Who's the Cadillac of Hi-End Audio?

I recently attended an auto show here in Indianapolis and Cadillac had some very nice products. The CTS and the Corvette based coupe (XLR?) appeared to be fully competitive with the best comparable priced Japanese or German offerings. So maybe, just maybe, my earlier comments about Cadillacs were out of line. But then again, there were crowds at the BMW or Lexus exhibits and the Caddy area was empty. It's going to take some time for Cadillac to change it's image.

Now that this thread’s direction is more car related than audio, I thought I would add my 2-cents.

Being fat, happy and maintaining the status quo, it could be argued that the U.S. big-3 were initially blind-sided by the compact vehicle invasion from the Far East. However, many years passed before their luxury car lines (such as Cadillac) were pummeled by the Infinity, Lexus et al.

Given the length of time it took for this to transition, even the casual observer – let alone Cadillac Management -- could foresee the inevitable. The question is, why wasn’t G.M./Cadillac capable of improving their product’s styling, engineering, fit, finish, etc. to be competitive with the anticipated Japanese onslaught?

G.M. has employed educationally, some of the best and brightest engineers in the world, with commensurately hefty salaries. Why couldn’t they change? For the same reason why they’re still playing catch-up. Too many old, country club belonging ready-to-retire-to-the-Hamptons Executives. Why would they care to change, and undergo the headaches of doing so? Their current 6 and 7 figure salaries and pensions are guaranteed! They’re still suffering from too little, too late, as exemplified by the comments responders have made to this thread, and by reviews on the www, in periodicals etc.

Instead of designing and building exciting, attractive, well designed, and fun to own and drive vehicles as their competition, G.M Divisions such as Buick are resurrecting dead engineers (ala the Harley Earl ads), and touting “port holes” (the ancient Buick symbol). How sad!! The dying off of their buying base is as obvious as was the aforementioned inevitable Luxury car confrontation. Will they be able to equal, or exceed their competition before this happens – so far they haven’t! Moreover, it’s doubtful they will be able to, before irreversible harm occurs to their once highly revered name plates (Oldsmobile is already dead, which one’s next?) – not so bad for the million dollar golden parachute owing executives or retirees that “have theirs”, but too bad for the remainder of the workers, and the U.S Industrial Base in general!

Actually Cadillac has finally begun to 'reinvent' itself.
I would even be interested in trying out a stick shift Caddy....
As to which audio equipment manufacturer almost died of stagnation, then has recently 'gotten it' ??? can't think of any... MAC comes to mind... but they are still selling dinosaur-style components...
Though Nissan seems to have judged the market well, finally...

Interesting points raised by Mrmb. I think the failure of GM/Ford/Chrysler wasn't in the engineering, but instead was a fault endemic to their entire corporate structure(s). When Toyota first started the Lexus brand they imported dozens of Mercedes to the Japanese factory and let the assembly line workers use them. Management wanted the workers to know first hand the level of fit and finish that they would have to do better than. It's hard to imagine at any of the Detroit Big 3 management and labor working together to accomplish long-term goals. My observation is that in successful companies management and labor have a mutual respect and trust for one another.

I know a lot more about cars than I do about audio equipment so here are my thoughts...

German:
The best high performance designs in general. Even those with modest specs present a cohesive approach to design and provide performance fundamentals before luxuries or features. At my budget end of the spectrum I would analog German cars to equipment such as Rotel or NAD - simple pieces with good performance for the money at cost moderately above garden variety mass market.

Japanese:
"Bland Quality". These products are generally well built and efficient but fail to excite most performance enthusiasts. Clinically there's little to fault with Japanese cars. I consider such cars to parallel audio equipment that is resolving and presents a flat frequency response but is otherwise uncaptivating.

American:
Design for specs and impressive behavior on a 20 minute test drive (i.e. excessive throttle response upon initial toe in of the accelerator). When I think of an American car I think of a mass market stereo with sharp treble and deep boomy bass. It catches your (not my :) ) attention on first impression but after sampling better products becomes tiring and artificial.