1984 Cadillac Deville Base Sedan 4-door 4.1l on 2040-cars

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Cadillac dealers frustrated over Escalade production snarls

Lincoln went through it during the launch of the MKZ last year, Jeep went through something similar with its Cherokee launch, and now the 2015 Cadillac Escalade has apparently caught the bug: dealer delivery delays because of quality control checks. Automotive News reports that Cadillac dealers have been waiting three times longer than usual - a month or more - from the time an Escalade leaves the assembly line to when it gets delivered. Worse, dealers are saying they don't always know where their vehicles are in transit, or when they are set to arrive. The situation has upset customers who have put down deposits and things have gotten so bad that some dealers have reportedly stopped taking pre-orders.
Cadillac says it has the delay, called "dwell time," down to two weeks, and it expects to cut that to a week by the beginning of September. The company said "a lengthy quality-assurance process on some interior parts" has caused the lag, the report citing additional issues with figuring out which vehicles should be delivered first. A spokesman said that more trucks have been put in the distribution system to work through the backlog, but it's clear it's still going to take some time to set things right, with one dealer telling AN that cars ordered in February and March still haven't arrived.
Brand chief Kurt McNeil said additional personnel are at the Escalade's Arlington, Texas factory to speed up the checks, and spreadsheets tracking every order have been distributed to field staff. Even with the snafu, though, the Escalade is Cadillac's best seller through July.

Mercedes leads in US luxury car thefts

Mercedes-Benz makes some fine automobiles. The Silver Arrow'd cars are so good, apparently, that thieves can't help but try to steal them. The German brand is at the top of the charts for luxury car thefts in the US, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, with New York City leading the way. (And those New Yorkers complain about Detroit being bad!)
The C-Class was the most stolen model, with 485 ganked between 2009 and 2012 in NYC alone, while the E-Class and S-Class (which also boasted the worst recovery rate, at 59 percent) both finished in the top ten. Following the C-Class was the BMW 3 Series and Infiniti G. Not surprisingly, each of these were the most common models in their respective lineups. Los Angeles and Miami are also prime hotspots for luxury car thefts, according to the Detroit News report.
While getting your car stolen is pretty awful, there was one inspiring statistic compiled by the NICB - the average recovery rate across the board was 84 percent, with the Cadillac CTS getting recovered 91 percent of the time.

2015 Cadillac Escalade

I have never liked traveling to Monterey, CA. The picturesque coastal city is about 300 miles from my home in Los Angeles, which means cramped and uncomfortable regional aircraft are part of the equation when the turnaround is only one night. Over the years, I have cursed the LA Basin's bumper-to-bumper traffic en route to the airport, argued with TSA personnel over carry-on baggage and waited countless hours for the fog to lift just for the anguish of being packed into a small regional jet for the flight. Of course, the process repeats on the trip home with equal misery.
Yet this time I am not suffering.
Cadillac has dropped its all-new 2015 Escalade in my driveway. Instead of battling city congestion, attempting to reason with misinformed government agents, snacking on a too-small bag of pretzels and physically rubbing shoulders with a dubious stranger for 90-plus minutes within the confines of a bumpy aircraft, I have chosen to forgo air travel and drive myself door-to-door in a fullsize luxury sport utility vehicle.