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| Blinded by the Light: The Perilous Success of the 1976 Cadillac Seville |
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| Written by Aaron Severson |
| Saturday, 09 January 2010 00:00 |
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The 1976 Cadillac Seville was Detroit's first response to the growing popularity of luxury imports like Mercedes. Although it was an immediate hit, earning a handsome profit and inspiring numerous imitators, the Seville marked the beginning of the end of Cadillac's credibility as "the standard of the world." This week, we look at the history of the Seville, and the reasons for Cadillac's long, ugly decline. THE 800-POUND GORILLA GETS A COLDWhen Robert D. Lund became general manager of Cadillac in January 1973, GM's luxury division was firmly established as America's number-one luxury automaker. Owning a Cadillac had become a potent emblem of material success, and many working-class and middle-class buyers took out home-mortgage-size loans to own one. Although sales had grown steadily since the early sixties, topping 200,000 in 1967 and hitting a record of 267,787 units for the 1972 model year, demand significantly exceeded supply, insuring high transaction prices and excellent resale values.
To Bob Lund, who was coming off a highly successful stint as general sales manager for Chevrolet, Cadillac's sales organization seemed complacent, even lazy. The general assumption among the sales force was that Cadillacs practically sold themselves. There was little effort to spark competition or promote growth. Cadillac salesmen didn't use high-pressure tactics; they hadn't needed to in years. For Lund, who had taken Chevrolet to a record three million sales in 1971, it was clear that the right tactics could improve Cadillac's volume by 30% or more. In a July 1974 Time article, Lund explained that his goal was to make Cadillac much more aggressive, calling for new advertising campaigns, more assertive marketing, and the division's first regional sales contests since the early fifties."When you're green you're growing," he declared, "but when you're ripe you're next to rotten." Lund's mission to improve Cadillac's growth would have been an easy task in 1970, but it became decidedly more complicated in late 1973. That fall, the member nations of OPEC embargoed oil shipments to the West, in retaliation for America's military support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Fuel prices, already on the rise, gave way to shortages and a brief return of fuel rationing. The very rich had never really cared about fuel prices -- driving a gas guzzler when fuel is expensive just goes to prove your affluence -- but the prospect of long-term shortages was quite another matter. Overnight, buyers fled from big cars, leaving new Cadillacs to gather dust on dealer lots. Lund, like many senior Detroit executives, presented a game face to the press, but it was a problem. It would require new solutions. LORD, WON'T YOU BUY ME A MERCEDES-BENZMeanwhile, Mercedes-Benz was on the move. Since establishing its own North American distribution organization in 1965, Mercedes had nearly tripled its U.S. sales volume. Its total sales for 1970 were only 29,108 units, but that was better than many European imports whose prices were far lower. By 1972, it was selling more than 40,000 units a year in the U.S.
At first, Mercedes appealed to a somewhat rarefied audience. The American luxury car ideal was a boxcar-sized rolling bordello with a 500 cu. in. (8.2 L) engine and a cloud-like ride. By contrast, even the biggest Mercedes -- barring the big 600 and 600 Pullman limousines, which were very, very rare -- were smaller than a contemporary American intermediate. They had frumpy, Calvinist interiors, and, until the advent of the 3.5 and 6.3 models in 1970, modest six-cylinder engines. They were tremendously solid, with roadholding ability that rivaled some contemporary sporty cars, but they were underpowered, they rode stiffly, and their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) would not have passed muster at Chevrolet, let along Cadillac. They were not the obvious choice for the sybaritic.  Mercedes nomenclature is more than a little confusing: the 280SEL designation of this 1972 W109 sedan implies a 2.8L "Super Einspritz" (injection) engine in a long-wheelbase model sedan, but this is a 4.5, which means it actually has a 276 cu. in. (4.5 L) OHC V8, linked to Mercedes' new three-speed torque converter automatic. This car, along with the W111/W112 coupes and convertibles, was replaced in 1972 by the new W116 S-Class. Its immediate successor had the same engine and transmission, but was more logically named 450SEL. Still, by the late sixties, truly affluent Americans were in the mood for something new. Cadillacs and Lincolns were becoming too common. That every grocery clerk in America aspired to a Cadillac was fine; pulling into a gas station in your new Eldorado and hearing that the attendant had one just like it was not. A fully loaded, top-of-the-line Cadillac was nearly $10,000 in those days, but some wealthy buyers wished openly that it cost at least $5,000 more, to thin the ranks of would-be social climbers. What did Mercedes offer such jaded customers? Its European pedigree lent it a certain exoticism, for one, and it was expensive enough and rare enough to provide a welcome degree of exclusivity. Furthermore, Daimler-Benz's obsessive attention to minor engineering details appealed to the sort of customer who would rather light his Cohiba with a Dunhill than a Zippo. The typical Mercedes sedan was built like a bank vault, and its meticulous construction bespoke quality. The fact that it was smaller, less ostentatious, and arguably less comfortable than a Sedan de Ville or Continental Mark III was incidental; it felt like old money. Car and Driver summed it up neatly in September 1970: "[O]wning a Mercedes-Benz says something [about its owner] like the following: 'Here I am, and you will observe that I obviously Have It Made, but I have too much taste and knowledge of fine things to be driving a common, vulgar Cadillac or a grossly ostentatious Rolls-Royce." Soon, a few brave souls were testing the sensibilities of country club valets across America with boxy, compact luxury cars from Untertürkheim. There were raised eyebrows at first, but once their friends got a look at the meticulous craftsmanship -- and lofty prices -- many ordered one of their own. It took Cadillac a long time to notice Mercedes, and longer still to understand it. (We would suggest that they never entirely succeeded.) Detroit executives were firm believers in the bigger-is-better school of automotive design. Luxury was synonymous with size, opulence, and comfort. A car like a Mercedes 280SE seemed to repudiate all the values Detroit held dear. What working man or captain of industry would ever aspire to that? Lincoln-Mercury general manager Bob Benton voiced the feelings of many Detroit executives in August 1973, when he told Motor Trend's John Lamm, "If we copied Mercedes and put it on the market, the luxury car public would think we'd lost our minds." The growth of Mercedes was not an immediate threat to Cadillac; at that time, Cadillac sales were at least twice the combined volume of all its competitors. The danger was a more insidious one. Although Cadillac had not depended on upper-crust buyers for its survival since the mid-thirties, its tremendous prestige hinged on the fact that the rich and famous drove Cadillacs. If those core customers, Cadillac's image-makers, lost interest, it would eventually bring the whole house of cards tumbling down. THE COMPACT CADILLACDespite its ongoing commitment to the bigger-is-better school of design, Cadillac did consider building a smaller car in the early seventies. It was not inspired by any desire to compete with Mercedes, but rather by a marketing study that Bob Lund's predecessor, George Elges, had commissioned back in 1970. The study found that while Cadillac buyers were generally happy with their cars, some owners, particularly older women, found them cumbersome to maneuver and difficult to park.
Based on that study, Elges proposed a more compact Cadillac that would offer the same plush ride and lavish appointments as the big cars, but in a smaller package. He argued that there was a strong potential market for such a car, but GM management turned it down, saying that it would hurt Cadillac's image. The Engineering Policy Committee also made the valid point that what people ask for in marketing surveys is not necessarily what they buy. A decade earlier, Cadillac had introduced a pair of short-deck sedans, the Series 62 Town Sedan and De Ville Park Avenue, after owners that new Cadillacs were too long to fit in their garages. The bob-tailed cars were a resounding commercial flop, and Cadillac quietly discontinued them after only two years. The idea of a compact Cadillac was shelved, but it resurfaced less than three years later. According to Bob Templin, who became Cadillac's chief engineer in 1972, the impetus came from GM board member John Meyer, the chairman of Pittsburgh's Mellon Bank. Meyer's wife had noted that her friends at the local country club were buying compact Mercedes sedans, rather than Cadillacs or Lincolns. Meyer subsequently pushed GM president Ed Cole and chairman Richard Gerstenberg to develop a smaller Cadillac. Ed Cole told Lund and Templin to proceed, although he was not enthusiastic. Cole had been chief engineer of Cadillac earlier in his career, and the idea of a small Cadillac rubbed him the wrong way. Templin thought that Cole expected the project would eventually fall apart without coming to fruition.  The new Mercedes S-Class, known internally as W116, appeared in late 1972. This 1973 450SE is still unencumbered by the bulky, ugly 5-mph (8-kph) bumpers later added to meet U.S. safety regulations, and it has the composite headlamps of a European model, not technically legal in the U.S. at that time; U.S. models had quad sealed beams. The 1973 450SE was 195.3 in (4,960 mm) long on a 112.8-in (2,865-mm) wheelbase, weighing 4,030 lb (1,828 kg) with the standard (for the U.S.) air conditioning). (Photo © 2007 Tom Bigelow; used by permission) THE OPEL DIPLOMATThe target for the small Cadillac was Mercedes' new W116 S-class, sold in America as the 450SE and 450SEL. The W116 was bigger than its immediate predecessors, but it was still relatively small for an American car, roughly the size of a Dodge Dart. Unlike many past Mercedes, it had a V8, a 276 cu. in. (4.5 L) engine initially rated at a modest 190 net horsepower (142 kW). Despite its modest size, it was quite sophisticated, with an overhead-cam engine, Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection, four-wheel disc brakes, and independent rear suspension (semi-trailing arms, replacing the old Eingelenkpendelachse swing axles). It had a price tag to match: $13,491 at introduction, enough to buy four Darts.
When Toyota decided to take on Mercedes in the mid-eighties, they developed a completely new platform and a new engine. GM had no interest in making that kind of investment in a project that its president considered a boondoggle, so Bob Templin and his engineering team were forced to look for existing platforms and engines to share. Templin's first choice was the Opel Diplomat, from GM's European subsidiary. Launched in 1964 and redesigned in 1969, the Diplomat was a bold and ultimately doomed effort to take Opel into the European executive class. It had never sold well in Europe, hamstrung by its down-market badge, but a Cadillac version for the American market was an intriguing prospect.  The Diplomat B 5.4 was a curious blend of American and European ideas. Roughly the size of an S-Class Mercedes, it had a sophisticated de Dion rear suspension (described in our article on the Rover P6) with inboard disc brakes, and and an optional 5.4 L (327 cu. in.) Chevy V8, linked to a Turbo Hydramatic transmission. The V8 was a brave choice in Europe, where engines over 3 liters (182 cu. in.) tend to provoke a sort of fiscal apocalypse at tax time, but it made the Diplomat more interesting for the U.S. market. (Photo © 2008 Armin Kußler; used by permission) Alas, it was not to be. Opel's production tolerances were higher than GM's U.S. factories, and redesigning the Diplomat to fit the American production lines would have been so expensive that it would have defeated the point of the exercise. Templin went back to the drawing board. THE X-BODYAs an alternative to the Diplomat, Ed Cole suggested the X-body, which was GM's only North American platform of that size. Developed in the early sixties as a rival for the Ford Falcon, the X-body was originally used by the Chevy II/Nova compact and the Canadian-market Pontiac Acadian. Thanks to the boom in compact sales in the early seventies, it had recently begun a rabbit-like proliferation. Pontiac launched a U.S.-market Nova clone, the Ventura II, in 1971, and Buick and Oldsmobile versions followed in 1973. (The F-body Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird also used a variation of the X-body platform, but with their own body shell.)
The X-body was not a particularly impressive platform. One of GM's sixties essays in semi-unitized construction, it was essentially a monocoque structure up to the firewall, but the engine, transmission, and front suspension were carried on a bolt-on, wheelbarrow-like subframe, similar in concept to the old Citroën Traction Avant. It was intended to combine the virtues of body-on-frame and unit-body construction, with mixed results. It felt more solid than GM's perimeter-frame cars of the same vintage, but it had more noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) than a body-on-frame car, and it was neither as rigid, as light, nor as space-efficient as a true monocoque. It was not a very promising basis for a luxury car, particularly one intended to compete with Mercedes-Benz. Templin originally wanted the small Cadillac to have front-wheel drive, using the Unitized Power Package (UPP) concept of the Eldorado and Oldsmobile Tornado. In recent years, many critics have decided that front-wheel drive is unsuitable for high-end executive sedans, but at the time, it was considered fairly exotic hardware, which would have added to the Seville's image. Cadillac did build some front-drive test mules, but they were abandoned because the plant that built the Eldorado and Toronado's unique TH425 transmissions did not have the excess capacity to supply a third model. The small Cadillac ended up with a conventional front-engine, rear-drive layout, with a live axle on parallel leaf springs. It differed in detail from the Nova, but in basic layout, it was a very ordinary American car.  The Seville was the first GM car engineered with Bendix electronic fuel injection, although not the first to go on sale; the Eldorado first offered it (on that car's bigger 500 cu. in. (8.2 L) engine in the 1975 model year, and the fuel-injected Chevrolet Cosworth Vega debuted shortly before the Seville. The 350 cu. in. (5.7 L) Oldsmobile engine was exceptionally smooth, and the injection system gave it 180 net horsepower (134 kW), but it proved troublesome in service, and some owners replaced it with a four-barrel carburetor. A NEW LASALLEThe next problem was finding an appropriate powertrain. Cadillac's smallest engine at that time was 429 cubic inches (7.0 liters), and naturally, there was no question of developing a completely new engine. Templin eventually selected Oldsmobile's 350 cu. in. (5.7 L) V8, modified with a new intake manifold and new Bendix electronic fuel injection -- a first for General Motors. The use of an Oldsmobile engine was a big step for Cadillac, which usually built its own engines, but it was not without precedent; back in the mid-thirties, the LaSalle, Cadillac's one-time companion make had used an Oldsmobile straight-eight.
Since it was conceptually similar to the old LaSalle, some older Cadillac dealers suggest reviving the LaSalle name for the new car. General sales manager Ted Hopkins and marketing director Gordon Horsburgh balked at that idea, concerned that the failure of the original LaSalle might give the name a "loser" image. There were several alternative suggestions, including St. Tropez and St. Moritz, but Hopkins and Horsburgh eventually recommended Seville, which Cadillac had used for hardtop coupe versions of its posh Eldorado from 1956 to 1960. It was a familiar name to longtime Cadillac buyers, and more importantly, it had no negative associations.  The first Cadillac Seville was not a compact car -- it was the hardtop coupe version of the posh Eldorado, offered from 1956 to 1960. This is a 1960 Eldorado Seville hardtop. TAILORING A DWARFCadillac chief designer Stan Wilen struggled to find a styling direction for the Seville. With a few exceptions, GM's Design staff had the same attitude toward compact cars as their boss, VP Bill Mitchell, who famously declared that styling a small car is like tailoring a dwarf. Worse, since the Seville was an all-new car, it had no design heritage to build on.
At Mitchell's suggestion, Wilen eventually developed an Italianate concept drawing called La Scala, which he took to Wayne Kady's Cadillac Advanced studio for further development. Unfortunately, the switch to the X-body platform presented more obstacles; its hardpoints did not fit the La Scala design. Nonetheless, Kady's team eventually came up with a lovely, semi-fastback design that bore a flattering resemblance to the contemporary Ferrari 2+2. Concurrently, designer Stan Parker developed an alternate concept, a stretched, notchback version of the Nova. At Bill Mitchell's suggestion, it took on a more upright, formal quality than Kady's design, with a nearly vertical backlight, like a contemporary Rolls-Royce. Mitchell's instincts were apparently correct; when Gordon Horsburgh took full-size fiberglass models of both designs to a consumer clinic in California in July 1973, he found an overwhelming preference for Parker's notchback design.  To Stan Parker's credit, the Seville displays none of its structural kinship with the contemporary Chevrolet Nova, thanks to square-rigged lines, a formal roofline, and an abundance of Cadillac styling cues. One minor way in which the Seville emulated its Mercedes rival was in styling continuity; eschewing the usual facelifts, it changed only in minor details through its five-year lifespan. The final design theme for the Seville became what GM stylists dubbed "the sheer look." The basic lines were sharp and angular, but the surfaces were subtly curved, with gently rolled edges. The intent was to evoke the straightforward linearity of contemporary European sedans without looking severe. The impact of the sheer look, which became very influential, has been lost through sheer familiarity; GM applied that aesthetic to nearly all its big cars in the subsequent wave of downsizing. To modern eyes, the Seville mostly looks boxy, but compared to the bulky, bloated styling of the contemporary Eldorado or Sedan De Ville, it was clean and refreshingly no-nonsense.  The sheer look in detail: sharply creased edges and gently curved body panels. From a distance, the Seville looks as if it were styled with a ruler, but the shape is more complex than it initially appears. MAKING A CADILLAC OUT OF THE NOVAIt's entirely possible that if it hadn't been for the OPEC embargo, the Seville program would have collapsed or languished, as Ed Cole expected. By the fall of 1973, however, Cadillac dealers were screaming for something, anything, with better fuel economy. The compact Seville, which Cadillac later claimed would return up to 19 mpg (12.4 L/100 km), seemed just the ticket. It received formal approval on December 21. GM management told Cadillac that they wanted the new car to go on sale by the middle of the 1975 model year, less than 15 months away. This unexpected urgency was a serious challenge for Cadillac's designers and engineers, who had barely over a year -- less than half the usual development time --- to transform the X-body into a luxury car.
Engineer Robert Burton, whom Bob Templin assigned to oversee the project, used Fourier analysis to identify sources of noise, vibration, and harshness in the X-body platform. Cadillac then made a valiant effort to mitigate them, with measures like tiny shock absorbers to tie the subframe to the front end of the body, and body bolts held with epoxy, rather than conventional washers. It was far from elegant, Templin admitted, but it worked. Design director Irv Rybicki persuaded Ed Cole to let them stretch the X-body's wheelbase by 3.3 inches (84 mm), giving better proportions and more legroom. Cole was reluctant, since the change would require new doors, but Rybicki won his case by reminding Cole that the car would wear the vaunted Cadillac name. The Seville ended up different enough from the X-body that it received a separate chassis designation, the K-body.  The Seville is 204 in (5,182 mm) long on a 114.3-in (2,903-mm) wheelbase, weighing around 4,400 lb (2,000 kg) with a full load of options. In profile, there's something odd about its proportions -- the 3.3-in (84-mm) wheelbase stretch over the X-body has shifted the front wheels forward. GM used a similar trick with the Chevrolet Monte Carlo and Pontiac Grand Prix, but it looks a little strange on a four-door sedan. This car's fake wire wheel covers were a $179 option. While Templin and Burton struggled with the chassis, designers Stan Parker and Donald Logerquist were working overlapping 12-hour shifts to complete the body design work. It was a grueling process for everyone involved. The frantic work was further complicated by managerial changes. In September 1974, Wayne Kady replaced Stan Wilen as Cadillac's chief designer. A few weeks later, Ed Cole retired as GM president, replaced by Pete Estes, and on November 4, Edward C. Kennard replaced Bob Lund as Cadillac's general manager. Nevertheless, the first completed Sevilles came off the assembly line on April 22, 1975, only 16 months after management approval. THE INTERNATIONAL-SIZE CADILLACThe Seville went sale in May 1975 as an early 1976 model, although rumors had been flying since the summer of 1973. Cadillac resisted calling it compact; advertisements called it "international-size." To forestall any misapprehension that it was an economy model, the Seville became the most expensive car in Cadillac's line-up, other than the Series 75 limousines -- it was even costlier than an Eldorado convertible.
The Seville's hefty $12,479 list price did include more standard equipment than most Cadillacs, which had long adhered to the American tradition of advertising a modest sticker price and then nickeling and diming you to death on options. You still paid extra for leather upholstery, cruise control, Twilight Sentinel, and other gadgets, a full complement of which would push the bottom line to a hefty $14,000. That was nearly the price of a 1973 Mercedes 450SE, but in the interim, Mercedes had obligingly raised the 450SE's price to more than $18,000, sparing Cadillac from a dicey head-to-head comparison.  The Seville's 350 cu. in. (5.7 L) gasoline engine remained little changed during the lifespan of the first-generation Seville, although in 1978, it fell from 180 hp (134 kW) to 170 hp (127 kW). A new option, added midway through the 1978 model year, was Oldsmobile's 350 cu. in. (5.7 L) diesel V8, a response to the popularity of the Mercedes 240D and 300D. A $287 option, it was rated at a meager 125 hp (93 kW). It proved grievously unreliable, which did much to sour American buyers on diesel engines in general. Reviews of the Seville inevitably waxed rhapsodic about how much smaller it was than a Sedan de Ville -- 26.7 inches (678 mm) shorter overall, half a ton lighter -- but the Seville was compact only in a relative sense. It was an inch and a half (38 mm) shorter than the 450SE, but it was more than 5 inches (132 mm) longer than a Jaguar XJ12L. It was heavy, too; the Nova had never been a lightweight to begin with, and all the structural gusseting pushed the Seville's curb weight to nearly 4,400 lb (2,000 kg). The Seville's fuel-injected Oldsmobile engine produced a modest 180 net horsepower (134 kW), the same as a 1976 Mercedes 450SE. With about 200 pounds (91 kg) more weight and taller gearing than the Mercedes, acceleration was lethargic; 0-60 mph (0-97 kph) took over 13 seconds, although top speed was a respectable 110 mph (175 kph). Fuel economy was disappointing, averaging around 16 mpg (14.7 L/100 km), although that was no worse than a gas-engine Mercedes. (It's worth noting that nearly half of all U.S. Mercedes sales during this period were of the smaller 240D and 300D diesels, which had glacial acceleration, but much better fuel economy.) The Seville's dynamics were a mixed bag. It was much quieter and smoother than a Nova -- as well it should have been -- and most reviewers were impressed with its suppression of noise, vibration, and harshness. On a smooth highway, it had a well-damped ride, with little of the typical land yacht's waft and float. It was far less solid than the S-Class Benz, however, and driven too hard, the Seville's patchwork structure made itself known, resulting in occasional ragged body motions. Car and Driver's Michael Jordan wondered if Cadillac had deliberately left the Seville with some rough edges, assuming that would lead buyers to perceive it as more "Mercedes-like." The consensus of critical opinion was that the Seville was not up to Mercedes standards, but it was a worthy enough Cadillac. That seemed to be enough for many buyers, because the Seville was an immediate success, particularly on the west coast. Cadillac sold 16,355 in the first four months and 43,772 during the remainder of the 1976 model year. We're not sure how well the Seville would have gone over five years earlier, but in the summer of 1975, it was exactly what Cadillac dealers and customers had been asking for. It recouped its tooling costs very quickly, and became one of GM's most profitable cars. It also demonstrated that buyers would not necessarily be alienated by a smaller Cadillac -- welcome news for GM, which was then preparing first downsized big cars for the 1977 model year.
 A 1976 Cadillac magazine ad shows off the dramatic size difference between the Seville and the full-size Sedan de Ville. The photo exaggerates only a little -- the Seville was 26.7 in (678 mm) shorter than its larger brother and more than 600 lb (275 kg) lighter. Inevitably, Chrysler and Ford hastened to develop their own "international-size" luxury cars, resulting in a host of imitators, like the Granada-based Lincoln Versailles and the Plymouth Volare-based Chrysler LeBaron. THE FINE PRINTBefore we start sounding too much like a Cadillac press release, let's consider what the Seville did not do.
First, while Cadillac had hoped the Seville would attract younger customers, the median age of Seville buyers was 57, compared to about 52 for other Cadillacs. It did appeal more to female buyers than other Cadillac models; women accounted for about 45% of Seville sales, a significantly higher percentage than the Cadillac norm. In short, the "international-size" Cadillac was attracting exactly the customers George Elges' marketing study had identified back in 1970: older women who liked Cadillac's plushness and prestige, but who wanted something easier to park.  The "Tuxedo Grain" vinyl top was a no-cost option on the '78 Seville; it was available in 16 different colors, with or without the opera lamps on the C-pillars, a $63 option. The electric rear defogger seen here was a $94 extra. An optional Seville Elegante package included two-tone paint, wire wheels, and plusher interior trim; it was quite expensive ($2,600 and up), and accounted for less than 10% of sales. There was also a choice of steel or glass sunroofs, a pricey option adding up to $1,106 to the bottom line. Second, the Seville did nothing to arrest the growth of the German imports. American Mercedes sales topped 50,000 for the first time in 1977, and BMW was growing at a formidable rate. The Seville was not tempting those buyers; in June 1977, Cadillac admitted to Motor Trend's John Ethridge than less than 15% of Seville buyers traded in an imported car. The upshot was that as successful as the Seville was, it was not a game changer for Cadillac. It may have kept it from losing some existing customers to foreign makes, but it did little to expand the division's existing demographics. DIRTY HIGHThe success of the Seville helped to pull Cadillac out of its post-embargo doldrums. By 1976, American buyers were returning to big cars, as memories of the fuel crisis began to fade. Thanks to the excitement surrounding the Seville and the aggressive marketing tactics Bob Lund had initiated, Cadillac set a new sales record for the 1976 model year, more than 309,000 sales. The Seville also served to prepare buyers for the downsized Cadillacs that appeared in September 1976. Still gargantuan, the 1977 De Ville and Brougham were 9.5 in (240 mm) shorter and around 800 pounds (363 kg) lighter than before, with engines scaled back from 500 cu. in. (8.2 L) to a mere 425 (7.0 L). Sales soared even higher, reaching nearly 360,000 for 1977 and just under 350,000 for 1978.
High volume is a dangerous drug for any manufacturer. Like cocaine, it produces an immediate rush, but it erodes good judgment. With high volume comes the desperate need to maintain it, to move the metal at any cost. In this case, the cost was very high indeed. Cadillac's all-guns-blazing sales push was bringing record business, but it also represented a sort of liquidation sale of the brand's former prestige, not to mention its traditional quality control. It put a new Cadillac in the garage of everyone who had ever wanted one -- even as the buyers who could afford anything they wanted deserted Cadillac in growing numbers. We doubt that one person in 20 at GM really understood why, and even fewer actually cared. All that mattered were the impressive sales numbers.
Giddy and filled with hubris at this overwhelming success, general manager Ed Kennard made a fateful decision. Cadillac had successfully challenged the mighty S-Class Mercedes (he thought) -- why not the hot-selling, compact BMW 3-Series? Once again, Cadillac didn't have the time or the money for a new platform or new engines, but that hadn't hurt the Seville. A compact Cadillac would help meet Cadillac's CAFE requirements, and it seemed like a cheap, easy way to boost sales volume and profits even higher. The result was the Cadillac Cimarron, a facelifted version of the J-body Chevrolet Cavalier. This time, Cadillac made far less effort to differentiate the new model from its cheaper sibling. The Cimarron was little more than a tarted-up version of a rather dismal subcompact, but Kennard was confident that the Cadillac name would be enough.  From the front, the second-generation Seville looked little changed. The Olds diesel engine was standard at first, followed by the ill-fated V8-6-4, and in 1982, a HT-4100 249 cu. in. (4.1 L) V8. With nearly 4,000 lb (1,815 kg) of curb weight and only 135 hp (101 kW), the Seville was bog slow, although a four-speed overdrive automatic (introduced in 1982) helped fuel economy. THE FALLCadillac's late-seventies success was a bubble waiting to burst, and the Iranian revolution in early 1979 provided the needle. Fears of renewed fuel shortages sent the economy reeling and inflation soaring. Cadillac sales plummeted from over 380,000 in 1979 to 231,028 in 1980, as GM and all of Detroit took a bath.
The newly redesigned 1980 Seville wasn't much help. Now sharing the front-drive platform of the downsized 1979 Eldorado, it was the last and wackiest gasp of the Bill Mitchell era, inspired by Mitchell's ongoing fascination with Rolls-Royce. The roofline plunged dramatically to a peculiar bustleback rear deck, evoking the accessory trunks and "trunkback" sedans of the thirties. The new Seville was about the same size as before, but it now shared the FWD drivetrain of the downsized 1979 Eldorado. In a misguided effort to compete with the Mercedes 300D, a dismal 350 cu. in. (5.7 L) Oldsmobile diesel engine, first offered in 1978, was now standard, with a meager 105 net horsepower (78 kW). The optional gasoline engine, a new Cadillac-designed 368 cu. in. (6.0 L) V8, had only 145 hp (108 kW), so in spite of a 300-pound (136 kg) weight loss, the Seville remained a slug. Moreover, Cadillac greedily raised prices from just under $16,000 to over $20,000. Sales dropped more than 25%. Cadillac struggled for traction throughout the eighties. Many of the buyers who had fled out fear of a renewed energy crisis never came back. The Baby Boom generation, older and newly affluent, largely ignored Cadillac, trading their Hondas and Toyotas for BMWs and Audis. The cynical, shoddy Cimarron didn't help, nor did the short-lived and disastrous V8-6-4, an early attempt at cylinder deactivation that was dropped after only a year. The downsized Eldorado sold well, and the downsized De Ville did okay, but they appealed mostly to Cadillac's traditional owners, an audience that was aging and shrinking in equal measure. At the same time, new GM chairman Roger Smith was mounting an assault on the autonomy of the divisions, pushing for cost-cutting and greater commonality between the brands. That move ate away at anything that had ever made Cadillacs special or desirable. The disastrous 1986 Seville and Eldorado were stark evidence of the magnitude of the problem. Historians make great hay over their smaller size, calling them a downsizing too far, but we think the bigger problem was that they were gawky and ill proportioned, a clumsy attempt to marry dated styling themes with the bland sheet metal of lesser GM cars. They seemed half-hearted, even apologetic. Unsurprisingly, the new Seville sold even worse than the Cimarron. The Seville regained a measure of credibility in 1992, with its first complete revamp since 1986. Developed under the auspices of design VP Chuck Jordan, it was a sharp, confident melding of European and American design themes, arguably the best-looking modern Cadillac. Your author recalls a conversation on an airplane in 1992 with a middle-age businessman who expressed tremendous relief at the introduction of the new Seville, saying it was the first Cadillac he could park next to his friends' Lexuses without embarrassment. Sadly, Cadillac shot itself in the foot by delaying the DOHC Northstar engine until 1993, leaving the '92 Seville with a serious power deficit compared to its new Japanese rivals. This was subsequently rectified, but it was a blunder that suggested Cadillac was still not ready for the big leagues. Subsequent revisions seemed to lose the plot, and even the current version, now called STS, might as well be invisible. REQUIEM FOR THE SEVILLEConsidering its thoroughly unpromising ingredients, the original Seville turned out much better than it had any right to. With due respect to the talented engineers and designers who labored so hard on it, it was a deeply ambivalent concept. GM wasn't sure they wanted it -- the fact that it probably wouldn't have been built at all if it weren't for OPEC and John Meyer's wife makes that clear enough. They weren't quite sure what they wanted it to be, either. There was certainly nothing wrong with the idea of offering traditional Cadillac values in a tidier package, but the assumption that it would lure Mercedes buyers was specious at best.
The fundamental problem was not that Mercedes were dramatically better than Cadillacs (although in certain specific ways they were); it was that Cadillac had completely failed to grasp why well-heeled customers thought they were better. All Cadillac really understood was that Mercedes were relatively small and very expensive. The Seville was certainly both of those, but it was hardly a serious Mercedes rival. Cadillac could have taken Mercedes seriously, made a genuine effort to analyze its allure, and produced a car that would actually have appealed to Mercedes buyers, just as Toyota did with Lexus. It would have cost a lot more money, and it probably wouldn't have been as profitable, at least in the short term, but it would have gone a long way toward preserving the Cadillac brand. Even if there had been the will to do something like that, however, which we doubt very much, Cadillac didn't see the need. It's hard enough to reevaluate your strategy when you're obviously losing. Who wants to do that when things seem to be going your way? In a sense, Bob Lund was right, although not quite in the way he meant. (We think his drive to increase Cadillac's sales volume ultimately did more harm than good.) Cadillac, like GM itself, was indeed overripe and ready to fall -- a victim of its own success. # # #
NOTES ON SOURCESRobert Lund's remarks on his sales philosophy are quoted from the article "Lido Green and Growing" (author unknown, 1 July 1974, Time, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942900,00.html, retrieved 8 November 2009). Additional thoughts from Bob Lund on the energy crisis, as well as Bob Benton's comments on Mercedes, came from John Lamm, "The King of the Hill: Mark IV vs. Eldorado," Motor Trend (August 1973), reprinted in R.M. Clarke, ed., Cadillac Eldorado 1967-78 Performance Portfolio
 (Cobham, Surrey: Brooklands Books Ltd., 2000), pp. 114-117. Our principal source for the development of the 1976 Seville was the recollections of engineer Bob Templin, recounted in "1976-1979 Cadillac Seville" by the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide (7 November 2007, HowStuffWorks.com, accessed 7 November 2009). Additional information about the design process, including the remarks of Bill Mitchell, Stan Parker, and Irv Rybicki, came from Michael Lamm and Dave Holls' A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design  (Stockton, CA: Lamm-Morada Publishing Co. Inc., 1997). Details on year-to-year changes and optional equipment came from John Barach's Cadillac History website (June 2002, Motor Era, http://www.motorera.com/cadillac/index.htm, accessed 7 November 2009).We also referred to "Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5," Car and Driver (September 1970, Vol. 16, No. 3), pp. 33-36, 94, 98; "Mercedes-Benz 450SE," Road & Track (June 1973, Vol. 24, No. 10, pp. 40-43); "Cadillac Seville: Not a Mercedes, but a very good Cadillac," Road & Track (October 1975, Vol. 27, No. 2), pp. 84-87; Michael Jordan, "Ground Zero in Detroit: Target: Seville," Car and Driver (May 1977, Vol. 22, No. 11), pp. 49-60; and John Ethridge, "Cadillac Seville," Motor Trend (June 1977, Vol. 29, No. 6) pp. 44-48.
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If Mitchell were still around, he'd probably admire the Phantom, a vehicle that, in my opinion, could have been styled by Tonka or Fisher-Price. It baffles me how the same man was responsible for many of GM's most beautiful designs -- as well as many of its most horrifying.