Oh no, you caught me Sheriff.
No, but my cousins in Dallas do. A 2008 550i. They still have it actually and love it for it's prowess. But they still think about if they should have spent that extra 10 grand and get a 7 series. That's the pricing I'm referring to here.
First off, questioning whether you should just spend an extra $10K for anything is not a realistic thought.
Secondly, there's no reason to go from a fully loaded 550i to a base model 7 Series just because you think you might have spent the extra $10,000. Because it's so easy to just say, "Hey, what's an
extra $10,000 yo?"
And third, that's an "issue" shared by other manufacturers as well. A fully loaded TSX V6 is right on the corner stone of a TL, just as a loaded Camaro SS runs under $3-4,000 short of a base Corvette.
Well, the best thing I can say about the XLR is that it seems to have suffered from crippling depreciation values, which means I might be able to buy one without betting the farm at some point. Yes, I'm an unabashed fan of the XLR.
But, relative to the Mercedes SL and BMW 6 Series, I'm not so sure that $100,000 for a top of the line XLR-V is all that outrageous considering that all of its competitors were similarly priced, and more expensive in many cases. That being said, a cheaper, attractive alternative to the Germans cruisers sounds more appealing than calling the XLR an uber-expensive Corvette, as far as I'm concerned.
The catch is that Mercedes & BMW offering a $100,000 car is not unheard of. A Cadillac coming out of nowhere, esp. one that's based on a gussied-up Corvette body is.
When you get down to actually comparing what you're getting from BMW & what you're getting from Cadillac, the BMW was a better car in every category besides maintenance fees.
M6 was hardtop - not available at all with anything opentop. Corvette looked alright, but wasn't as comfortable, not as flashy, and wasn't available with the folding hardtop. The SL55 AMG MSRP was 30 grand higher than the V while still being down on power.
The Corvette looks or comfort wasn't the point of the picture; it was the fact that there was indeed a car just like the XLR on the road. The only other car that is built on the Y-Platform.
The SL55 AMG can not be compared on any level to the XLR-V. It was $30,000 more, but the facelift model (the previous model was already 4 years old by the time the V came along) produced 510Bhp over the 443Bhp of the Cadillac, so where are you getting that it was down on power? Because even the pre-facelift model sported 470Bhp.
And where as the V only produced 414lb-ft of torque, the Mercedes was outputting 530lb-ft. The only thing the V had close to the BMW & the Mercedes was similar 0-60s due to the weight advantage.
If you want to compare any SL, it would be the SL500 & it was $8,000 cheaper. It wasn't as powerful as the V, but it was still much more luxurious.
As for the Corvette, it obviously isn't going to be as comfortable or flashy because that was the point of the XLR. To be that "flashy" version of the Corvette, but that was all it had going for it. The Corvette was offering similar performance to a XLR-V for half the costs, so it should be expected that it isn't going to have all the creature comforts.
I don't disagree that it didn't stack up very well against the germans, but that's because the interior still just wasn't as good as them, not because the basic idea was bad. On the road and around town it was every bit as poised and 'right.' I think the main problems with it are that the interior was bad and it wasn't marketed very well. It's much more stunning than SL, priced better, and comparatively sporty.
The whole car fell flat next to its German competitors in every way practically. It wasn't as nice to drive, wasn't as luxurious, wasn't as quick. For a $100,000 it still had typical GM touches to it, which was ridiculous.
Just because people aren't used to paying 100k for a Cadillac doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a 100k Cadillac.
That's exactly what it meant 6 years ago. Cadillac did not have the image it has today back then, so a $100,000 Cadillac had to be pretty something special if there was a M6 being sold for the same price. But, it was an extremely expensive car being sold by a company that did not attract that kind of market. Cadillac can do it today because they've changed their image & make much better cars.
It's a story similar to Hyundai; if you had told me in 2006 there would be a $60,000 Hyundai sedan going on the market that year, I bet it would have flopped too next to the XLR & the Phaeton.
Plus older trucks have way more character, better looks (less plastic), and simpler mechanics, no pointless computers.
