+ Click to Enlarge INTERNATIONAL CAR: The Swedish-built Cadillac BLS is a perfectly decent sedan, rendered even more sensible by its excellent Fiat-built diesel engine.

August 6, 2006
By Michael Booth

Cadillac BLS 1.9D specifications
Price: £21 473 (about R280 000).
Performance: Top speed 210km/h, 0-100mph 9.5sec.
Combined fuel consumption: 6.34 litres/100km.

How far should one change to please others? Are the makers of Marmite honestly satisfied now their once-noble product now sells in a squeezy tube and has thus been irreparably compromised in the pursuit of convenience?

Paul McCartney must surely regret dying his hair the colour of an Aberdeen Angus Steak House banquette because Heather didn't want him to embarrass her in front of her mates. And I've never truly forgiven my wife for making me sell all of my Suzi Quatro memorabilia as a condition of our engagement.

I wonder how Cadillac will feel about the new BLS in a few years? Certainly, it will be satisfied because it has built what is probably the best-quality American car since the days of Duesenberg and Tucker. Cadillac's parent, General Motors, set out to design and build a car that would appeal to European middle management.

It had to be relatively compact and frugal, have Rizla-paper thin shut lines and a robust yet lavish enough cabin to at least tempt a BMW 3 Series owner.

A radical image overhaul was required as well.

Once upon a time, for example, Cadillac's PR people would have seen it as a coup to have had a Stetson-wearing deputy prime minister photographed behind the wheel of one of their cars, but the BLS had to appeal to habitués of the Norwich Union HQ car park rather than sequinned stars of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry.

So, the BLS is a perfectly decent sedan, rendered even more sensible, in the case of the one I tried, thanks to its excellent Fiat-built diesel engine.

But you know there has to be a "but". Like those other 20th-century relics Jim Davidson and Lego GM is experiencing a little financial difficulty right now. In fact, GM's bank statement probably makes me look well off; I can't even afford to refill my collection of Pez dispensers – and I only have three.

So, to save money while simultaneously launching its most serious challenge yet in Europe, GM decided to take another of its products - the Saab 9-3 - jazz it up a little and knock a few hundred quid off the price.

Look closely and you'll see the BLS has the same side windows, roofline and windscreen as the 9-3. It also has the same engine as the 9-3, you start it with the same type of key and steer it with the same kind of steering wheel which, for the first time in a Cadillac, is on the right.

And it's assembled in Sweden.

If there is a country more antithetical to the notion of a Cadillac than Sweden, it is probably Finland, but Sweden is a pretty good second choice. In Sweden, they wear sensible shoes, eat crackers and worry about the effects of acid rain on Latvia.

It's true that King Gustaf XVI drives a Ferrari but he has to apologise for this at the opening of parliament each year. (And the fact that they've had 16 kings called Gustaf probably tells you all you need to know about the Swedes' conservative nature.)

What, then, makes this a Cadillac? As far as I can make out, the badge. And they're probably thinking of changing that too. I'd stick with the Saab if I were you.

It's a classic: Elvis's Cadillacs

Elvis Presley owned dozens of Cadillacs. His first was a 1954 model, painted pink and white. According to the Elvis's Cadillacs website it caught fire on the road between Hope and Texarkana.

Judging by what happened to many of Elvis's other Cadillacs, the first got off lightly. His next was used to transport live poultry; another rotted in a field in Alabama; and his 1960 Fleetwood limo - the one with a gold-plated interior and paint made from pearl, diamond dust and Oriental fish scales - is now in a museum in Nashville, Tennessee.

And then there was the 1968 Eldorado Coupé that he shot one morning because it wouldn't start. He later gave it to his wife Priscilla's stepfather. Presumably he couldn't stand the man.

Even Elvis's last journey, on August 18, 1977 to his resting place in the garden at Graceland, was in a Cadillac - a white Miller-Meteor Landau hearse that was followed by 16 more Cadillacs. – The Independent, London