1955 Cadillac - Profit Margins

This 1955 Cadillac Series 62 Coupe deVille is part of Cadillac's first major update of their seminal post war models that debuted in 1948. 

That update occurred for model year 1954 with the '54's being longer, lower and wider than what they replaced. The tailfins, which first cropped up on 1948 models, were bigger than ever too. 

1955 was a big year for General Motors as they became the first company in history to net a profit of more than a billion dollars - in a single year. Actually, they made around 1.22-billion and their profit margins were an absurd, especially for an auto maker, 10-percent. 

By comparison, Walmart today has a profit margin of maybe 2-percent. You almost can't blame GM for wanting to keep their profit margins at those stratospheric levels. 

Problem was, to do so, they began skimping, especially on what made a Cadillac a Cadillac. Even by 1955, many of the features that were once unique to Cadillac had trickled down to General Motors "lesser" models. 

For instance, you could even get air conditioning in a Chevrolet not to mention a V-8 engine. Although, that V-8 engine in a Chevy was tiny in comparison to the brute under the hood of a Cadillac. 

Maintaining those huge profit margins of 1955 left Cadillac with little more to market than styling and the prestige of the brand. 

Didn't seem to matter for about ten-years, though, but by the mid-'60's, buyers of the means to afford a Cadillac were beginning to catch on that their Cadillac wasn't anything more special than a Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac or, heaven-forbid, a Chevrolet.