Why does General Motors Cadillac need a high-performance sub-brand?
It's an interesting question. For years, Cadillacs were thought of as "a couch on wheels," as the brand's marketing chief, Uwe Ellinghaus, put it in a conversation with us in Detroit last week.
But times have changed. German luxury giants BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi have all shown that high-performance luxury cars can sell -- and sell quite well.
But the business cases for cars like BMW's M5 -- or Cadillac's CTS-V -- go beyond profitable sales. These are brand-builders, models that have a "halo effect" on the other cars in the automaker's lineup.
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