How come they never made this.. (CIEN)

[The Fred]

That thing is the ULTIMATE Fred Car.

http://www.seriouswheels.com/top-Cadillac-Cien-Concept.htm

[Bruce Nunnally]

Apparently the business case just did not work; it would have cost more to do than they ever could have recovered in car sales, or benefit from having this as a high-halo car. Certainly a nice show-case for what Cadillac can do, and out of the range of what most people expect of the marque.

[The Fred]

Apparently the business case just did not work; it would have cost more to do than they ever could have recovered in car sales, or benefit from having this as a high-halo car. Certainly a nice show-case for what Cadillac can do, and out of the range of what most people expect of the marque.

That's logical,

I don't understand why the production costs would have been so much higher since it would have been mostly just some extra metal .. but I suppose I don't know what it costs to build an automobile.. I think that even if they lost money it would really get the Cadillac name back out there to people who think they stopped making Cadillacs or that they're big sluggish leadsleds(Like Paris Hilton thought you bought walls at wal-mart )

And if they kept it and just made it from then on they might recover the initial cost of the thing... not that GM can really afford to wipe their own asses right now, but at the time, the Cien would have been a good move

[Cadillac Jim]

A new model is much more of an investment than most people realize. The basics from a show car are simple: a working (sometimes) model with a body, doors, and driveline represents a concept taken from studios through an in-house or contracted model shop. But the design of a new model has not yet begun. Even the simplest of high level requirements for the completed production car aren't even near complete at that point.

High-level requirements for a production model that are evident from the show car include body shape, interior appearance, and some idea of driveline and chassis performance. High level requirements that are not apparent when a show car appears include, but are not limited to:

• Production capacity (about how many will sell per quarter?)
• Cost per unit (how much will the public pay?)
• Ride and handling.
• Features and options (what will the buyer want on it?)
• Life-cycle cost, including purchase, operation and maintenance -- usually through multiple owners -- and disposal.
• Manufacturer and dealer logistical support (parts supply chain, maintenance and overhaul manuals, etc.).

Given a set of high-level requirements, engineering based on knowledge, experience, emerging available technology, and hard work define the mid-level requirements. The mid-level requirements are things like:

• Frame or unibody geometry and technology (aluminum unibody, steel subframe with aluminum panels, etc).
• Overall weight, and weight distribution.
• Height of center of gravity.
• Suspension type and geometry.
• Electrical system communications buses and technology.
• Vehicle management computer architectures and communications.
• Accessibility and reparability support to be designed in.

Then, you start the hard part: the development of the low-level requirements, or documentation of the production requirements. This is done as an integral part of the design of the production line – actually a far larger project than design of the new model itself – and is updated as the production line is designed and developed. The mid-level requirements are also updated as part of this process, and even the high-level requirements are subject to update as lessons-learned are accumulated during this process. The first few production prototypes are a by-product of this process; these prototypes bring out the problems in the designs of the car and production lines are necessarily rough in construction, and they may be used as show cars but are never sold. Usually they are scrapped but sometimes they end up in museums.

Some short-cuts can be obtained by taking advantage of existing models whenever possible. For example, the 1953 Corvette show car was originally a fiberglass prototype body put on a modified 1949-1954 Chevrolet coupe chassis, and the original Evoq was a custom body on a Corvette C5 platform. The early Corvettes kept the original chassis parts through 1962, allowing Zora Arkus-Duntov's team to design the first real Corvette for 1963. But the Cadillac XLR has little design in common with the Evoq show car.

This process takes form 18 months to four years and costs several tens of millions of dollars for the simplest of models.

[The Fred]

Wow,

I see,

But it comes down to a couple years and a few mil..

You would think someone would make the Cien a reality.

If I had enough money I would.. but I'd need alot. I wouldn't want to spend more than 5% of my net worth on it so I'd have to be well into the billions and that will take awhile

[Cadillac Jim]

Startup is not the whole story or the only risk involved in a new model. Once you've got the production line up and running, you have the burn rate (cost per day in salaries, maintenance, utilities, etc.) to deal with, and it just keeps going no matter what sales are like. If you don't share the line with other models and sales are slow compared to production capacity, you have a big cash flow issue. That's what killed DeLorean -- they built for a capacity of 120,000 units per year and sales were a fraction of that, and they only had one model.

[The Fred]

That is just a real good example of complete idiocy.

120,000 Deloreans per year?

What on earth were they thinking

[KHE]

That is just a real good example of complete idiocy.

120,000 Deloreans per year?

What on earth were they thinking

Hindsight is always 20-20...

[BodybyFisher]

You can still buy remanufactured Delorean,

http://www.delorean.com/

[The Fred]

Wow, that is a something.