Cadillac's Big Step Backwards - 1971 Eldorado

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At the beginning of the 1970s, Cadillac ruled the American luxury car market with a substantial lead, thanks largely to innovative and spectacular models like the 1967 Eldorado that married performance with styling and technology to create a trend-leader for the emerging Personal Luxury Car.

This was until their rivals at Lincoln struck back with the equally successful Mark III, and as the ground was laid for what automotive onlookers were predicting to be a long and decisive battle between two of America's most affluent car brands, Cadillac took a huge step backward when they foolishly believed that beating Lincoln would be done by simply just adding more exuberant luxuries and expanding the new model to such bizarre proportions, that the resulting machine no longer appealed to the forward-thinking new money of American business, but instead would cement the Cadillac brand as the ponderous, water-bed suspension barges of the middle-aged and elderly, a reputation it has struggled to shake off even over 50 years after the launch of the car that started it all, the 1971 Cadillac Eldorado.

Chapters:
0:00 - Preamble
0:46 - Cadillac's Golden Era - 1955 to 1959
4:02 - Lincoln's Darkest Hour - 1956 to 1961
6:00 - The Rise of the Personal Luxury Car
8:52 - 1967 Eldorado - Rewriting the Book
14:10 - The Mark III - Lincoln Strikes Back
15:58 - 1971 Eldorado - A Look to the Past
20:27 - Old Designs and Oil Crises
24:44 - Losing the Race to Lincoln
29:33 - Emergency Downsizing
33:47 - The Last Strand of a Long Dead Era
35:50 - Conclusion

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References:
- The Marquis (and their respective sources)
- Curbside Classic (and their respective sources)
- Indie Auto (and their respective sources)
- Wikipedia (and its respective references)