GM’s enthusiasm for badge-engineering has seen many of its European models adopt new identities before offering themselves for sale in faraway lands. On the whole, this practice has been a huge (financial) success for the company. Contrary to its earlier efforts, however, the decision to slap a Cadillac badge across the front of the Omega before firing it at unsuspecting Stateside car buyers is widely regarded as one of the biggest fails in American automotive history.
Launched as the ‘Catera’, “the Caddy that zigs” was pitched as a sporty alternative to the Detroit motor giant’s portfolio of big, V8-powered luxury barges. Unfortunately, the demand for such a car didn’t really exist, and the Catera’s reputation as one of the smallest Cadillacs ever produced – coupled with the fact that it was ‘missing’ two cylinders – ensured that its future was over before it began.
Like its earlier incarnation, the short-lived facelift variant of the Catera included USDM styling features that separated it from its Omega sibling. The most pronounced of these updates could be seen on the model’s rear end, where a redesigned ‘trunk’ housed a Cavalier Turbo-esque boot panel and a super-wide integrated third brake light flanked by LED-illuminated light clusters with red and white lenses stacked in the reverse order to those seen on the Omega.
Fitting these Yank-spec components to the Omega/MV6 isn’t possible without heavy modification to both the European and American parts. This is primarily because the Catera’s boot lid includes a dedicated recess to house its decorative panel, not to mention the fact that its inner light clusters are much deeper and much narrower than those of the Omega. In other words, they just don’t fit!
That said, not being one to take no for an answer (and in spite of being told that “it simply can’t be done”), I imported a Catera boot panel and a complete set of accompanying LED light clusters from the USA in advance of formulating a plan of action that resulted in an attack of my MV6’s boot lid with an angle grinder, splitting the boot panel into four separate parts, smoothing its Cadillac badge recesses, colour coding the altered parts and plastic welding everything back together in an entirely bespoke arrangement.
The phrase ‘trial and error’ has never been more appropriate, and it took many long nights in my garage, lots of cursing and plenty of teeth sucking until I was happy with the fit of the reassembled pieces. I don’t mind telling you that I questioned my decision to cut up these rare and expensive parts on more than one occasion, but I’m glad that I kept going - the finished article looks fantastic!
While the back of the MV6 was stripped bare, I replaced its crash bar with a new genuine GM item, and I reinforced its Irmscher dual-exit exhaust system with new joiners and clamps. I also took the opportunity to swap its tired exhaust mounts with brand new Powerflex polyurethane parts. The improvement since fitting them is nothing short of extraordinary, with no vibration or movement of any kind where the OE rubber equivalents would encourage the pipework to bounce around under load. A highly recommended mod.
More Dark Destroyer project progress to follow!
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http://www.powerflex.co.ukAn early (pre-facelift) Catera promotional poster:
My recently-acquired facelift Catera 'trunk' panel. The required recess is absent from the Omega's boot lid, meaning that the Catera part sits a few centimetres proud of the Vauxhall's metal. The only way to get around this is to break apart the boot panel, plastic weld it back together in a new arrangement, cut large chunks out of the Omega's boot lid and hope for the best!
Note the contoured Cadillac badge recess. The Body Shop did a cracking job of smoothing this on the finished panel:
The individual 'Catera' letters also sit in their own recesses:
Time to split the panel:
And then some!
Note how much wider the MV6's original inner light cluster is (left) when compared to the Catera equivalent (right). The rear housing of the latter is also much deeper than the Vauxhall's part (to accommodate the enlarged rear bulb housing etc). This is one of the reasons that the boot lid needs to be cut to suit. The light casing itself also needs to be cut and re-shaped to fit.
This was my somewhat conservative estimate regarding how much metal needed to be removed from the boot lid. Trial and error resulted in much more cutting than I had anticipated:
There are lots of mounting points on the rear of the coloured centre panel that need to be removed in order to prevent it from sitting too far forward:
I removed all of the MV6's boot badges at the same time. A combination of Autobrite Direct 'Just The Tonic Glue and Tar Remover', plenty of elbow grease and a filler applicator did the trick:
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Topic: humbucker's 2004 Irmscher MV6 #irmscherMV6 (Read 119527 times)