in its purest form. Happy Birthday Roman.

I wonder how an owner would feel submitting the car for review and having it royally shit upon...

Thing is, while the Cimarron never deserved s Cadillac badge, the car itself near the end of its run was actually half decent. Like many GM failure stories (ie: Fiero), they killed so many cars just once they started to get them right.

I can almost smell this car. I love it.

Yay!!! back to truly regular car!!!

It was an 87 Chevy Cavalier I took driver ed in. I can remember the instructor yelling to floor it down the hill so we could get up the other side. I would have been pissed to do this with a Cadillac.

I can remember my grandfather had one of these in the mid 90s and I can remember him saying that the reason he bought it was because of 2 reasons: #1 it was cheap used and #2 its a vehicle no one would want to steal. The previous owner had an anti theft immobilizer installed on it and he would always point out how pointless it was to have that on a car not worth stealing!

Thank you on the GIF pronunciation, I don't care if the inventor says it's JIF, he is WRONG!

How rare must a still surviving manual Cimerron be?

I unironically love all GM J-body cars. i have never owned one but something about them just attracts me to them. i 100% plan on buying one as a side car soon just for the history alone. Id LOVE it to be a cimarron too

As a kid I distinctly remember sitting in the barbershop chair looking at the Cimmeron commercial playing on the wall mounted tv. “Testimonials” from “customers” who had compared Cimmeron to BMW and Audi and gone for the Cadillac. My family had owned several BMW’s at this point. At 12 years old I thought...yeah, give me break. Who the hell are these people? I would drive one today just for the nostalgia value.