The Perilous Success of the 1976 Cadillac Seville

The 1976 Cadillac Seville was Detroit’s first serious 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 a leading luxury car brand. This week, we look at the history of the 1976-1985 Cadillac Seville and the reasons for Cadillac’s subsequent decline.

1984 Cadillac Seville mirror

THE 800-POUND GORILLA STUMBLES

When Robert Lund became general manager of Cadillac in January 1973, GM’s top 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 267,787 units for the 1972 model year, demand still significantly exceeded supply, ensuring high transaction prices and excellent resale values.

Those were enviable achievements for any luxury automaker, but to Lund, who was coming off a highly successful stint as general sales manager for Chevrolet, they made Cadillac’s sales organization seem complacent, perhaps even lazy. It had been years since there’d been any serious organizational effort to promote sales growth, which Lund saw as a waste of potential. Soon after his arrival, he ordered a revamp of Cadillac’s marketing strategy and initiated a more aggressive sales campaign that he expected to boost Cadillac’s overall volume by 30% or more.

Lund’s plan to increase Cadillac sales would have been easy back in 1970, but that task 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 tentative fuel-rationing efforts. The very rich had never really cared about fuel prices — driving a gas guzzler when fuel is expensive only demonstrates your affluence — but the prospect of long-term shortages was quite another matter. Overnight, buyers fled from big cars, leaving dealers struggling to move their stocks of new Cadillacs.

During the crisis and in its aftermath, Lund, like many senior Detroit executives, presented a game face to the press, but it was a serious problem that would require new solutions.

THE ASCENSION OF MERCEDES-BENZ

As Detroit floundered, 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 U.S. sales for 1970 were only about 29,000 units, but that was better than many European imports whose prices were far lower. By 1972, Mercedes was selling more than 40,000 units a year in the U.S.

At first, Mercedes appealed to a somewhat rarefied audience. The contemporary American luxury car ideal ran to something roughly the size of a boxcar, with a cloud-like ride, a cosy drawing room interior decorated like a 19th century bordello, a full array of power convenience features, and an engine of at least 429 cubic inches (7.0 liters or near enough). By contrast, even the biggest Mercedes-Benz models — barring the very rare 600 and 600 Pullman limousines — were smaller than a contemporary American intermediate and, until the advent of the 3.5 and 6.3 models in 1970, relied on modest six-cylinder engines. Mercedes-Benz automobiles were tremendously solid, with roadholding ability that rivaled some contemporary sporty cars, but they were somewhat underpowered; rode stiffly; and had heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) that would not have passed muster on a Chevrolet Malibu, let along a Cadillac. They were not an obvious choice for the sybaritic.

1972 Mercedes 280SEL 4.5 front 3q
Mercedes nomenclature is more than a little confusing: the 280SEL designation of this 1972 W109 sedan implies a 2.8 L (2,778 cc, 170 cu. in.) “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. (4,520 cc) 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 simply becoming too common. That every grocery clerk in America aspired to a Cadillac was fine; pulling up to the country club in your new Eldorado and hearing that your valet or caddy owned one too was not. A fully loaded, top-of-the-line Cadillac Eldorado cost nearly $10,000 in those days, but with banks and financing companies offering ever-longer car loans, that was no longer enough to deter working-class social climbers, a troublesome situation to the ultra-wealthy keen to flaunt their status.

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 and for well-heeled buyers, it connoted a high level of discernment and taste. 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 the owners’ skeptical peers got a look at the meticulous Mercedes craftsmanship — and lofty prices — many ordered their own.

It took Cadillac a long time to notice Mercedes and longer still to understand it. Most Detroit executives, particularly at Cadillac and Lincoln-Mercury, 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 most of the values Detroit held dear. What working man or captain of industry would ever aspire to that?

In any event, 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 in the brand, it would eventually bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.

THE COMPACT CADILLAC

Despite its ongoing commitment to the more-is-more ideal, Cadillac did consider building a smaller car in the early seventies. It was not inspired by any desire to compete with Mercedes-Benz, but rather by complaints from customers, many of them older women, that Cadillac’s big cars were too cumbersome to maneuver and park.

The results of a marketing study commissioned in 1970 by Bob Lund’s predecessor, George Elges, had led the division to propose a more compact model that would retain all the brand’s other traditional virtues. However, the corporation’s Engineering Policy Committee, which had to approve new models, rejected the proposal on the grounds that it would hurt Cadillac’s image. The committee also made the valid point that what people ask for in marketing surveys is not necessarily what they buy. Cadillac had found that out a decade earlier when the division had introduced a pair of short-deck sedans, the Series 62 Town Sedan and De Ville Park Avenue, in response to customer complaints that existing models were too long for many surburban garages. Both cars were resounding commercial flops and Cadillac had quietly discontinued them after only two years.

Nonetheless, even before the OPEC embargo, Cadillac customers and dealers continued asking when the division would introduce a smaller model. When the wife of influential board member John Meyer (then the chairman of Mellon Bank) posed the same question, GM president Ed Cole asked Bob Lund and new Cadillac chief engineer Bob Templin to revisit the idea of a compact Cadillac.

1973 Mercedes 450SE front 3q
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 km/h) 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 inches (4,960 mm) long on a 112.8-inch (2,865mm) wheelbase, weighing a bit over 4,000 lb (1,825 kg) with the standard (for the U.S.) air conditioning. (Photo: “My 1973 Mercedes 450-SE” © 2007 Tom Bigelow (aviatorr727); used with permission)

The target for this new model, whose chances of production were still by no means assured, was the new Mercedes-Benz 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; its exterior dimensions were roughly the size of a Dodge Dart. Unlike many past Mercedes, the W116 had a V8, a 276 cu. in. (4,520 cc) engine initially rated at a modest 190 SAE net horsepower (142 kW). Despite its modest size, it was quite sophisticated, with an overhead-cam engine, Bosch D-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 its pedigree: $13,491 POE at introduction, enough to buy four Darts.

When Toyota decided to take on Mercedes in the mid-eighties with the Lexus brand, the Japanese company developed a completely new platform and a new engine for the car that became the first Lexus LS400/Toyota Celsior. GM had no interest in making that kind of investment in a low-volume project, particularly one that still rubbed Ed Cole (a former Cadillac general manager) the wrong way. “Economies of scale” had been GM’s corporate religion since the thirties; even luxury models were expected to share platforms and body shells to minimize per-unit costs and maximize return on investment.

The question for Ben Templin and his engineering staff was what platform to use. The whole point of the project was that GM’s big cars (the corporate B- and C-bodies) were too big, and the compact X-body, used by the Chevrolet Nova, hardly seemed a suitable base for a high-end luxury car. Templin considered the intermediate A-body, but while that might have been an appropriate compromise a few years earlier, GM’s contemporary intermediates had grown almost to the dimensions of full-size cars of a decade earlier, which was also too big.

A promising alternative was the Opel Diplomat, the flagship model of GM’s German subsidiary. First launched in 1964 and redesigned in 1969, the Diplomat was a bold but ultimately doomed effort to compete in the higher realms of the executive class. The top Diplomat model even offered a V8 engine, a rarity for the European market. The Diplomat had never sold well in Europe, where it was hamstrung by its down-market badge, but a Cadillac version for the American market was an intriguing prospect.

1977 Opel Diplomat B 5.4 front 3q
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 327 cu. in. (5,354) Chevrolet V8 linked to a Turbo Hydra-Matic transmission. The V8 was a brave choice in Europe, where engines over 170 cu. in. (2,800 cc) tended to provoke a sort of fiscal apocalypse, but it made the Diplomat more interesting for the U.S. market. (Photo © 2008 Armin Kußler; used with permission)

Alas, it was not to be. The Fisher Body Division warned Templin that they couldn’t use the Diplomat’s existing tooling — designed with metric dimensions and closer tolerances that none of GM’s existing North American factories could accommodate — without a major redesign that would probably cost as much as tooling for an all-new body, defeating the point of the exercise. Templin went back to the drawing board.

THE X-BODY CADILLAC

At the urging of Ed Cole, Cadillac turned again to the X-body. GM’s compact X-body was first developed in the early sixties as a rival for the Ford Falcon and a stopgap for disappointing sales of the rear-engine Chevrolet Corvair. Until 1971, the X-body had been exclusively used by the Chevy II/Nova and the Canadian-market Pontiac Acadian (the F-body Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird were mechanically related, but had their own body shell). However, a renewed boom in compact sales in the early seventies led to a rabbit-like proliferation, leading to the introduction of the X-body Pontiac Ventura II in 1971 and the Buick Apollo and Oldsmobile Omega for 1973.

The second-generation X-body, which had debuted for 1968, was the latest evolution 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, albeit with mixed results. While the X-body felt more solid than most of GM’s perimeter-frame cars of the same vintage, it had more noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) than a body-on-frame car and was neither as rigid, as light, nor as space-efficient as a true monocoque. Turning it into something that could seriously rival Mercedes-Benz would take work.

A related problem was finding an appropriate engine. Unlike GM’s other divisions, which all had smaller V8s, Cadillac’s smallest engine at that time displaced 429 cu. in. (7,025 cc). Naturally there was no question of developing a completely new engine, so Templin was obliged to adapt one from another division, something Cadillac hadn’t done since the 1934–1936 LaSalle. Hearkening back to those cars, which had used Oldsmobile straight-eight engines, Templin’s eventual choice was Oldsmobile’s 350 cu. in. (5,737 cc) V8, fitted with a new intake manifold and a brand-new second-generation Bendix electronic fuel injection system. (Cadillac also considered using a Wankel engine, the corporation’s much-publicized GM RCE, but that project was repeatedly delayed and eventually canceled outright.)

To give the compact Cadillac further mechanical distinction, Templin proposed making it front-wheel-drive, adapting the Unitized Power Package (UPP) from the Cadillac Eldorado, Oldsmobile Tornado, and the new GMC Motorhome. In recent years, many pundits have decided that front-wheel drive is unsuitable for high-end executive sedans, but at the time, it was considered racy, semi-exotic hardware and would have added lust to the Seville’s image. Cadillac built a number of FWD test mules, but the Engineering Policy Committee subsequently vetoed the FWD idea, apparently due to inadequate capacity at the plant that built the UPP’s unique TH425 transmission. (Since the UPP was probably subject to a Ford patent, as discussed in our Toronado history, patent royalties may also have been a consideration.)

Independent rear suspension was also considered, but Cadillac eventually abandoned that idea in favor of a refined version of the X-body compacts’ existing live axle and Hotchkiss drive. The compact Cadillac would differ considerably from the X-body in detail, but in basic layout, it would be a fairly ordinary American car.

1977 Cadillac Seville badge
The Seville was the first GM car designed 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. (8,194 cc) engine in the 1975 model year and the fuel-injected Chevrolet Cosworth Vega debuted shortly before the Seville. The 350 cu. in. (5,737 cc) Oldsmobile engine was exceptionally smooth and Bendix fuel injection gave it 180 net horsepower (134 kW), but the fuel injection system could be troublesome and some owners replaced it with a four-barrel carburetor.

TAILORING THE DWARF

While Templin was beginning the new car’s mechanical development, Cadillac chief stylist Stan Wilen was struggling to find a styling direction. Since it was all-new, the compact Cadillac had no specific design heritage on which to build and its smaller dimensions were seen as a challenge. With the notable exception of the Corvette and other sporty cars, Wilen’s boss, Styling VP Bill Mitchell, had never had much regard for small cars, famously likening their styling to “tailoring a dwarf.”

At Mitchell’s suggestion, Wilen developed an Italianate concept drawing he dubbed La Scala. He then transferred the project to Cadillac’s Advanced One studio, then led by Wayne Kady, which produced several very attractive elaborations on the theme, including one rendering that bore a flattering resemblance to the contemporary Ferrari 365GT.

Unfortunately, La Scala was conceived when Cadillac still hoped to build the car on the Diplomat platform. Once the stylists began adapting the design for the X-body, Irv Rybicki, then in charge of all exterior design for Cadillac, Buick, and Oldsmobile, became concerned that the results were becoming too recognizably similar to the Chevrolet Nova and its X-body siblings, something that would probably have sat ill with potential customers.

Stan Parker, who succeeded Wayne Kady as head of the Advanced One studio when Kady was promoted to chief stylist of Buick, found that that problem could be mitigated by extending the wheelbase a few inches between the B-pillar and the rear axle. Doing that would be more expensive because it would make it impossible for Cadillac to share the rear doors and door glass of the other X-body sedans, but Rybicki eventually persuaded Ed Cole to authorize the change because it would give the Cadillac compact distinct proportions.

Two competing proposals eventually reached the full-size clay model stage. The first, conceived by Kady, had partially skirted rear wheels, a downward-swept beltline (somewhat reminiscent of the 1959 Cadillacs), and a sloping rear deck. The second, the work of Stan Parker, had a more conventional notchback profile with crisp edges that evoked the Hooper-bodied Rolls-Royces that had once inspired the 1963 Buick Riviera. A consumer clinic in Southern California in July 1973 strongly preferred the notchback, which subsequently traded its slanted C-pillars (which to our eyes made the model look a bit like the later Aston Martin Lagonda) for a more formal upright backlight — another Rolls-Royce-inspired suggestion from Bill Mitchell.

The final design, which received production approval in December 1973, was another example of what Bill Mitchell called “the sheer look.” The idea of the sheer look, which Mitchell credited to former GM president and one-time Cadillac general manager Jack Gordon, was to offset sharp, angular lines with subtly rolled or curved surfaces. GM designers had previously applied that aesthetic to great effect on the first Riviera and the 1967 Eldorado, combining the straightforward linearity of European sedans without their severity.

1977 Cadillac Seville front 3q
To the credit of Stan Parker and the rest of the Cadillac design team, the Cadillac 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-Benz rival was in styling continuity; eschewing the usual facelifts, the Seville changed only in minor details through its five-year lifespan.

The impact of the sheer look has been diminished through sheer familiarity — GM subsequently applied the same principles to its downsized 1977 B- and C-body cars — but it was a big departure from the bulbous lines of the mid-seventies Cadillac De Ville and Eldorado. As it finally emerged, the new compact Cadillac was crisp and refreshingly no-nonsense — to our eyes, as a clean a design as GM had produced since the late sixties.

1978 Cadillac Seville rear fender
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 NOVA

Even before the OPEC embargo, Cadillac was under increasing pressure from dealers nervous about customers jumping ship to Mercedes or BMW. After the oil embargo began in October 1973, dealers were screaming for something, anything, with better fuel economy. The new compact, which Cadillac later claimed would return up to 19 mpg (12.4 L/100 km), seemed just the ticket. Executive vice president E.M. Pete Estes (who would succeed Cole as president in September 1974) told Cadillac the new compact needed to be ready by the middle of the 1975 model year, leaving the division less than 18 months to complete the X-body’s transformation into a Mercedes-fighting luxury car.

To distinguish it from the Nova, the Seville’s platform received a new K-body chassis designation. Mechanically, the K-body was superficially similar to the X-body despite a 3.3-inch (84mm) floorpan stretch, but the Cadillac differed considerably in detail. Aside from a standard limited-slip differential and automatic level control, the K-body benefited from engineer Robert Burton’s concerted assault on the X-body’s intrinsic NVH problems, which were mitigated in various ways, including increasing the number of front subframe bushings from four to six; adding Teflon liners between the semi-elliptical rear springs; allowing more fore-aft suspension compliance; using small hydraulic dampers to brace the driveshaft tunnel, the front fenders, and the transmission tail shaft; and locking the body bolts with epoxy resin rather than conventional washers. Templin admitted all this was far from elegant, but it worked.

1978 Cadillac Seville side
The Seville is 204 inches (5,182 mm) long on a 114.3-inch (2,903mm) wheelbase (compared to 111 inches/2,820 mm for the Nova), weighing around 4,400 lb (2,000 kg) with a full load of options. Brakes were initially front discs and rear drums, but four-wheel discs became standard in 1977. Radial tires were standard on the Seville; the popular simulated wire wheel covers were a $179 option.

While Templin and Burton worked the kinks out of the chassis, designers Stan Parker and Donald Logerquist were working overlapping 12-hour shifts to complete the production design work. A full-size fiberglass model of the final version was completed for management approval in June 1974.

The hasty development process was grueling for everyone involved and was further complicated by personnel changes. In September 1974, Wayne Kady returned to Cadillac to succeed Stan Wilen as chief stylist. Later that month, Ed Cole reached GM’s mandatory retirement age and relinquished the presidency to Pete Estes. On November 4, Bob Lund went back to Chevrolet, this time as general manager, and Edward C. Kennard took his place as general manager of Cadillac.

The new compact didn’t have a name until late that year. Since the new car was conceptually similar to the old LaSalle, Cadillac’s ad agency and some dealers proposed reviving the LaSalle name, which had actually been applied to some of the styling prototypes. LaSalle tested well with consumers, but marketing director Gordon Horsburgh and general sales manager Ted Hopkins ultimately rejected it, worried that some old-line dealers and customers recalled the old LaSalle as a commercial failure. Several alternatives, including St. Moritz and Allegro, were also rejected and Hopkins and Horsburgh eventually recommended Seville, a name Cadillac had used for two-door hardtop versions of its posh Eldorado from 1956 to 1960.

1960 Cadillac Eldorado rear 3q
The first Cadillac Seville was not a compact car — it was the hardtop coupe version of the limited-edition Eldorado, offered from 1956 to 1960. This is a 1960 Eldorado Seville hardtop, the last of the line; from 1961 to 1966, the Eldorado was offered only in convertible Biarritz form.

Thanks to the Herculean efforts of everyone involved, pilot production of the new Seville began in late March 1975, with the first production-spec cars rolling off the assembly line on April 22.

THE INTERNATIONAL-SIZE 1976 CADILLAC SEVILLE

The new Cadillac Seville made its official debut on May 1, 1975, as an early 1976 model. In contrast to the contemporary norm, the Seville was offered only in one body style, a four-door pillared sedan; during the development process, there had been several attractive coupe proposals, but the sedan was judged the most essential for battling Mercedes-Benz.

Cadillac advertising carefully avoided calling the Seville a compact, instead characterizing it as “international size.” Perhaps to forestall any misapprehension that it was an economy model, the Seville was also the most expensive car in Cadillac’s line-up other than the Series 75 limousines; in fact, a 1976 Seville was even costlier than an Eldorado convertible.

The Seville’s hefty $12,479 list price did include considerably 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 buyers on options. However, leather upholstery, cruise control, and gadgets like Twilight Sentinel still cost extra and a full complement of options pushed the bottom line to a hefty $14,000. That was nearly the price of a 1973 Mercedes 450SE, but in the interim, Mercedes had raised the 450SE’s price to more than $18,000, sparing Cadillac from a potentially dicey head-to-head comparison.

1978 Cadillac Seville front
The Cadillac Seville’s 350 cu. in. (5,737 cc) 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. (5,737 cc) 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 had a poor reliability record and 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 and half a ton lighter — but the Seville was compact only in a relative sense; it was 1.5 inches (38 mm) shorter than the 450SE, but more than 5 inches (132 mm) longer than a Jaguar XJ12L. The Seville was was heavy, too. All the structural gusseting had inflated curb weight to nearly 4,400 lb (2,000 kg).

At launch, the Seville was offered with only one powertrain: a three-speed TH375 transmission linked to the fuel-injected Oldsmobile V8. The latter produced a modest 180 net horsepower (134 kW), the same as a 1976 Mercedes 450SE. With taller gearing and about 200 pounds (91 kg) more weight than the Mercedes, acceleration was leisurely; 0-60 mph (0-97 km/h) took around 13 seconds, although top speed was a respectable 110 mph (175 km/h). Fuel economy was slightly disappointing, averaging around 16 mpg (14.7 L/100 km), although that was no worse than a V8 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 road manners were a matter of taste. Reviewers were consistently impressed with its suppression of noise, vibration, and harshness. In fact, contemporary road tests found that the Seville was significantly quieter than either the Mercedes 450SE or the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. On smooth roads, the Cadillac had a pleasingly well-damped ride with little of the typical land yacht’s waft and float and was far more maneuverable than the bigger Cadillacs of its time. However, the Seville could not match either the grip or the solidity of the contemporary S-Class. If pushed too hard, the Cadillac’s belt-and-braces structure made itself known, resulting in the occasional ragged body motion. The consensus of critical opinion was that the Seville was not up to Mercedes standards, but it was a fine Cadillac.

That seemed to be enough for many buyers, because the Seville was an immediate and profitable success, particularly in crucial West Coast markets. 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. Cadillac sold more than 16,000 Sevilles in the first four months and almost 44,000 during the remainder of the 1976 model year. The Seville quickly recouped its development costs, providing welcome reassurance for GM that its forthcoming downsized big cars would not be complete commercial disasters.

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 PRINT

Before 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. The Seville did appeal more to female buyers than did other Cadillac models; women accounted for about 45% of Seville sales, a significantly higher percentage than the Cadillac norm. All that suggests that the Seville appealed most strongly to the same audience identified back in 1970 by George Elges’ marketing study: older female buyers who liked Cadillac plushness, but wanted something easier to park.

1978 Cadillac Seville roof
The “Tuxedo Grain” vinyl top was nominally a no-cost option on the 1978 Cadillac Seville, although few if any Sevilles went without the padded top. It was offered in 16 different colors with or without opera lamps, which were a separate $63 option. This car’s electric rear defogger was a $94 extra. An optional Seville Elegante package, new for 1978, 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.

It appears that the Seville also did little to arrest the growth of the high-end German imports.
Gordon Horsburgh insisted that it did, but Cadillac officials admitted in early 1977 that only about 15% of Seville customers traded in a luxury import, which doesn’t seem an impressive figure for a model specifically intended as an import fighter. Meanwhile, German luxury car sales continued to climb. Mercedes’ U.S. sales topped 50,000 units for the first time in 1977 and BMW was growing at a formidable rate.

The upshot is that as successful as the Seville was, it was not really a game changer for Cadillac in terms of demographics. It may have kept some existing customers from defecting to the imports, but it appears to have done little to attract buyers who would not otherwise have chosen a Cadillac in the first place.

DANGEROUS HIGH

The success of the Seville helped to pull Cadillac out of its post-oil-embargo doldrums. By 1976, American buyers were returning to big cars as worries about the fuel crisis began to fade. Thanks to the excitement surrounding the Seville and the more aggressive marketing tactics Bob Lund had initiated, Cadillac set a new sales record for the 1976 model year of more than 309,000 units.

As the Seville’s popularity had foreshadowed, Cadillac customers proved receptive to the downsized De Ville and Brougham that arrived for the 1977 model year. Although still gargantuan by global standards, the new Cadillacs were 9.5 inches (240 mm) shorter and around 800 pounds (363 kg) lighter than before with engines scaled back from 500 cu. in. (8,194 cc) to a mere 425 (6,970 cc). Sales soared even higher, reaching almost 360,000 for 1977 and almost 350,000 for 1978.

High volume is a dangerous drug for any manufacturer. Like cocaine, it produces an immediate rush, but it can have a corrosive effect on good judgment. With high volume comes the need to maintain it, to move the metal at any cost. In this case, that cost was 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 while eroding Cadillac’s traditional quality control. It put a new Cadillac in the garage of everyone who had ever wanted one just as the customers who could afford anything they wanted were deserting Cadillac in growing numbers. A 1979 marketing study suggested a worrisome trend: the next emerging generation of affluent buyers was shunning domestic luxury cars entirely in favor of high-end imports. Spectacular as it was, Cadillac’s boom couldn’t last.

1984 Cadillac Seville front
The second-generation Cadillac Seville switched to front-wheel drive, sharing the Unitized Power Package powertrain of the Eldorado, Toronado, and Riviera. The 350 cu. in. (5,737 cc) Oldsmobile diesel was now standard, making a meager 105 hp (78 kW), but the new Cadillac 368 cu. in. (6,040 cc) V8 was optional, initially with 145 hp (108 kW). By 1982, the 368 cu. in. (6,040 cc) engine was replaced by a 249 cu. in. (4,088 cc) V8 (the HT4100) with a modest 125 hp (93 kW). A 252 cu. in. (4,128 cc) version of Buick’s 90-degree V6 was also optional in 1981-1982, making 125 hp (93 kW).

THE BUSTLEBACK 1980 CADILLAC SEVILLE

If Cadillac’s late-seventies success was a bubble waiting to burst, the Iranian revolution in early 1979 provided the needle. Fears of renewed oil shortages sent the economy reeling and inflation soaring. Cadillac sales plummeted from more than 380,000 in 1979 to around 231,000 for the 1980 model year as GM — and all of Detroit — took a bath.

The redesigned 1980 Seville wasn’t much help. Developed by Wayne Kady, its design had its roots in a number of concept renderings Kady had done back in the sixties, capitalizing on Bill Mitchell’s enduring love of Rolls-Royce. Like the 1963 Riviera, the new Seville’s sharp-edged roof evoked Hooper-bodied Rolls-Royces, but the design traded the previous car’s notchback profile for a peculiar bustleback trunk that evoked the “trunkback” sedans of the mid-thirties. (Ironically, that was a look that one of Bill Mitchell’s own designs — the 1938 Cadillac Sixty Special — had helped to make obsolete three decades earlier.)

Kady had originally developed the bustleback concept in early 1967 as a possible successor to the then-new FWD Eldorado. While it hadn’t made the cut at that time, Kady resurrected the proposal when he became Cadillac’s chief exterior designer in the mid-seventies. Ed Kennard, who didn’t care for the design, rejected the idea of making it the 1979 Eldorado, but Mitchell liked the bustleback too much to let it go and proposed making it the next-generation Seville instead.

The second-generation Seville was one of the last designs Mitchell championed before his 1977 retirement and remains one of the most controversial. Kady says Cadillac dealers loved it at the 1980 model year introduction, but critical and consumer response was sharply divided. The seventies had seen a great boom in neo-classical and pseudo-classical designs, from modern replicas of prewar cars to aftermarket accessories like faux Continental kits and simulated side mounts, so there were obviously people who liked that sort of thing, but there were also many who hoped the eighties would leave such gaudy ostentation behind.

Under the skin, the new Seville was closely related to the newly downsized 1979 Eldorado, Riviera, and Toronado, sharing their FWD platform and fully independent suspension. In a curious sign of the times, the Oldsmobile diesel V8 was now standard, although buyers in states other than California could also order Cadillac’s new 368 cu. in. (6,040 cc) petrol V8, which on Sevilles had throttle-body fuel injection and 145 hp (108 kW). Automatic transmission and four-wheel disc brakes remained standard.

Although the 1980 Seville was as technologically sophisticated as any contemporary Detroit product and its rarely ordered Touring Suspension provided surprisingly adroit handling, the styling made the Seville look positively baroque next to the sober BMW and Mercedes sedans of its era. The new look was undeniably bold, but it was probably the final nail in the coffin for the Seville as erstwhile import fighter. It’s hard to envision affluent young Baby Boomers, already hostile to their parents’ conception of luxury, viewing the bustleback Seville with anything but disdain.

The polarizing looks combined with a shaky economy and a price increase of nearly $4,000 (with several additional increases during the 1980 model year) to cut Seville sales to 39,344, a decline of more than 25% from 1979. Sales of the handsome new Eldorado, which had gotten off to a strong start, were also down for 1980, but recovered for 1981 while Seville sales fell an additional 27%.

1984 Cadillac Seville side
The 1980–1985 Cadillac Seville was about the same size as its predecessor — 204.8 inches (5,202 mm) long on a 114-inch (2,896mm) wheelbase — but the adoption of front-wheel drive trimmed curb weigh by 269 lb (122 kg) compared to the previous generation. The second-generation Seville was still no featherweight; curb weight remained over 4,000 lb (1,815 kg). This 1984 model has the 249 cu. in. (4,088 cc) HT4100 engine with 135 hp (101 kW). The Oldsmobile diesel V8 remained optional through 1985, but sales had slowed to a trickle.

Adding to the Seville’s woes in 1981 was the introduction of Cadillac’s ill-fated “V8-6-4,” more formally known as the Cadillac Modulated Displacement Engine. This modified the existing injected 368 cu. in. (6,040 cc) gasoline engine with the industry’s first cylinder deactivation system, developed by Cadillac under an Eaton Corporation patent. Under light load conditions, solenoids could shut down either two or four cylinders by disabling their rocker arms; a dashboard display indicated how many cylinders the engine was using at any given moment. Bob Templin claimed this system did more for fuel economy than adding an overdrive fourth gear to the automatic transmission (something the Seville wouldn’t get until 1982), but contemporary reviewers were dubious about the cylinder deactivation system’s real-world benefits. The V8-6-4 proved to have serious reliability problems as well and was quickly dropped on everything but the slow-selling Series Seventy-Five.

Unfortunately, Cadillac did not simply revert to the standard 368 cu. in. (6,040 cc) engine for 1982, instead substituting the new HT-4100, a fuel-injected 249 cu. in. (4,088 cc) V8 with an aluminum block and iron cylinder heads (like the old Chevrolet Vega engine). The HT-4100 was more fuel-efficient than its predecessor, helped by the new TH325-4L four-speed automatic, but could muster only 125 hp (93 kW) and 190 lb-ft (257 N-m) of torque, which made for lethargic performance. Sales fell an additional 30%, to only 19,998 units.

By the time the V8-6-4 arrived, Ed Kennard and Bob Templin had turned their attention to a new model even smaller than the Seville. The idea of a compact, entry-level car made a certain amount of sense; it would it help the division meet its CAFE requirements and it might snare some of the younger buyers who were avoiding Cadillac in favor of the BMW 3-Series or other high-end small cars. As with the first Seville, cost considerations precluded the development of a completely new platform or engines, so in early 1980, Kennard persuaded Pete Estes to allow Cadillac to join the corporate J-body program, a new line of FWD compacts slated for the 1982 model year. Estes was none too sanguine about that prospect since it left Cadillac very little time to differentiate its car from the other J-bodies, but Kennard persevered, apparently hoping that the Cadillac name would be enough.

1980 Cadillac Seville Elegante rear
Whatever one might say about the 1980 Cadillac Seville’s aesthetics, it would be hard to mistake it for anything else. Nonetheless, its bustleback styling theme also appeared on Chrysler’s 1981–1983 Imperial coupe, a similarity that seems to have been coincidental; both drew their ultimate inspiration from Hooper-bodied Rolls-Royces of the forties and fifties. While this 1980 Seville superficially resembles the Elegante package, which added two-tone paint and simulated luggage straps on the rear deck, it is apparently an aftermarket conversion.

The result was the compact Cadillac Cimarron, which bowed in May 1981. The Cimarron suggested that Cadillac had learned all the wrong lessons from the success of the first Seville. Like the 1976 Seville, it shared its underpinnings with an inexpensive Chevrolet, but was priced in the same realm as its import rivals: At launch, the Cimarron was about $750 cheaper than a BMW 320i, but nearly $3,000 more than an Audi 4000. Unlike the Seville, the Cimarron did little to hide its kinship with its platform-mates, which cost around $5,000 less. Despite generous standard equipment and an attempt at Germanic suspension tuning, the early Cimarron was little more than a Cavalier with a Cadillac grille, which convinced neither BMW fanciers nor existing Cadillac customers. Sales were well below expectations.

Thanks to an improving economy, Cadillac’s overall business recovered somewhat by the middle of the decade, topping the 300,000 mark in 1984 and setting a new record of 394,840 for the 1985 model year. Sales of the bustleback Seville improved commensurately, reaching almost 40,000 units a year in both 1984 and 1985. Even so, the Seville never sold as well as its predecessor and the mechanically similar but more orthodox-looking Eldorado outsold its bustleback cousin by more than two to one.

The downsized 1986 Seville, no longer as flamboyant but now bearing a disconcerting resemblance to the cheaper GM20/N-body cars, sent sales skidding once again. The Seville wouldn’t top 25,000 units a year until 1990. The Cimarron did even worse and Bill Hoglund, head of the new Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac group created by GM chairman Roger Smith in 1984, eventually persuaded Cadillac general manager John Grettenberger to cancel it after the 1988 model year.

Despite the upswing in sales, it was becoming painfully clear that Cadillac’s demographic was aging and neither the Seville nor the Cimarron had succeeded in turning that around. The median age of bustleback Seville customers was 60, four years older than the median age of all Cadillac buyers and a worrisome 25 years older than the median import buyer. (The median age of Cimarron buyers was 53.) The inflation-adjusted median income of Cadillac buyers had fallen by about 25% since the early seventies and fewer than one-third had a college education, suggesting that the brand now appealed more strongly to older blue-collar customers than to affluent yuppies.

1995 Cadillac Seville front 3q © 2008 IFCAR PD
The 1992–1997 Cadillac Seville was roughly the same size as the 1976–1985 models; 1995–1996 models like this one were 204.1 inches (5,184 mm) on a 111-inch (2,819mm) wheelbase, weighing a bit over 4,000 lb (1,815 kg). Despite handsome styling and ample power from its DOHC 279 cu. in. (4,565 cc) Northstar V8 — 275 hp (205 kW) for the base Seville, 300 hp (224 kW) for the sporty STS — this generation sold no better than the bustleback and it seemed to make little impression on import buyers, perhaps in part because of the FWD layout. (Photo: “1995-1997 Cadillac Seville” © 2008 IFCAR; released into the public domain by the photographer, resized 2010 by Aaron Severson)

After languishing throughout the late eighties, the Seville was redesigned again for 1992, courtesy of Cadillac chief stylist Dick Ruzzin under the auspices of design VP Chuck Jordan. Stylistically, the new Seville was first-rate — a sharp, confident melding of European and American design themes. However, the new car’s impact was muted somewhat by Cadillac’s decision to delay the planned DOHC Northstar engine until 1993, leaving the ’92 Seville with a serious power deficit relative to its major Japanese rivals. That was subsequently rectified, but it was a blunder that suggested Cadillac was still not competing in the big leagues.

The current model, once again rear-wheel drive and now called simply STS (previously a Seville sub-series), has remained largely invisible, selling no better than the downsized 1986–1991 models. Cadillac’s current business relies heavily on SUVs and the cheaper CTS, which is aimed not at the S-Class Mercedes or 7-Series BMW, but slightly easier targets like the Infiniti G-series and Lincoln MKZ. It remains to be seen whether Cadillac will once again field an effective entry in the high-end luxury market.

REQUIEM

Considered on its own merits, the original 1976–1979 Cadillac Seville turned out much better than it had any right to given its unpromising foundation, the hasty development schedule, and the deep-seated corporate ambivalence about the whole project. However, we remain deeply skeptical of the Seville’s value as an import rival. There was certainly no shame in offering traditional Cadillac values in a tidier package, which the Seville did very well, but the idea that a made-over Nova would have stemmed the growth of Mercedes strikes us as more than a little far-fetched. It was not that contemporary Mercedes-Benz cars were dramatically better than contemporary Cadillacs (although in certain specific ways they were); it was that Cadillac did not entirely grasp why well-heeled customers thought they were better. All Cadillac really seemed to understand was that Mercedes were relatively small and very expensive. The Seville was certainly both of those, but despite its virtues, it was not really a serious Mercedes rival, nor was its bustleback successor.

Throughout the seventies, officials of both Cadillac and Lincoln often reminded the motoring press that those brands’ many existing customers neither appreciated nor would have accepted the qualities that enthusiast critics so loved about BMW and Mercedes-Benz. That was probably true, at least to a point, but Cadillac’s determination to cling to its traditional clientele would cost the division dearly in the eighties and beyond.

The alternative would have been for Cadillac to make a genuine effort to analyze the allure of the high-end imports and produce a car that would actually have appealed to BMW and Mercedes buyers, just as Toyota did with Lexus. Admittedly, that would have undoubtedly cost far more and wouldn’t necessarily have worked, but the problem was that the outstanding success of the first Seville appears to have convinced Cadillac and GM that it wasn’t necessary to take such a leap. By the time the division realized the depths of the problem, they had lost a great deal of ground that, even more than 30 years later, Cadillac has yet to regain.

In a sense, Bob Lund was right about the dangers of Cadillac’s complacency, 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 at the top of its game in the seventies, but it was about to become a victim of its own success.

FIN

NOTES ON SOURCES

Our sources for this article included C. Edson Armi, The Art of American Car Design: The Profession and Personalities (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988); the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide, “1976-1979 Cadillac Seville,” HowStuffWorks.com, 7 November 2007, www.howstuffworks. com/1976-1979-cadillac-seville.htm, accessed 7 November 2009; Cars That Never Were: The Prototypes Skokie, IL: Publications International, 1981); and Encyclopedia of American Cars: Over 65 Years of Automotive History (Lincolnwood, IL: Publications International, 1996); “AUTOS: More Miles for More Sales,” TIME 15 September 1975, www.time. com, last accessed 30 November 2010; John Barach, “Cadillac History,” Motor Era, June 2002, www.motorera. com/ cadillac/ index.htm, last accessed 30 November 2010; Patrick Bedard, “The Making of an UnCadillac,” and Rich Ceppos, “Cadillac Cimarron: America’s number-one luxo-boat maker takes aim at the likes of Audi, BMW, Volvo, and Honda. No Kidding,” Car and Driver Vol. 27, No. 2 (August 1981): 35-40; Ray T. Bohacz, “Mechanical Marvels: One Size Fits All: The 1981 Cadillac V-8-6-4 engine,” Hemmings Classic Car #43 (April 2008): 82–85; Thomas E. Bonsall, “Trouble in Paradise: The Story of the Cadillac Cimarron,” RideandDrive. com, 1997; archived on web at web.archive. org/ web/ 20010118205200/ www.rideanddrive. com/ disasters/cimarron.html, last accessed 30 November 2010; www.cadillacseville.org, accessed 7 November 2009; Rich Ceppos, “Cadillac Sedan de Ville: Holding on for dear life with the world’s first variable-displacement engine,” Car and Driver Vol. 26, No. 10 (April 1981): 63–70; Mike Covello, Standard Catalog of Imported Cars 1946-2002, Second Edition (Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 2001); David R. Crippen, “Reminiscences of Irwin W. Rybicki” [interview transcript], 27 June 1985, Automotive Design Oral History Project, Accession 1673, Benson Ford Research Center, www.autolife. umd.umich. edu/ Design/ Rybicki_interview.htm (transcript), accessed 7 November 2009; Jim Dunne, “Cadillac’s Revolutionary 3-in-1 V8,” Popular Science Vol. 217, No. 4 (October 1980): 121-122; Helen Jones Earley and James R. Walkinshaw, Setting the Pace: Oldsmobile’s First 100 Years (Lansing, MI: Oldsmobile Division of General Motors Corporation, 1996); “Estes, Elliott M.,” Generations of GM History, GM Heritage Center, n.d., history.gmheritagecenter. com/wiki/index.php/Estes,_Elliott_M., accessed 7 November 2009; Henry Frank, “Hard Times at Cadillac: Unfocused marketing and aging customers spell trouble for GM’s luxury division,” Car and Driver Vol. 31, No. 6 (December 1985): 106–107; David Halberstam, The Reckoning (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1986); Bill Hartford, “Too Rough a Ride for the Soft Life,” Popular Car June 1969, reprinted in Cadillac Eldorado Performance Portfolio 1967-1978, ed. R.M. Clarke (Cobham, England: Brooklands Books Ltd., ca. 2000), pp. 56-57; Maurice D. Hendry and Dave Holls, Cadillac: Standard of the World: The Complete History, Fourth Edition (Princeton, N.J.: Automobile Quarterly, 1990); Dave Holls and Michael Lamm, A Century of Automotive Style: 100 Years of American Car Design (Stockton, CA: Lamm-Morada Publishing Co. Inc., 1997); John Lamm, “The King of the Hill: Mark IV vs. Eldorado,” Motor Trend Vol. 25, No. 8 (August 1973), reprinted in Cadillac Eldorado Performance Portfolio 1967-1978, pp. 114-117; L’Editrice Dell’Automobile LEA, World Cars 1973 (Bronxville, NY: Herald Books, 1973); “Lido Green and Growing,” TIME 1 July 1974, www.time. com, retrieved 8 November 2009; Steve Magnante, “History of Automotive Design 1969-1988: Steven N. Bolinger, Chrysler Design Specialist,” Hemmings Classic Car #27 (December 2006), pp. 72–77; Donald Neff, Warriors Against Israel: How Israel Won the Battle to Become America’s Ally 1973 (Ft. Collins, CO: Linden Press, 1981); Productioncars.com, Book of Automobile Production and Sales Figures, 1945–2005 (N.p.: 2006); Gary Smith, “Wayne Kady,” Dean’s Garage, 10 November 2010, deansgarage. com/ 2010/ wayne-kady/, accessed 29 November 2010; “We RememBear: Cadillac Cimarron,” 14 March 2004, AutomoBear.com, accessed 5 November 2009; Gary Witzenburg, “1980 Cadillac Seville: Unforgettable or Unforgivable?” Collectible Automobile Vol. 26, No. 4 (December 2009): 34–45; Kevin Wong and Greg Pruett, “Port Fuel Injection,” Olds FAQ, 2000, www.442. com/ oldsfaq/ ofinm.htm, last accessed 29 November 2010; and the Wikipedia® pages for the Cadillac STS (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_STS, last accessed 29 November 2010) and Opel Diplomat (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Diplomat, last accessed 29 November 2010).

We also referred to the following period road tests: “Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5,” Car and Driver Vol. 16, No. 3 (September 1970): 33–36, 94, 98; “Mercedes-Benz 450SE,” Road & Track Vol. 24, No. 10 (June 1973): 40–43; “Cadillac Seville: Not a Mercedes, but a very good Cadillac,” Road & Track Vol. 27, No. 2 (October 1975): 84–87; Michael Jordan, “Ground Zero in Detroit: Target: Seville,” Car and Driver Vol. 22, No. 11 (May 1977): 49–60; John Ethridge, “Cadillac Seville,” Motor Trend Vol. 29, No. 6 (June 1977): 44–48; and “Giant Test: Daimler Double Six Vanden Plas, Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II, Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9, Cadillac Seville,” CAR September 1977, pp. 36–43, 72–73.


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  1. I am a big fan of your site. I think that you usually go beyond the normal party line of automotive history in an attempt to dig deeper into the real story.

    Concerning this article, I appreciate your analysis of increased production at Cadillac leading to a drop in exclusivity and prestige. However, you take shots at the 2nd generation Seville, without realizing what was truly at stake.

    The “bustleback” Seville was a design that Ed Kennard didn’t want. Bill Mitchell trusted his own iconoclastic taste and pushed it through nonetheless. In the last days of the 1970’s, GM was still a leader in styling and the VP of Design Staff was one of the most powerful, influential men in the company. In the tradition of Harley Earl, Bill Mitchell wasn’t afraid to pursue adventurous design.

    The 1980 Seville wasn’t the failure that you represent it as. Production numbers dipped, but the car served it’s purpose as a lower-volume halo car for GM and Cadillac. This is exactly what you rightly accuse the first-gen model of not being. Today, it may seen baroque, but the styling was loved by dealers and buyers, as well as copycats Ford and Chrysler.

    I can say nothing positive for the diesel or the “HT” 4100, but the 368 feels underrated at 145hp. Both ’80 Sevilles that I have owned were powerful, capable cars, particularly at high speed. They were also beautifully constructed, with extensive hand finishing and opulent interiors. I will say that the excellent sales and current collectibilty of 82-85 Cadillacs proves that the public loves the styling so much that it is willing to put up with unreliable, severely underpowered engines.

    The Bill Mitchell era saw some adventurous cars. The 65 Riviera, 66 Toronado, 68 Corvette and 71 Riviera are a few of the cars that staid corporate types hated. They were polarizing and sold in low volumes, but they added a lot of personality to each division. The 1980 Seville is the last in a long line of “personality” cars from GM. What followed was diminished design autonomy, lookalike cars that were the joke of the industry and GM’s place in the world growing ever more tenuous.

    You should be celebrating and mourning the loss of strong, independent designers at GM and exciting cars like the 1980 Seville.

    1. Bill Mitchell’s departure was definitely the end of an era, as I talked about in the story on the Reatta ([url]http://dev.ateupwithmotor.com/model-histories/buick-reatta-history/[/url]). I agree that it had very serious consequences for GM, for which they’re still paying dearly.

      However, I think that the second-generation Seville was also a clear sign of how much Cadillac’s appeal had contracted. The bustleback may have appealed to existing Cadillac customers, but it was wildly out of step with the tastes of much of the luxury car market. I see it as the point that Cadillac went from being a default choice for a broad spectrum of American customers to having a narrow appeal to existing buyers.

      I don’t criticize Mitchell or Kady for creating a polarizing design, even if it’s one I don’t happen to like. As you say, if designers aren’t willing to shake things up, the result is cookie-cutter blandness. And if you’re going to do something radical, a niche product like the Seville or Eldorado is a better place to do it than with your bread-and-butter products. Still, "baroque" is an understatement.

      I’m really not sure that the Imperial was an intentional imitator of the second-generation Seville. Stylist Bob Marcks feels that the Imperial’s design was lifted from a turbine-powered concept car he did in the mid-seventies. I suppose it’s possible that they added the bustle at the last minute after seeing early studies or models of the 1980 Seville, but I have no specific evidence to support that. (By the time the Seville was publicly announced, the Imperial’s design would already have been locked, but stylists are often aware of competing products before they appear.) The Lincoln, however, very likely [i]was[/i] a conscious imitation. Neither of those cars sold particularly well, either, suggesting they appealed to fairly rarefied tastes.

      1. That Mitchell had wanted the bustleback for the 1st gen Seville was common knowledge in the industry. Pictgures of the bustleback proposals were included in the design development story of the 1st gen Seville in Car Styling. EVERY car Design studio around the world subscribed and poured over the pictures.

        The bustleback Imperial was a clay sitting in the Design wing modeling floor during the Cordoba and Mirada. It had been a losing proposal but management refused to let the clay be broken down. It was resurrected to become the Imperial later. Its treatment for the bustleback was decently done; the Versailles was just clumsy.

    2. What are your thought*s on the 4100 aluminum engine in the 1985 Eldorado? I drove one the other day that had only 47000 miles.The car itself was cleaner than a whistle,but don*t know where it came from as it was sitting on an local area lot. To me it was pretty impressive but am a bit skeptical of the engine.

  2. I appreciate your thoughtful, lengthy response to my comment. You bring to mind an age old question about the last of a certain type of car. Did it cause it’s own downfall, or was it the result of changing times and markets.

    As the bustleback Seville was the last stand for exciting styling at GM and the ultimate statement of the neoclassic school of the 70’s, one would have to wonder if it’s excesses caused the downfall of that entire school, causing a radical shift toward rational, boring design.

    I would draw a parallel to the Lincoln Mark VIII, which was certainly a polarizing design that stretched the jellybean look and the concept of what a luxury car should look like. Was it’s excessive styling the reason that there was no Mark IX, or was it just time to stop making personal luxury cars and go home?

    Loving the bustleback and hating the Mark VIII, I hadn’t seen the connection until now. Are they really two sides of the same coin? Two excessive styles from their respective schools which ended the party for that kind of design.

    I would still submit that a company with as many model lines as GM [i]should[/i] tailor some of it’s products to more rarefied tastes. Lately, they have been trying to make every car a car for everybody, with a precious few notable exceptions (CTS, Camaro). Has this policy of watering down the styling mix and trying to satisfy too many divergent tastes resulted in a fleet that nobody feels strongly about? I would argue that it does and that it has taken a severe toll on a company that made it’s money on selling status and the concept of “moving up.”

    1. I think the demise of the Mark VIII had more to do with the contraction of the big coupe market in the nineties than with buyer reaction to its styling. Many of the consumers who had previously bought cars like the Mark were buying luxury SUVs like the Yukon Denali by then, and even the Thunderbird didn’t survive the nineties. (In fact, sinking T-Bird sales may have affected the fate of the Mark, since the Mark shared the Thunderbird and Cougar’s MN12 platform.)

      I don’t know that I think creating deliberately polarizing designs is useful, except for show cars and exotics. The problem with polarizing designs is that stylists tend to create them for the benefit of other designers, rather than for the buying public. That was the case with GM’s 1959 cars; there was a conscious push to be radical and innovative to reclaim styling leadership from Chrysler, and even Bill Mitchell (who led the ’59 designs) later admitted they went overboard. By contrast, a design like the 1968½ Continental Mark III was a risk — no one had done anything quite like that before — but it was developed with a specific marketing concept in mind. Iacocca had an instinct that customers would perceive the Mark III’s melange of retro and Rolls design cues as opulent and rich looking, and it turned out that he was right.

      I think part of GM’s problem today is its misguided emphasis on branding. The fundamental problem is that a lot of GM’s products are now very much alike (something the demise of Pontiac and Saturn will only partly address). Styling is clearly under a lot of pressure to create a distinct visual identity for each brand, but I think that the corporation has lost sight of where its customers’ tastes lie. I ask the same question an old colleague of mine from another industry used to ask about new products: “Who is this aimed at, and who do you think is buying it?” If you understand the priorities of your target market, you can challenge and develop their tastes without alienating them or boring them to death. If you don’t — and I’m not at all convinced GM has [i]any[/i] understanding of the current market, except perhaps for Corvette buyers — all the tacked-on brand identification and self-conscious design philosophies in the world will not help.

    2. As for the Seville, I think that the bustleback suggests that Mitchell didn’t quite understand [i]why[/i] neoclassical design was so popular in the seventies. My suspicion is that buyers did not gravitate toward cars like the Mark, the Monte Carlo, et al, because they perceived them as [i]retro[/i], but because they looked [i]expensive[/i]. The Marks didn’t really have a unified theme — they looked liked a cross between a Thunderbird and a limousine — and Bill Mitchell was very critical of their hodgepodge styling. However, customers didn’t see them as a hodgepodge; the important thing was that Mark’s Rolls-Royce grille, opera windows, etc., all looked ritzy and opulent.

      The bustleback Seville, on the other hand, was self-consciously neoclassical, which was not what buyers were really after. I’m sure there were (and still are) people who liked it just because it looked different, but I don’t think it was as appealing to the greater mass of buyers as the Mark IV or Mark V Continentals.

      Furthermore, by the early eighties, the market had changed. A younger generation of buyers was finally hitting the point where they could afford luxury cars, while the traditional Cadillac and Lincoln crowd was aging. To a Baby Boomer yuppie, whose car-buying history may have gone from Mustang to Maverick to Rabbit to Honda Accord, the neo-classical Cadillacs and Lincolns were just bloated and gross. Many of those buyers walked past the Cadillac and Lincoln showrooms without a second glance, and ended up with BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes.

  3. I can’t resist replying to you on this one, as we are talking about my favorite subject here.

    I think you are right about the Mark III, IV and V being very commercial designs and the sales figures show this to be a fact. Gene Bordinat was the type of designer who never wanted to outstrip his buyers’ tastes. I think that with some exceptions, Ford was a well known follower of design trends.

    GM, under Earl and Mitchell was known as the leader in styling and the innovator of new trends. This reputation produced a hubris that gave these men the conviction to release some pretty remarkable designs. This, combined with the autonomous division structure, is what I think caused their success and high market share. The Seville was certainly an excess from this era, but the disappointing products we have had to endure since the Seville make you realize that it was the end of the GM Dynasty. For that, I will always love the bustleback Seville.

    As far as the younger generation goes, someone that wants a BMW, Mercedes, etc. will never be as satisfied with a Cadillac or Lincoln copy of said car. I think Cadillac just realized this. The Escalade and CTS-V are two models that rely on distinctively American characteristics and are a hit with the baby boomers.

    1. In 1975, Bill Mitchell told Brock Yates of [i]Car and Driver[/i] that the problem with Ford styling was that the sales guys were in charge, and were constantly saying, "Couldn’t you add…" To a large extent, that was true, particularly under Iacocca, who was first and foremost a sales guy.

      Interestingly, Gene Bordinat didn’t like the Mark III at all. Dave Ash, who was the lead designer on it, said if he’d submitted the concept to Bordinat without it being Iacocca’s idea, Bordinat would have told him he was full of it. I think Bordinat later warmed to it, but at first, he was nonplussed by it. It was not something he would have come up with himself.

      I think that Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell were cantankerous and full of hubris in part because they had to be; if they had been more cooperative, they would have been steamrolled. Dave Holls and Michael Lamm felt that was the great failing of Irv Rybicki, who succeeded Mitchell. By all accounts, Rybicki was a really nice guy, and he was certainly talented, but he acquiesced to things that would have made Mitchell throw a tantrum. The problem was that after dealing with Earl and Mitchell’s temperament for 50 years, GM management was very reluctant to put up with any more. They wanted a good team player, and they got one, but you can see the results.

  4. Aaron,

    Thank you for another insightful article on the Seville – and the beginnings of Cadillac’s (and GM’s)long hard fall. That first 1976 Seville may have been a patchwork quilt of engineering bandaids on an old Nova platform, but it was a game changer for the American auto industry as far as design went at the time. Mitchell’s “sheer look” was the impetus for the more organized, squared-off less bloated styles that permeated US design throughout the 1980’s. I was smitten the first time I saw one on the street and still am today. To these eyes, it ranks right up there with Mr. Mitchell’s first Cadillac Sixty Special. In it’s day, it was a beautifully detailed luxury automobile that whispered quality and exclusivity – something unique for a Cadillac. It was too good to last, as the next generation bustle backed car shows.

  5. I’m absolutely shocked to see the love for the bustleback 80’s Seville. I guess that’s because for me it was this very car that put the final nail in the coffin for “American luxury” cars for me.

    Growing up in the 70’s even I as a kid noticed the excessive family resemblance of the premiere Caddy’s to their supposedly less polished GM siblings, I never understood why older folks held them in such high regard.

    When I was about 13 a neighbour down the street bought a new brown 83/84? Seville Elegante and brought it to our house to show it off. Stylewise I thought it had weird proportions with the stubby trunk but it was all the tacked-on crap that just turned me off completely.
    Vinyl top, fake wheel cover on trunk, fake “luggage” straps? All fake and chintzy looking.
    Then the interior which was leather still felt like vinyl and the dash and center stack looked not very different from our 78 Cutlass.

    I couldn’t believe that this represented some pinnacle of luxury? style? class?

    His various reliability problems further tarnished the image.

    From that point on (aside from the STS sedans) I never really looked at Cadillacs with anything but pity until the CTS-V came out, hell I even seriously considered buying one 5 years ago but couldn’t get over the brand’s reputation.

    1. From an aesthetic standpoint, I have to say I find the bustleback quite appalling, although having a better sense of where it came from, design-wise, has reduced the “What the hell were they thinking?” factor. I give Cadillac credit for trying something radical, which is not easy for well-established brands to do, but the fake luggage straps are pretty difficult to rationalize in any sense…

    2. I remember the luggage straps and fake spare tire; I’m almost certain that that was aftermarket tat, put on without Cadillac’s endorsement, though perhaps they should have been more aggressive in stopping dealers from pushing those packages. In its factory trim, the car was definitely an acquired taste, but I always found it intriguing. It was far more advanced and space efficient than the C bodies, and it was the only real car (not a novelty coup) that used the UPP FWD layout. Even if its appeal as a new car was limited, it’s a great choice as a collector’s car.

  6. Just found your site and this was the first article I’ve read, what can I say… amazing!

    Well written, articulate, highly researched and thoroughly detailed – bravo!

    I’ve loved cars all my life and a have a grudging fondness for older GM vehicles such as these. Though I must admit I became alienated and disenfranchised with GM since the mid 80’s.

    That said I would like to add a piece of missing info your fine article. You may not have come across this during your research but early, first generation Sevilles were unavailable from the factory without a vinyl roof.

    My first job out of college was working for a Cadillac dealer in Queens, N.Y. in 1976 as a fleet dept. administrator (fancy title, low pay, fun job).

    I worked with the owner’s son scheduling delivery of vehicles to fleet customers. We received numerous requests from some very wealthy clients to order the ’76-’77 Seville with a metal roof. I was requested to contact Cadillac’s N.Y. regional office (I believe it was Tonawanda, N.Y.) for special approval.

    The response I received was titled “confidential” but I suppose I can reveal it now… The factory did not offer it due to cost. I learned it was more expensive to delete the vinyl than to make it available, if that makes sense.

    The reason given indicated the necessity for a greater amount of labor needed to grind, smooth and polish out the weld lines between the roof and “C” pillars.

    In the end, the dealership took it upon themselves and offered it to “select” customers as an in-house customization and collected a tidy profit.

    BTW, this was done for a significant number of “international” customers from the middle east who purchased a dozen cars each month. I had the unique experience of driving at least one or more of these custom Caddys to the docks where the cars where “containerized” and shipped to Saudi Arabia.

    Some of the mods done included repainting the cars to match specific fabric colors (submitted by the customers), custom interiors including rear bucket seats with refrigerators, TVs, telephones, etc.

    Very common “toys” today but very unusual and expensive back then. I remember one Seville with over $20K (above and beyond the cost of the car) of additional dealer installed items and customizations.

    I sometimes wonder if any of those cars survived and where they might be today?

    Anyway, great site and look forward to reading more…

    Best Regards,
    =Hy=

    1. I’d be interested in talking to you? There used to be a story that you had to have a vinyl roof because the roof came in several pieces. Having broken a few of the late ’75, early ’76 Sevilles we found this was not so. The roof and sail panels assembly on the early cars was just like a ’77 or ’78?

      Interesting you being so close to the action as it were. Could we speak on email?

  7. Love your site, BTW.

    The ’80 Seville you’ve got pictured is not an Elegante (it does not have the “french curve” side mouldings and the two-toning does not follow the correct contour) and the chrome trunk straps are aftermarket schmaltz, not factory equipment.

    If you want better pics to use I have an ’84 Elegante that is in mint condition, take a look at my FB page and let me know if you’re interested in that or any other photos. My taste in cars seems to lean heavily towards GM marketplace failures so you might find something useful.

    In defense of the bustleback edition given its price-point at the very top of Cadillac’s line-up coupled with it’s comparatively diminutive size next to its more traditional stablemates that it sold in the numbers that it did can best be attributed to its unique styling.

    Arguably if Cadillac had gone with a less gorpulent three-box design for the second generation it’s hard to say that its sales would have been significantly better as evidenced by the total collapse of sales that the much-maligned third generation experienced. I’d say for the times it was pretty much in sync with what Cadillac buyers wanted, granted not a lot of import-intenders were conquested, but back in the day if you were looking for the ultimate domestically-produced luxury car, the Seville was at the pinnacle in terms of luxury, handling and distinctiveness.

    That the Eldorado was a runaway success does not reflect poorly on the Seville given that they were aimed at the needs of significantly different buyers not to mention the (initially at least) wide differential in pricing between the two models. The Eldorado was simply exactly the right personal luxury coupe for those times; while it was significantly smaller than its predecessor in every dimension it sported a larger, more comfortable interior, contemporary styling, better performance, fuel economy and errr.. handling than the boat it replaced.

    1. Thanks for the correction on the photo; I’ve amended the text.

      [quote]if Cadillac had gone with a less gorpulent three-box design for the second generation it’s hard to say that its sales would have been significantly better as evidenced by the total collapse of sales that the much-maligned third generation experienced.[/quote]

      I generally agree. I’m always leery of historical arguments that boil down to "if they had only done/not done this, things would have been different," because it’s seldom that simple. I think what the Seville does reveal, though, was the emerging schism between Cadillac brand values (a term that makes me cringe a bit, but is fairly appropriate here) and median buyer tastes of that period. As I wrote in the article, I’m not sure how many import buyers the earlier model actually swayed, but if a potential Mercedes or BMW buyer might not have been convinced by a 1976-1979 Seville, they definitely wouldn’t have touched a bustleback with a 10-foot pole.

      Sales-wise, the bustleback was hardly a complete disaster (particularly if we consider that the 1980-1981 model years were affected as much by the economic effects of the Iranian revolution as anything to do with the product), but by the time that model ended, it was becoming very apparent that Cadillac was no longer desirable to most buyers in the way it had been from the fifties through the seventies. I’m not suggesting the Seville caused that, simply that it was a case in point.

      You make a good point about the Eldorado’s price, although I’d want to take a look at the options lists to see how big the gap actually was on an equipment-adjusted basis. As with the earlier generations, I suspect a lot of Eldorados were still sold fully loaded, which may have put them closer to the Seville than the base MSRPs would suggest. I’ll have to check that out.

  8. 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.

    1. I think the interesting thing is that the classic designs and the appalling ones are clearly drawn from the same set of influences. He liked the Auburn Speedster (and other early-thirties boattail roadsters), which directly influenced both the Sting Ray and the ’71-’73 Riviera. He loved the Hooper-bodied Rolls-Royces and thirties luxury cars, which influenced both the original Riviera (which looked great) and the second-generation Seville (which, well…). I suppose the moral of the story is “they can’t all be winners.”

      1. Bill Mitchell’s worst sin, in my opinion, was the sawmilled hunchback styling of the 1978-79 Cutlass & Century sedans. They were ugly than most hatchbacks and didn’t even have folding rear seats. The only thing more shocking was that GM re-created their failure in the even uglier 1997 Pontiac Aztek.

        1. I have to agree about the Aeroback Buick and Oldsmobile sedans. I have a lot of animosity toward the Aeroback Cutlass and Century, which were dreadful to drive as well as unjustifiably ugly. The Aztek, shockingly clownish as it was, seems to have had a different set of problems, stemming from the challenges of productionizing it. (I don’t think the original concepts were very attractive either, and the huge nostril effect was always a terrible mistake, but one can see what they were thinking, even if the results were disastrous.) It also provided to be a conceptually sounder product, ahead of its time, as evidenced by the fact that a growing number of carmakers now refuse to offer anything but crossovers and pickup trucks. It is, sadly, the Pontiac Aztek’s world and we are all living in it.

  9. I can’t read all the way to the right on this page and the imperial page. Other pages work fine. I am on an Iphone

    1. Okay, I think I’ve managed to fix it. I don’t have an iPhone, I’m not able to confirm it, but I see what I believe was the issue and I think I’ve resolved it. Let me know if you still have any issues with it. (Please note that you may need to clear your iPhone browser cache to see the changes — some browsers like to cling to the previously cached version even if you hit reload.) Sorry for the trouble.

  10. Thank you for a well written article on the Seville. I enjoyed your analysis of consumer mindset. My family had a ’78 Seville which we bought in about 1985. I think the appeal for my father was a tried and true drive train, Olds 350 and TH400 trans, RWD and a classy look. My father painted the car in a maroon color which wasn’t available from the factory.
    We only kept the car for a few years, it was not entirely reliable, and it still handled like a big car. When looking for a replacement we considered some boring cars like 80’s Cutlass Cieras, and the Mazda 929. We settled on a Volvo 740 turbo due to its tried and true drive train, peppy engine and good handling and safety (it’s pretty sad when a Volvo 740 was considered an exciting car!). So maybe its true that Seville buyers were leaning towards European car values. I remember on the test drive of the Volvo the seller referred to the 760 as an old mans car. My father bought the Seville looking for a more sporty Cadillac, but we ended up going European after all.
    I think if it had gotten smaller and more sporty in 1980 they may have gained more buyers. Instead they seemed to run from success and make it more bloated and FWD and ugly to boot(no pun intended).

  11. The ’76 – ’79 Seville is one of my all time favorites. As you point out it introduced the Sheer Look that ended with the ’90 Caprice and remains one of my most appreciated styling themes. I’ve spent decades reading on the first generation Seville and yours is the finest treatise that I’ve ever encountered.

    Thank you and congratulations on receiving the E.P. Ingersoll award. It is the reason why I discovered your site today.

  12. I purchased and still own the 1978 Cadillac Seville I saw rotating in a Southern California showroom window for $12,500, Tara White with the Red Carmine leather interior. It has been a very reliable car for 36 years. Recently, I had to have the engine replaced and it needs a new vinyl top. I don’t know why they ever put a vinyl top on such a beautiful automobile. The most expensive thing I had to do with this vehicle until replacing the engine was to replace the vinyl top four (4) times. The first 15,000 miles the speedometer failed, but the dealer replaced it. I believe the longevity of the car is due to the frequent oil changes (every 3,000 miles). In 2013 the State of California issued a Historical License Plate for this fine American automobile.

  13. Loved this article and all of your articles, thanks for writing this!! One correction: the 1973 450SE had bosch d-jetronic electronic injection. k-jetronic came later. Pardon my iPhone induced type-os.

    1. Ryan — you’re quite right and I’ve fixed that in the text. Thanks!

  14. Other than the mandatory vinyl roof, I’d say the styling of the 1975.5-1976 models was sort of an early high point for the “shear look”; the egg-crate grill sitting under a nearly-flat hood with just a subtle, almost imperceptible “power bulge” gave it an elegant, watch-like quality. The fake-rolls grille that was used from 1977 on ruined all that, but the car lost much of its raison d’être when the downsized 1977 Deville and Fleetwood models, which were superior in most respects, came out. The loss of 10 HP the following year just made the Seville seem more redundant. That gets us to the love-it-or-hate it 1980. Though I wouldn’t want every car to look like that, I’ve never understood the negativity directed at that car. While odd, without all the dealer-installed tat that helped ruin its image, I’d call it cleaner than a lot of the cars from that era. It was a bit of a dare, but I’d never compare it with the in-your-face ugliness of, say, the 1978 Cutlass sedans or the 1998 Pontic Aztek. It didn’t have much of the clownish front overhang that made so many ’70s cars cringe-worthy and it actually had lines, unlike, for instance, a 1980 Town Car or most BMWs of that era. It was also the first and only use (as far as I know) of the UPP FWD layout in a sedan, which probably makes it the best demonstration of how effective that layout could have been in fitting a generous interior into a small package. Though my experience with both cars is limited, I’ve always heard that the ’80 was a much more comfortable car than the ’79. So, in my estimation, the worst problem the 80-85 had was a lack of decent engine choices. Either way, if I were looking for a car of historical value from that era, the V-4-6-8 powered ’81, with the cylinder deactivation intact, would be an amazing choice. Being uniquely styled, with the first-in-the-world use of a new engine management technology and the only more-than-novelty use of the UPP configuration, it’s the perfect storm of collectability traits, even if it’s more desirable as a collector’s car than it was as a new car.

    1. I will admit it’s a bit of a struggle for me to weigh the 1980 Seville’s in vacuo merits because the design so aggrieves my sense of taste that in a different era they would have been challenging each other to duels. That said, as a piece of design, one certainly can’t call the 1980 Seville dull, and aside from the technological points you mention, one could make a reasonable case that it presaged the modern fad for style-forward high-end four-door “coupes” (or the Japanese fondness throughout the ’80s for pillared four-door hardtops, q.v.).

      Nonetheless, I think the design was a mistake from a commercial standpoint because I think it largely sacrificed any possibility of the car being considered on its merits as an alternative to something like a 5-Series. Part of the appeal of the 5er and its ilk to Yuppie buyers of that period was the idea that the European model of luxury was more sensible, rational, and modern. (Whether it was or not is arguable, but that was a big chunk of the sales pitch.) The Seville, being an unapologetic and indulgent neo-classical design, was clearly not pretending to be that, whatever its technical merits.

  15. Dear Old Dad bought an ElDorado in ’74; the dealership figured him to be a ripe prospect (i.e., “sucker”) for a trade-up a couple-three years later.

    He was given a “loaner” Seville for a day. He and I both drove it; we both hated it. The thing was completely beyond gutless. Dad wanted an extra foot of length tacked-onto his Eldo, clearly the Seville wasn’t “big enough”. I thought the Seville was overweight, under-powered, lazy, and ill-handling–although not to the extent that the Eldo was overweight and ill-handling. At least the Eldo could pull the ski-boat trailer. I don’t think the Seville could have tugged the boat and trailer up the boat ramp–and this was NOT a big boat! The Seville was a no-torque turd.

    Dad and I couldn’t wait to turn the Seville back in to the dealership, although we had different reasons. That Cadillac had the audacity to charge more for the Seville than most of the rest of the Caddy line just added injury to insult.

    Cadillac was already on the downhill slide well before the Bustleback styling disaster and later sales decline. Dad’s ’74 Eldo had no end of quality problems including but not limited to repeated failure of the leveling system, dashboard trim warpage, premature upholstery rips, premature rust, fading paint, and approximately the scariest handling I’ve ever encountered in a vehicle that had all it’s shock absorbers and control arms still connected as the manufacturer intended. The ’74 Eldo used the same tires that Chevy pickups were equipped with–no traction, skinny, hard-rubber dreck. It was difficult to know which was the real cause of the poor stopping distance–the brakes, or the skidding tires.

    Dear Old Dad never owned another Caddy; he gave the Eldo to the Starvation Army because the tax deduction was worth more than the resale value, and bought a Monte Carlo which saw him through the rest of his life–and now belongs to me. I have no intention of ever owning a Cadillac. I saw first-hand how Cadillac first earned, then disavowed the six “sitting ducks” that used to be on the Cadillac crest but are now mysteriously missing.

    For the record, I still own and enjoy a ’77 Concours which, like the Seville, technically isn’t a Nova (the Chevy Concours was a separate line in ’77, the word “Nova” is not found anywhere on the vehicle) and also a ’66 Toronado (with Polyurethane suspension bushings and modified disc brakes up front.)

  16. Although I have only ever seen 3 or 4 Cadillac Seville’s from the era 1975 through 1979 I am endeared with harmonious design now as I was when I first saw one in the early 1980’s.

    Your article is well reseached and equally well written, as someone who originally hails from Southern Africa the allure I think in seeing a Cadillac, Lincoln or Oldsmobile was exclusivity, the import duty which was normally around 125% more than someone would have paid Stateside for the same car accounts for this, moreover import permits were very difficult to obtain.

    If one tried weighing up the argument to acquire a BMW or a Mercedes – Benz the argument was often overwhelmingly in favour of the imported American luxury sedans and coupes (this from a personal perspective).

    BMW and Mercedes have long had an established manufacturing prescence in the region, import duties (and permits) for locally assembled cars therefore do not apply.

    When I finally acquired my first full-size American sedan, a 1986 Fleetwood Brougham only then did it become apparent of the wide gulf between the Teutonic cars and what GM had on offer?
    The faux plastic dashboard wood grain applique was especially distasteful and cheap, I was constantly comparing it to the real wood in our then Mercedes 280E, there was no compare, even when the respective glove compartments were closed then and only then was the difference so apparent!

    With exception of this terrible design oversight and poor judgement call I still find these cars very endearing and can say that objectively as someone who is neither American nor German.

    1. The ticky-tacky interior trim (and, on ’70s cars, often slapdash assembly) is really one of my biggest complaints about Cadillacs and other American luxury cars of this vintage. While it was a low point for performance, that still wasn’t bad by global standards, the brakes were finally improving, and there’s nothing wrong with having a distinct alternative to the German paradigm. (That kept Jaguar alive for decades!) But then you got inside and everything was awash in low-end woodgrain appliqué like cheap fiberboard cabinetry, plastic chrome, and neatly color-keyed but often visibly cheap plastics. One might accept that in products further down the Detroit food chain, but for what were supposed to be top-of-the-line models, I find it awfully disheartening.

  17. My aunt and uncle had always owned Lebaron Land Barges, They bought a fully loaded Seville at it’s debut.. like the brown one, but with a glass moonroof… It was beautiful, and I normally abhor brown cars… I drove it a few times… Kinda Gutless, and “Floaty” feeling.. What it needed was a set of Low Profile Tires on 19″ Rims, Eibach Proline Springs to drop it like 5 inches.. Thick anti sway bars, shock tower braces.. and a Supercharger !! THEN, it would be Cool Ride.. :0)

  18. Don’t buy one then

  19. The 1976 Seville could be called a success, despite its many compromises, because, as the smallest and yet most expensive model in Cadillac’s lineup, it got buyers used to the prospect of paying more money for “less car”. Using the same styling cues, the 1977 B and C bodies looked like upsized Sevilles, which, in a perverse way, made them seem like bargains. The shape lived on in GM’s FWD A bodies well into the 1990s.

    1. The Seville was definitely very influential, or at least prescient, stylistically. Ironically, I think that ended up making it harder to appreciate the success of the sheer-look Seville. It was an attractive car in its way, but seeing the same look on every taxicab and police car for the next 15 years tended to dilute the effect.

  20. The Bustleback looks much better to me without the two-tone, fake wire wheels, and chrome curve, but few were sold that way. I’d like to see one given the Eldo Touring Coupe treatment. But like the Seville STS, it probably wouldn’t have drawn import buyers unless all versions were de-chromed and de-floatied. (Assuming they’d ever buy an American car again).

    It’s strange that they developed the single-year V864 at the same time as the HT4100. Did they rush the new engine into production because of the failure, causing another, even bigger, disaster? They knew enough to offer the Buick V6, too.

    They de-chromed the Eldo/Seville dash for 1985, a big improvement for a single year. In the 90’s, they dechromed the whole interior of most of their cars, and then the Germans went glitzy.

    1. I think the V-8-6-4 was probably a stopgap measure for delays in the HT4100, although it might have lasted longer if it had worked better. GM was in great fear of getting slapped with gas guzzler taxes or CAFE fines, not because Cadillac buyers couldn’t have afforded the guzzler tax (or would have cared), but because they feared flaunting the regulations would cause the feds to get especially punitive — GM still had half the market at that point.

  21. In 1981 my employer relocated me from Minneapolis to Valley Forge, PA. The shock of having to pound up and down the Schuylkill known locally as the Sure Kill) Expressway (if you were so lucky) caused me to trade my Chevy K5 4×4 for a 1979 Diesel Seville that has a recovered ‘stolen’ (more like abandoned) car.

    I got it for a song as it was almost impossible to start, smelled of diesel fuel and various interior parts were missing or damaged. The factory wire wheel baskets were missing too. I subsequently learned the car may have been stolen just for the wire baskets as Cadillac charged around $250 each for replacements. But I loved the car. It rode better than any Mercedes I’d driven and rode the Sure Kill beautifully. But …

    I flew out of Philadelphia airport most weeks and left the Seville with a parking service that would meet me kerbside on my return with the car cool or warm depending on the weather. After a few months the owner apologetically told me not to use their service as starting the Seville was “a problem’.

    I took a few days off and set about sorting the car. New injectors and seals fixed the fuel smell. New glow plugs and two(!) new batteries solved the staring problem along with replacing the solenoids that controlled the batteries. You see the started operated at 24V, as did the glow plugs. Even the local dealer’s mechanics didn’t know that! Untrained idiots.

    The deal when I bought the car was that I could buy the necessary parts from them at their cost, including a set of the wire baskets, which got stolen again the first time I left the car at the airport garage. The insurance company declined to cover the cost for replacements so after much searching for almost anything that would fit the unusual wheel rims I eventually scored a set of Chrysler Cordoba straight spoke wire baskets that fit and boy did they look great! And they never got stolen either.

    So, my metallic bronze Seville, with no padded roof looked fantastic. I got over 30 mpg (and I’m a lead foot driver) and after correcting the problems the dealer had passed on, it was 100% reliable, quiet and rode wonderfully over the crappy, potholed Philly streets of that time. I received compliments wherever I drove it, even at the local main Line snooty country clubs. But it was fun to look at drivers around us looking for the diesel truck they couldn’t see and we couldn’t hear inside our quiet, comfortable Seville cocoon.

    When I left for California some years later I had no difficulty selling it for far more than it had cost me as I had three people lined up wanting to buy it. Oh, and the ‘bustle back’ Seville was about the ugliest car of the decade. I wouldn’t have owned one if one were given to me.

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