EVEN with some vehicles of more recent times you do wonder ‘Why did they do it?'

One such is the Cadillac BLS, a compact executive car which was aimed to make Cadillac a more familiar name on the UK's roads.

The giant GM Group, which at the time had a controlling interest in the respected Swedish manufacturer Saab, took a long look at the Scandinavian way of doing things before deciding to produce compact Caddies to be built alongside existing Saab models.

Based on the GM Epsilon architecture, the Cadillac BLS was a heavily restyled version of the Saab 9-3.

It may have had the Cadillac badge and the big growly grille but an American car in the sense that we know it, the BLS was not.

At the time queries were raised over the wisdom of producing a car so similar to the Saab on the same production line at Trollhattan, a question that was never properly answered, in my viewby GM. Indeed one GM executive blandly stated ‘Hey, it's a Cadillacâ¦.'

The truth is that the BLS was not that bad a car, but because of its manufacturer's policies it lived in identity no-man's-land.

It handled well, except for too heavy a roll on corners, its safety equipment was Saab quality and it had a massive boot.

Power came from four-cylinder 1,988cc or 2.8 V6 petrol and a 1.9 diesel was also on offer.

But it just lacked that special something to inspire the buyers who were used to the likes of BMW.

GM had deeply raided the Saab parts bin and at times you wondered what you were driving.

A great shame because this car, especially the V6 could have been so much better.

Most motoring journalists at the time had their own pet names for cars that were on the market. For the BLS mine was Bacon and Lettuce Sandwich because there were two distinct flavours fighting for precedence between two layers of bland automotive baking.

And to complicate matters there were also overtones of the Vauxhall Vectra as salad dressing.

In its own way the BLS stood out from the crowd. But its rather dull way of going about things was the writing on the wall. The estate did not help because with its prominent roof rails it had a hearse-like stance.

Despite a $140million design and development programme and high hopes for sales in the Middle East, Mexico, South Africa and Korea, in addition to Europe, the BLS, which was launched in 2006, shuddered to a halt in 2009 as a result of disappointing sales.

Cadillac had a second bite at the cherry with the CTS, a much better compact Cadillac, but still nowhere nearly as good at the iconic and muscular STS which was one of the best American and indeed worldcars of the era.