The leading late-night talk show host gave glowing reviews for the direction that General Motors is taking on its brands at the GM Advance Design Center‘s 10th anniversary party in the Valley north of Los Angeles that included a host of celebs and dignitaries like Motown legend Smokey Robinson and actor Will Arnett. In particular, Leno gave high praise to the Cadillac Escalade and CTS Coupe, the Buick Enclave and the award-winning Chevrolet Vault. General Motors in particular had to purge their hierarchy of the numbers crunchers and put the fortunes of the colossal company back into the hands of the designers.
“I think they are coming back now. I think that Ford is having a record year. The new Chevy Volt was named car of the year. I’m a big fan of the American car, especially Detroit, They finally got all the bookkeepers and accountants out and the engineers are running the company [GM] again. You know, all this bad stuff that happened [to the Big Three’s fortunes] was probably the best thing that could have happened. Because you now have real engineers building real cars again. So it’s exciting,” said Leno.
It’s one thing to have ordinary consumers applaud GM’s turnaround. But it adds to the cachet — and translates to an increased bottom line when celebrities endorse your products. These are the people that General Motors — and particularly their premium brands like Cadillac and Chevrolet — have been trying to recapture ever since GM was dethroned by Toyota as the world’s greatest and largest automaker. Smokey Robinson had a wide smile pasted on his face for practically the entire time he was at the extremely exclusive party.
“To see Cadillac become the standard again is very excitin
g. I think that Cadillac will continue to be the standard. It’s got well over 500 horsepower. To get that in a foreign car, you have to go two to three times the price [of a Caddy],“ said Leno, who drove up in an ear-bleeding-loud jet car that resembles a Cadillac. “And it handles and it’s American. I grew up when the Cadillac was an old man’s car and now it crosses all social and economic lines. It can still be an old man’s car. But now you[‘ve] got young people wanting a Cadillac sedan. It just makes me smile when I see someone under 25 say ‘hey, I want the new Cadillac,’ because when I was young, if you wanted a Cadillac and you were under 25, you were in the mob.” –terry shropshire
