The irony is the demographic buying the later model DeVille putters down road so slowly it could have the frontal area of a bungalow and get the same mileage.
Worst of all – having driven a few Caddies of that era – they drove no better than any other upscale GM FWD of that time. Cheap, cheap, cheap feeling. A ten-year-old Taurus felt better planted to the road.
At least GM got their FWD act together across the line, based on recent ones I’ve driven.
2000 Cadillac, least attractive ever. Dumbing down of everything Cadillac ever stood for. The aftermarket vinyl top actually gives some visual interest to an anonymous blob. Such a shame.
The chrome b-pillar covers are most likely an owner add-on. Those tend to look cheap and a little tacky no matter what they’re on–a thin chrome bead around the window can look classy, but the wide pillars of these cars just don’t look right with that much shiny.
The decline and fall of Cadillac shown in a single photograph. One has one of the best drivetrains in the world and an imposing, substantial presence and the other, well . . . .
Although the timeframe is a little different, this is like a photo showing a pair of Packards, a 1938 and a 1958.
I agree that Cadillac seems to have upped its game since the Deville/DTS days, but I would not go so far as to say that they are anywhere close to their 1968 selves in terms of quality, perception and market stature.
I think the last of the true Devilles were the 1994-1999. These had the imposing grills and the traditional tail light pods that were on Cadillacs since the 1960’s. The 1994-1996 Devilles even had skirted rear wheels. Though they mildly redesigned the Deville in 1997 dropping the skirts and revising the front clip, it still looked traditional looking like the Caddies of old.
The 2000+ Deville/DTS felt cheap, looked cheap and really seemed like it was a step back compared with the 94-99
These looked like 9/10th scale versions of the RWD Fleetwood, I really liked the Concours version of these, though I think the interior on the 2000 and up cars is a little better detail wise, these earlier 94-96 style DeVilles cheaped out on certain details like the missing courtesy lamps on the rear doors, and a blank reflector where there should have been a red light on all the doors, they fixed that on the 97’s, but the loss of the skirted rear wheels made them look a little awkward, like the whale Caprice after it lost the skirted wheels.
This is true that they omitted the lamps on the rear doors but they added power door lock switches to to the rear doors so that the person sitting in the back seat could lock or unlock all the doors from the back seat.
I have never seen a car with power lock switches on the rear doors. each doors could also be unlocked manually with the slide lever on the door.
Those actually pre-date that design, Cadillac started adding them on downsized C-bodies around 85-86. They were a neat idea pre-remote entry, if you were getting something out of the back seat, you could lock all the doors from there without having to open the drivers door again.
Chris M.
Posted December 16, 2015 at 7:26 AM
That’s actually a very clever idea. It would eliminate the dance of “open front door, unlock all doors, open rear door before closing front door, re-lock all doors, close front door” that I have to do from time to time.
My ’94 Fleetwood has the rear seat power lock buttons but you can only lock the doors from there. For child safety, I suppose, they didn’t let the rear passengers unlock the doors. I assume yours are probably the same?
True, even as a person who only has older cars, that’s the case because I don’t need a daily driver. If I had to drive every day the new one would certainly suit that purpose better, and I wouldn’t care nearly as much if it got scratched or dinged.
That said, if the only car I could own was to be a daily driver, that one car would not be a 2000-05 DeVille, either.
If I could upgrade the brakes and tighten up the suspension a little, I’d much rather daily the older one. We don’t get a lot of salt here, and I’d be religious about washing it and meticulous about service if I was driving something that special.
I just really dislike that generation of DTS. One of my least favorite Cadillacs, period.
This generation DeVille is slightly awkward looking in the base models, but older folks kept buying them, this one is even worse with all the additional bric-a-brac added on.
The sportier DTS version though fixes lots of the issues with the base models, the body colored grille with the chrome band and the larger wheels help, a lot.
Even in the nicest trim, this car looks like an overinflated Camry.
The design just seems lazy, it looks “big”, but absolutely nothing about it says “luxury”. Then again, GM was probably trying to convince people to stop buying them.
Big improvement. I still don’t like it very much, but the red one you posted is several notches above the monument to poor taste in the original photo.
My favourite Cadillac. The semi-fastback ragtop roofline nails it, I’m not such a fan of the two-door tintop. My only quibble is the 67 should have been in the foreground and the minion much further from the camera.
Love the Buick-esque sweepspear below the fins on the Cadillac, looks like it is girding its loins to take flight, like a jumbo jet, from that parking space.
There is a lot right with the styling of the 67-68 Cadillacs, it really works. I’m more partial to the 68 for the 472 and the hidden wipers, but they both have a certain “rightness” to their styling, the follow up to these, 1969-70, I’ve never been a big fan of, I don’t hate them, but they added more visual “bulk” that the 67-68 cars didn’t have.
+1 I’m not a Cadillac fanboi, so my preference for the early 50s fastback and the 65/7/8 MY is just out of pure aesthetic delight, but they lost their ‘fullsize’ style mojo in 69.
Carmine’s posted example in solid red looks much better. There is a black one parked near me at work and I actually like it. From the rear three quarters view I find the roofline attractive. I even like the tail lights. These later Cads do not look well with the coach roof add ons or chrome wheel arches. Bill Mitchell used to refer to such roofs as “pig bladders”. These were usually added at the dealer level. Since these were based on a shared platform with the Seville I would imagine they would handle pretty good. I had no complaints about how my STS handled. I think the later “Art and Science” designs have given the later Cads a little visual zing.
It looks like they may have extended the height of the fuel filler flap to try and deter the installation of a vinyl roof, but clearly it hasn’t worked. How would you feel every time you refuel the car and have to see that piece of vinyl and trim on the fuel door? Surely a bit silly!
Does that badge on the rear quarter panel say “HORNET”? And if so, either that’s an extraordinarily obnoxious place for a dealer badge, or the owner has personalized the car in a rather cryptic fashion.
Those handsome wheel covers appear to be from a different model/year – anyone know? Most images of the 67 DeVille I’ve found have covers like this one.
Oh, it looks like it is a daily driver with the wear and tear of almost 50 years on it. It looks like everything is original. That makes the car so much better in my mind as it is not somebody’s restomod garage queen and is driven around.
Going from aspirational to simply settling in a few decades. Overcoming the latter and becoming former again has been and is an ongoing struggle. A luxury car reputation is a fragile thing.
Brendan- that would be an awesome purposeful composition, a way of telling a story without words- here’s the ancestor, in the background and in the past, and here’s the modern version in the foreground. It’s a Magic Shot.
There is a certain elegance and dignity the pre 1980s Cadillacs possessed that nothing else ever quite matched. Driven by and for dignitaries, captains of industry, ladies of high fashion or just a simple guy rewarded for a career prudently worked there was a special quality about them. Who’s the standard of the world now?
A feeling of loss is hard to avoid when seeing classic and 80s/90s/00s Cadillacs side by side. Even an early 1970s Coupe de Ville has a certain presence that its successors lacked, as shown in this photo that I took two years ago.
‘2000 Caddy was a nice drive. Spacious, roomy, comfy ride with decent enough handling. Gas mileage wasn’t exceptional but no worst than S class or 7 series. FWD helps in snow and stuff.
Styling wise, the proportion was quite nice. Somehow the headlights were over sized and out of proportion and details seem unrefined.
The luxury and driving experience of the S-Class and 7-Series were on an entirely different level though. Not to mention that they cost at least twice as much as the DeVille. The Lincoln Town Car and GM’s own Buick Park Avenue Ultra were more accurate competitors and even with that, the DeVille was really in a class of its own by this point, as a full-size front-wheel drive V8 luxury sedans with bench seats geared towards older buyers.
The 2000 looks like the Russian Zil and GAZ prototypes from a few years earlier. If I did not know and someone photo shopped the grill, I’d have believed it to be some such prototype. Not very nice. But luckily, Cadillac has started to go up – I would not mind something from the current offering, not at all.
This generation just hasn’t aged well. When all new, I liked them as a ‘modern Caddy’. Now, they are mostly beaters with missing trim, dents, and bad aftermarket add ons, as passe’ as leisure suits.
I believe the newer one is painted a color called Bronze Mist…the shop I worked in shot Akzo Nobel’s Sikkens paint, and that was the one color that was nearly impossible to paint without mottling and looking like a blotchy mess. The shop wound up setting up an account with the local Standox paint dealer largely because we were working on so many cars in this color…the Standox worked so much better with that particular color. Having two paint systems in the building was a PITA, but it was one of those things.
I’d much rather have any pre-73 Cadillac than anything newer.
Beauty and the beast….
What have we done????
I want one, a lot more than the other. Can you guess which is which?
One thing that made the old cars look better than the new ones is the forward canted grille. The curse of aerodynamics hits right on the nose.
The irony is the demographic buying the later model DeVille putters down road so slowly it could have the frontal area of a bungalow and get the same mileage.
I drive an 04 Deville and the only reason I can’t drive faster is because the BMW drivers in front of me are going 10 below the limit.
Worst of all – having driven a few Caddies of that era – they drove no better than any other upscale GM FWD of that time. Cheap, cheap, cheap feeling. A ten-year-old Taurus felt better planted to the road.
At least GM got their FWD act together across the line, based on recent ones I’ve driven.
2000 Cadillac, least attractive ever. Dumbing down of everything Cadillac ever stood for. The aftermarket vinyl top actually gives some visual interest to an anonymous blob. Such a shame.
But the vinyl top combined with chrome B-pillar covers looks ridiculous. They should be blacked-out.
Why, don’t convertibles normally have fully framed doors, B-pillars and sunroofs? Looks really genuine to me.
The chrome b-pillar covers are most likely an owner add-on. Those tend to look cheap and a little tacky no matter what they’re on–a thin chrome bead around the window can look classy, but the wide pillars of these cars just don’t look right with that much shiny.
The decline and fall of Cadillac shown in a single photograph. One has one of the best drivetrains in the world and an imposing, substantial presence and the other, well . . . .
Although the timeframe is a little different, this is like a photo showing a pair of Packards, a 1938 and a 1958.
I agree that Cadillac seems to have upped its game since the Deville/DTS days, but I would not go so far as to say that they are anywhere close to their 1968 selves in terms of quality, perception and market stature.
But if that photo were of a ’38 Packard and a ’56 Caribbean, I may well go with the latter….
One from before Broughamitis sank in, and the other clinging to it far too long.
In the foreground – anonymity. In the background – unmistakable style, distinction, and hauteur.
The foreground is photo bombing the background.
I think the last of the true Devilles were the 1994-1999. These had the imposing grills and the traditional tail light pods that were on Cadillacs since the 1960’s. The 1994-1996 Devilles even had skirted rear wheels. Though they mildly redesigned the Deville in 1997 dropping the skirts and revising the front clip, it still looked traditional looking like the Caddies of old.
The 2000+ Deville/DTS felt cheap, looked cheap and really seemed like it was a step back compared with the 94-99
Here is my 1995 Deville
These looked like 9/10th scale versions of the RWD Fleetwood, I really liked the Concours version of these, though I think the interior on the 2000 and up cars is a little better detail wise, these earlier 94-96 style DeVilles cheaped out on certain details like the missing courtesy lamps on the rear doors, and a blank reflector where there should have been a red light on all the doors, they fixed that on the 97’s, but the loss of the skirted rear wheels made them look a little awkward, like the whale Caprice after it lost the skirted wheels.
This is true that they omitted the lamps on the rear doors but they added power door lock switches to to the rear doors so that the person sitting in the back seat could lock or unlock all the doors from the back seat.
I have never seen a car with power lock switches on the rear doors. each doors could also be unlocked manually with the slide lever on the door.
Those actually pre-date that design, Cadillac started adding them on downsized C-bodies around 85-86. They were a neat idea pre-remote entry, if you were getting something out of the back seat, you could lock all the doors from there without having to open the drivers door again.
That’s actually a very clever idea. It would eliminate the dance of “open front door, unlock all doors, open rear door before closing front door, re-lock all doors, close front door” that I have to do from time to time.
My ’94 Fleetwood has the rear seat power lock buttons but you can only lock the doors from there. For child safety, I suppose, they didn’t let the rear passengers unlock the doors. I assume yours are probably the same?
Which one would YOU rather own?
Depends on what your going to use it for, for a daily driver, the new car hands down.
True, even as a person who only has older cars, that’s the case because I don’t need a daily driver. If I had to drive every day the new one would certainly suit that purpose better, and I wouldn’t care nearly as much if it got scratched or dinged.
That said, if the only car I could own was to be a daily driver, that one car would not be a 2000-05 DeVille, either.
Just without all that rubbish added to this one, please.
.
If I could upgrade the brakes and tighten up the suspension a little, I’d much rather daily the older one. We don’t get a lot of salt here, and I’d be religious about washing it and meticulous about service if I was driving something that special.
I just really dislike that generation of DTS. One of my least favorite Cadillacs, period.
More than a little over-toasted with bling. Gawd , what a mess!
This generation DeVille is slightly awkward looking in the base models, but older folks kept buying them, this one is even worse with all the additional bric-a-brac added on.
The sportier DTS version though fixes lots of the issues with the base models, the body colored grille with the chrome band and the larger wheels help, a lot.
Hey Carmine nice to see you back!
+1
Agreed!
Thank you…thank you.
Even in the nicest trim, this car looks like an overinflated Camry.
The design just seems lazy, it looks “big”, but absolutely nothing about it says “luxury”. Then again, GM was probably trying to convince people to stop buying them.
Trying to think which Camry has big square headlights, a big grille with a wreath and crest and big vertical taillights…..
Big improvement. I still don’t like it very much, but the red one you posted is several notches above the monument to poor taste in the original photo.
My favourite Cadillac. The semi-fastback ragtop roofline nails it, I’m not such a fan of the two-door tintop. My only quibble is the 67 should have been in the foreground and the minion much further from the camera.
Like a few streets over.
That vinyl roof on the 2000 is the same color as a hearing aid. Rather indicative of the people who bought one.
The copycat Daewoo styling is off putting, whetther the cars is any good or not.
No, Daewoos had more presence.
Love the Buick-esque sweepspear below the fins on the Cadillac, looks like it is girding its loins to take flight, like a jumbo jet, from that parking space.
There is a lot right with the styling of the 67-68 Cadillacs, it really works. I’m more partial to the 68 for the 472 and the hidden wipers, but they both have a certain “rightness” to their styling, the follow up to these, 1969-70, I’ve never been a big fan of, I don’t hate them, but they added more visual “bulk” that the 67-68 cars didn’t have.
+1 I’m not a Cadillac fanboi, so my preference for the early 50s fastback and the 65/7/8 MY is just out of pure aesthetic delight, but they lost their ‘fullsize’ style mojo in 69.
Heartily agreed. The ’68 is still among the styling department’s greatest hits, but I’ve never liked the ’69-’70 “face”.
Carmine’s posted example in solid red looks much better. There is a black one parked near me at work and I actually like it. From the rear three quarters view I find the roofline attractive. I even like the tail lights. These later Cads do not look well with the coach roof add ons or chrome wheel arches. Bill Mitchell used to refer to such roofs as “pig bladders”. These were usually added at the dealer level. Since these were based on a shared platform with the Seville I would imagine they would handle pretty good. I had no complaints about how my STS handled. I think the later “Art and Science” designs have given the later Cads a little visual zing.
It looks like they may have extended the height of the fuel filler flap to try and deter the installation of a vinyl roof, but clearly it hasn’t worked. How would you feel every time you refuel the car and have to see that piece of vinyl and trim on the fuel door? Surely a bit silly!
Some more shots of the ’67:
And another
Thanks for these shots, as it seems that my eyeballs have finally stopped bleeding. Dig that rear quarter panel- must be half a mile long!
Does that badge on the rear quarter panel say “HORNET”? And if so, either that’s an extraordinarily obnoxious place for a dealer badge, or the owner has personalized the car in a rather cryptic fashion.
Thanks Brendan
Those handsome wheel covers appear to be from a different model/year – anyone know? Most images of the 67 DeVille I’ve found have covers like this one.
They’re 81-85 Fleetwood Brougham base hubcaps.
Thanks, I was pretty sure they were much newer. Still look fine.
Good to have you back.
Oh, it looks like it is a daily driver with the wear and tear of almost 50 years on it. It looks like everything is original. That makes the car so much better in my mind as it is not somebody’s restomod garage queen and is driven around.
I was watching a video by Nora Jones the other night and noticed a Cadillac like the older one in this photo; it’s a great song too:
Alanis Morissette drives in a Lincoln Mark V in the music video to “Ironic”. One of my favorite songs.
Now *that* brings back memories of 1995.
Sublime. Something about the Nora Jones video and Robert Plant’s ‘Big Log’ (which also features a Caddy) hits me just a certain way.
Going from aspirational to simply settling in a few decades. Overcoming the latter and becoming former again has been and is an ongoing struggle. A luxury car reputation is a fragile thing.
Brendan- that would be an awesome purposeful composition, a way of telling a story without words- here’s the ancestor, in the background and in the past, and here’s the modern version in the foreground. It’s a Magic Shot.
There is a certain elegance and dignity the pre 1980s Cadillacs possessed that nothing else ever quite matched. Driven by and for dignitaries, captains of industry, ladies of high fashion or just a simple guy rewarded for a career prudently worked there was a special quality about them. Who’s the standard of the world now?
A feeling of loss is hard to avoid when seeing classic and 80s/90s/00s Cadillacs side by side. Even an early 1970s Coupe de Ville has a certain presence that its successors lacked, as shown in this photo that I took two years ago.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-outtake/cc-outtake-ducks-in-a-row/
‘2000 Caddy was a nice drive. Spacious, roomy, comfy ride with decent enough handling. Gas mileage wasn’t exceptional but no worst than S class or 7 series. FWD helps in snow and stuff.
Styling wise, the proportion was quite nice. Somehow the headlights were over sized and out of proportion and details seem unrefined.
The luxury and driving experience of the S-Class and 7-Series were on an entirely different level though. Not to mention that they cost at least twice as much as the DeVille. The Lincoln Town Car and GM’s own Buick Park Avenue Ultra were more accurate competitors and even with that, the DeVille was really in a class of its own by this point, as a full-size front-wheel drive V8 luxury sedans with bench seats geared towards older buyers.
The 2000 looks like the Russian Zil and GAZ prototypes from a few years earlier. If I did not know and someone photo shopped the grill, I’d have believed it to be some such prototype. Not very nice. But luckily, Cadillac has started to go up – I would not mind something from the current offering, not at all.
The 2000-2005 DeVille has always reminded me of a “Monster” sundae from Friendly’s.
This thing…
This generation just hasn’t aged well. When all new, I liked them as a ‘modern Caddy’. Now, they are mostly beaters with missing trim, dents, and bad aftermarket add ons, as passe’ as leisure suits.
I believe the newer one is painted a color called Bronze Mist…the shop I worked in shot Akzo Nobel’s Sikkens paint, and that was the one color that was nearly impossible to paint without mottling and looking like a blotchy mess. The shop wound up setting up an account with the local Standox paint dealer largely because we were working on so many cars in this color…the Standox worked so much better with that particular color. Having two paint systems in the building was a PITA, but it was one of those things.
I’d much rather have any pre-73 Cadillac than anything newer.