(first posted 5/20/2013) I have freely admitted to liking pretty much every Cadillac ever built. That said, there are some Caddys even I have a hard time loving. Case in point: The 1986 Eldorado. OK–first of all, if you haven’t read my ’83 Eldo CC, check it out (here) and then come back. Dum de dum…OK, are you back? Now, isn’t that a beautiful car? Yes, it is! So while keeping that lovely E-body in your head, imagine walking into your Caddy dealer in October of 1985 and seeing one of these...things…sitting in the showroom. Great Caesar’s ghost! What happened?
The 1979-85 Eldorado was perhaps the best Eldo since the original FWD 1967-70 model. Indeed, it was meant to recall the ’67, albeit with a much more squared-off C-pillar. And just what was going through the minds of the Cadillac designers who gave us the 1986 Eldorado?
In a word, fear. Fear of CAFE, fear of changing consumer tastes…but mostly fear of gas prices and six-bucks-a-gallon fuel. As at the other GM divisions, the forecast at Cadillac was that gas prices would spike and never come down. In such a scenario, gunboats like the Coupe deVille and Fleetwood Brougham would sell about as well as T-bone steaks at a vegetarian restaurant.
So Cadillac shrunk most of their lineup, which resulted in tiny 1985 C-body deVilles and Fleetwoods, and even tinier 1986 Eldos and Sevilles: Honey, I shrunk the Cadillacs! Only the D-body Fleetwood Brougham escaped the carnage.
Bill Mitchell once said, famously, that downsizing a luxury car is like tailoring a dwarf–and his reference was to the 1977 C-bodies and ’79 E-bodies and not this kinda-sorta Eldo. I can understand why they did what they did, but try explaining it to the wealthy customers who still wanted their old-style Cadillacs. I can imagine some Texas millionaire (J.R. Ewing?) walking into a Houston or Dallas Cadillac dealer: “What the hell is this?” “It’s the new Eldorado, sir.” “No it ain’t! It looks like something a REAL Eldorado chewed up an’ spit out!”
I will say one thing: The interiors were every bit as nice as before–and much less Broughamy. Yes, faux-wood had been replaced by silver trim (at least on non-Biarritz models), but lush leather and every expected Cadillac creature comfort remained luxuriously in place. There were new gadgets as well, including a Driver Information Center that displayed the date, time, outside temperature and fuel economy.
Like the C-body deVilles and Fleetwood, the new Eldo offered interior room quite comparable to that of its predecessor. Another interesting new feature was Retained Accessory Power, which allowed the driver to operate the windows, windshield wipers, radio and power sunroof for up to 10 minutes after shutting off the ignition. While commonplace on modern cars, it was pretty cutting-edge in 1986.
Perhaps part of the problem was that this Eldorado was too small and modern for Cadillac’s traditional customers, yet too Broughamy to attract new, import-loving buyers. It was the worst of both worlds–and it certainly didn’t help that a year earlier, the N-body Grand Am, Calais and Somerset had appeared. Despite the Eldo (and Toro and Riv) being larger than the N-bodies, their resemblance to them was all too obvious.
And while the standard Eldorado may have been a little stark, the Biarritz–with its Landau top, wire wheel covers and extra chrome–looked like a cartoon Cadillac. “The new Eldorette Brougham! Half the size of our full-size Eldorado, but with all the luxury. Buy one for the Missus today!” And if that wasn’t enough, all 1986-87 Eldorados had the Self-Destruct 4.1-liter V8 with a special Cadillac innovation: Always Fail™ head gaskets. Oh joy.
It also didn’t help that most buyers of the mini-Biarritz usually went with the fake continental kit, Huggy Bear grille, gold package and wire wheels. Ugh–please give me a dark-red Brougham d’Elegance instead.
Naturally, the anticipated gas crisis never occurred. Big cars came back in a big way, leaving Cadillac stuck with a couple of turkeys. Sure, while they rode nicely, had nice interiors and were MUCH better handlers than previous Eldorados, they were severely lacking Cadillac style.
If Cadillac had had enough time, the 1986 Eldo might have looked like this–but when it was being designed in 1982-83, who knew that gas prices were going to settle down?
Fortunately, Cadillac rushed a stretched model with nicer trim (and even little fins) into production for 1988. Best of all, they also replaced the 4.1-liter V8 with the much more reliable 4.5-liter V8. They were much more palatable cars overall, and I really like them.
I personally have driven both a Garnet Red ’89 Eldorado (pictured above is the very car I test-drove), and a Polo Green ’91 Seville. Both were very, very pleasant, comfortable cars with nice handling, and the 1992 Eldorado would be even better. Still, the 1986-87 Eldo is most likely my least-favorite Cadillac. I would rather have even a 1986-88 Cimarron than one of these–at least they weren’t quite so obviously shrunken, and the 2.8-liter V6 could be fun. But if I were to run across a 1990 or ’91 Eldo–in midnight blue or garnet red, and with the 4.9-liter V8–I might have to have it for my very own. Luxy little rocket ships, those Eldos were! Well, except from 1986-1987.
I didn’t know this was originally hobbled with the 4.1 V8. But I’ve always liked these–and the Riviera, and the Toro of the same vintage. Might be a generational thing, but to me they seemed like the last gasp of the ‘classic’ three-box Broughams (albeit semi-modernised), before the cars started to bloat again and put on faux-Euro airs like the ’92 Eldo. That said, I can see someone ten years older seeing this Eldorado the same way.
You think the 1992 and up Eldorado has faux Euro touches? With a full chrome molding around the car, an 3 ft thick C-pillar?
The Volvo 262C had the same basic roof and quarter window shape nearly a decade earlier, only squashed a bit. Similar interior too!
The HT4100 was the only mill for 1986 and 87 on these cars with 130 HP and 200 torque. It did receive a better block and improved sealing for 1986 but still required the owner to religiously keep up with anti-freeze change intervals and stop leak to survive. The 4.5 introduced two years later for the 1988 season was improved further and gained 40 LBS FT of torque and 25 HP and better reliability. For 1990 the 4.5 gained port injection and was increased to 180 HP but now required premium fuel and a year later was punched out to 4.9 liters and a full 200 ponies.
Like that garnet red ’89 as well. Never did like those Cadillac wire wheel covers, and was glad when they finally stopped with “classy” padded half roof, opera light, and stupid carriage tops, and started making serious performance cars. Took them awhile. Growing pains and all. A friend had a 89 (or 90) Coupe Deville with the Northstar I believe, that would humble my 89 Camaro 305 TBI 5 speed out on the interstate.
The division had no choice but to put that junk on the option list, because dealers would install worse stuff from the aftermarket if not.
Absolutely fell in love with the 91 Eldorado Touring coupe, red, blue, green..I don’t care. Loved them.
I once owned a 98 Eldorado which was sold to get married (some guys have a motorcycle story linked to getting married, I have a Cadillac story linked to getting married).
If I could find a 91 ETC with low miles I would jump on the opportunity in a second.
The 88 restyle really brought the car up to par in my eyes.
I am sure you saw that 91ETC that we had in the auction barn last month. Red with tan leather and sunroof. Probably the best non-Northstar Eldorado. It only had like 70K and it sold for about $4500 I think. I am sure you would have been pleased.
As an aside, I often wonder why guys feel they have to sell cars in order to get married. I suppose if you had 3-4 cars and you sold one or two to raise case for the wedding and/or moved and needed the space, but if you 98 Eldorado was your daily driver why sell it? I certainly didn’t ask my wife to sell her car when we married. Given my employment background, it would have been difficult for any wife to exert that kind of control over me.
I wish I had seen it. I would have jumped on it in a second.
I “hear” you regarding selling a car to get married. To be honest, I did have 4 cars at the time, and the Eldo was my daily driver (had 46K miles on it). Problem 1 was that I was putting 90 miles a day on it, though it would pull down 26mpg on the highway with ease.
Problem 2 was that my then future wife lost her job when the very large insurance agency closed their Boston location, and then her mother lost her job and the offered “help” to pay for the wedding dissapeared. It made sense to sell the Eldorado, buy a cheap beater (Saturn SL1 ugg) and put the equity into trying to salvage the wedding venue because all of this happened after the $5000.00 non-refundable deposit was sent in.
Was I sad to sell? Absolutely!
Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.
Ended up having to lose the deposit anyway and got married in a bar. Turned out to be more fun for everyone than I could have imagined. We were only the second couple to get married there, they went out of business a few months later and now we have the honor (haha) of being one of only two couples married in the historic mill building that was absorbed by the historical society…Picture on the wall as a part of history.
Sad.
Still married?
haha, yes, it will be 4 years this November.
It all worked out. Life is too short to stress over stuff that insignificant in the big picture.
Congratulations on your marriage: I like the way you look at things!
Jesus… you sold that beauty and ended up losing the deposit anyways ? Wish you would have left that part out. 🤦♂️
lol.
Not only was the styling far too boxy, these cars were unlucky timing wise. In 1986 the price of gas was actually falling. It was under $1/gallon for the first time in a long time. And the fact that they were hard to tell from the N-bodies didn’t help–not only the same styling but not all that different in overall size. I think the best of the 3 was the Toronado. My two favorite styling touches are hidden headlights and across the back taillights and it had both.
my 1990 Trofeo was the best CHEAP daily beater I ever drove. FE3
Yep, the same old story. Cadillac makes a much better car, and the general American consumer is (of course) too stupid to appreciate it. Dammit, it ain’t big enough, floaty enough, tacky enough, and gas hogging enough! It ain’t American! Meanwhile Mercedes-Benz continues to munch away at market share.
Their loss. Go rot in your broughams.
Considering that the American consumer bought Lincoln Mark VII LSCs and various BMW and Mercedes coupes instead, I’m not sure that the problem was that the American consumer was “too stupid” to appreciate this car.
This car didn’t have the presence of a Cadillac, and looked far too much like a contemporary Oldsmobile Calais. A leather interior and an eggcrate grille could not hide those flaws.
The E24 BMW 6-series was a beautiful coupe — even today, the exterior design has aged reasonably well. Cadillac had nothing to compare.
they never built a reliable BMW 6XX.
MkVII LSCs were only cool for the lousy 5.0 and the times.
Yup, rot indeed!
The lousy multiport 5.0? Why couldn’t caddy, the standard of the world, produce an engine worthy of that claim?
Smaller is not always better, especially with bad proportions and a confused mix of design cues.
There was not that much particularly wrong with this generation Eldorado and Seville, the cars were a considerable step up in terms of build, engineering, space utilization and efficiency. The warranty rates on the Cadillac engine had fallen dramatically by the late 1980s so much so that by the end of production in 1995, it was second lowest to the Buick 3.8.
The problem was, that in the early 80s, with much uncertainty in the energy market, GM tried to get ahead of the trends. In typical GM fashion (at the time), when they bet, they bet big. It was like a total commitment. No evolutionary changes, but all in or else. A lot of money was spent. Virtually everything was new about these cars but the name and the wreath and crest. Sort of like the shock and awe factor that was the Citation when it debuted in 1979. It was a radical departure from the conventional norm. In a way, it was a play to have the cake and eat it too. If gasoline would have continued to $4 a gallon, it would have been a spectacular success. Here you could have your Cadillac with a V8 and all of the trimmings in a package that was both sensible in size and efficient in a socially responsible way. But of course, as we all know, the energy situation stabilized, and the price of gasoline fell in real terms to among the lowest levels of post OPEC by the middle of calendar 1986 so such a revolutionary car looked like a bridge too far at the time. In uncertain times, it might have been easier to get luxury car buyers to accept such a paradigm, and they eventually did by the 1990s, but at the time, Cadillac meant “presence.” If they were no longer the fastest cars, they certainly were the biggest and most comfortable. Traditional buyers balked at the new concept and sales fell. But ironically, if you look at where the market was, it wasn’t like it was the only ultra modern car going. The Lincoln VII was bigger than this Eldorado, but not unequally sleek especially the LSC models. Chrysler did not have a large coupe at the time these came out, the LeBaron coupe for 1987 was as close as it got and it too was very sleek and modern looking and smaller.
So I suppose the lesson in this is that when you are developing new product, sometimes revolutionary is good, but sometimes you can take it too far as well. Even the very best of a product has to match the needs and wants of the customer base, and be understood as such.
With that said, I drove an 88 for awhile that I took in on the cheap when the ABS failed. I was able to repair it and kept it for a time eventually selling it to a lady who enjoyed it thereafter. It was a nice car for about town. The 4.5 was pretty powerful for what was the lightest application for the Cadillac V8, it got decent mileage upper teens to 27 on the highway. It was dark red, very similar to the picture above and a Biarritz model so it looked sharp. For an everyday car, it would be ideal as they were comfortable and practical in size. But again, compared to my previous generation 83, did not have that Cadillac “presence” that so much drives car sales in this category. Driving my 83 is slower, more ponderous in handling, and the car does not feel as tight as the 88 did. But what it lacked in performance, in made up in what defined Cadillac. Which is why the 79-85 Eldorado are often considered the best balance of Eldorado of all time. They are not gargantuan like the 71-78 yet have all the classic Bill Mitchell clues. It was no wonder that was the best selling generation ever. Sort of like Rolls Royce, aside from the name, the grille and hood ornament defines that car.
Even the biggest names in consumer products can be affected by bets that turn out wrong. Right about the time that this car came out, Coca-Cola introduced “New Coke” because Coca-Cola was losing market share to Pepsi and the company was considered stale and old fashioned. In a way similar to GM, and like GM, they went out and introduced a revolutionary product that they felt would change everyone’s thinking on cola. Well, we all know that within a year, New Coke was largely gone and Coca-Cola Classic paid homage to the mistake.
I remember reading an interview with some of the E-body stylists, and they were begging for a few inches here and there to make the cars look less like plucked chickens, but management always wanted to err on the side of smallness, anything that could even look in-efficient was not considered.
I’ve seen some of the more dramatic proposals for the 1986 Eldorados, and some were much much better than what came out, if the stylist could have been given a little more freedom with the dimensions and styling, the car would have look much less awkward.
The same car be said about the 1985 C-body cars.
If there is anything we can fault GM for on these cars, it would be the way in which its increasingly bureaucratic system would have prevented any really new way to deal with the smaller packages. When you try to take the same thing and make it smaller, it is hard to keep customers from thinking they are getting less car for more money. Ford’s stylists went a new direction with the 83 Tbird and 86 Taurus. Chrysler’s did the same with the Intrepid. In the 80s, GM still had the kind of market penetration that could have put a new design out there frequently enough that folks would start thinking it the norm. But they didn’t. Under the company’s system by that time, the stylists didn’t have a chance. Too many layers of management turned these cars into products of committee. It is a shame that so much money and effort produced so little.
That’s an interesting point you bring up and it makes sense to me. The ’83 Fords & cab-forward Chryslers were “cutting-edge” while the ’85 GMs were just “smaller”.
Probably the biggest difference between GM and Ford/Chrysler in this regard, is that GM redesigned cars that were by and large successful when the new models came out. The Eldorado was coming off its best two years ever in 84/85. The same more or less goes for the rest of the cars switching from RWD to FWD. The J cars perhaps were the closest to following weak models, the RWD H bodies which were not weak but not nearly as popular as the others.
Chrysler with the K cars and everything else, well we all know Chrysler was on the ropes. Aside from the Omni/Horizon and the M cars and the trucks, there wasn’t much there to compete again so pretty much anything was better.
That was somewhat the case with Ford. The 83 T-bird was underpinned by the Fox body which made it more or less a larger more luxurious Mustang with a very sleek body. But remember, the 80-82 T-birds were dogs with weak sales and uninspiring styling. As for the Taurus, they were going up again the LTD/Marquis which sold relatively well but were basically akin in strength to the GM RWD H bodies, moderately popular but not endearing. Ford hedged their bets by introducing the Taurus while keeping the RWD LTD/Marquis around for a year to cover their ass. Ford’s product was stale by the early 80s. The Fairmont was a charmer in 1978, but by 1983 without any significant change it was long on the tooth. As was much of the other product line.
So when the new for 1986 E/K cars came out, you had very popular market defining cars that reached their peak right about that time followed by cars that were in many ways better, but radically different. So yes, people thought “why mess with success.” And there you have it. I suppose GM could have came out with a car that was just a evolved version of the 79-85 cars, but they had already committed to the unibody chassis so long ago, the HT4100 was more or less developed essentially to have been a transverse V8 and to have significantly altered the package would have negated the entire design paradigm. That is not an apology for the car, but an explanation of why it came out the way it did. I suppose they could have done it like the 88 and made it more distinctive but that was beyond what I was privy to.
I see your point, but remember that the 77-79 TBird had been quite popular as well. As I see it, Ford in the 70s had the same kind of lack of imagination that GM had in the 80s. Ford’s near-death experience brought about a conversion of sorts, and Ford was a whole different company in the 80s. GM, whether fortunately or not, never had the same close call that Ford or Chrysler had gone through, and its bad ways were allowed to continue. It seems to me that GM did the very same thing that Ford did with the 1980 TBird. The damning fact is that they had driven right past that roadside accident, but did not learn from it (or more likely), did not consider it relevant because GM was, well, GM and people just didn’t walk away from GM models – they bought them, got used to them, and the cars became the standard.
I think I know which book you are talking about. I believe it is on file at the AACA library in Hershey, PA. I was there in October and it sounds very similar. If I could remember the name I would love to obtain a copy. It was a very insightful look at how things rolled in the studios back in the day.
I heard exactly the same thing, I believe it was Chuck Jordan that was really pulling for it.
Oil prices peaked in 1980, at $106 (adjusted). Each subsequent year, they dropped steadily. By 1983, it averaged $67, a drop of 42%, and the trend was clearly down.
My point: these cars came out in in the fall of 1985, so by 1983, GM could still have made major changes or cancelled this E-Body program, and designed a new one to come out for 1987.
Look how quickly they modified the C and E cars within a few years, elongating them and making them look less like the N-Body. GM could easily have made those types of changes in time for its introduction, or one year delay.
And I can assure you that elongating them, like they did later, would not have affected mileage.
For GM to allow these cars to come to market looking like they did was incredibly poor judgement, and very much a Deadly Sin. It didn’t need to happen, but they let it anyway.
pretty quick to throw the deadly sin line out there aren’t we?
GM took a chance with these and lost.
Ford took a chance with the Taurus and won.
Would the Taurus have been lumped into this whole deadly sin nonsense if it failed?
The Taurus was right-sized, and its design was truly new and fresh, which made it eminently popular even with the import-loving buyers. The Taurus was a huge hit in trend-setting California. The E-cars were a pathetic joke, with a bad mix of old and new design cues. You could hardly give them away in CA.
The Taurus had excellent proportions (Audi-esque), and its design was totally in tune with the times. The E-Cars: NOT.
I realize that your comeback will be to say that styling is subjective. But that only goes so far. GM design under Irv Rybicki was a disaster, pretty much across the board. And the market affirmed that, not me.
It’s one thing to take a risk; another to know how to do it properly.
You are right, styling is subjective.
Of course a risk is only successful if it happens to work out in the positive.. Ford got very lucky, and they know it and unfortunately let the Taurus turn into a raisin when they had a grape for so long.
Sometimes this place gets dangerously close to being like TTAC. Soirry for disagreeing with you on some level.
philhawk: Yes, if the Taurus had flopped, and Ford went bankrupt, it would certainly have been a DS.
You said: Sometimes this place gets dangerously close to being like TTAC.
I’m not quite sure in which way you mean that. If it is a reference to my GM DS series, or generally calling a spade a spade, then that’s sort of true. We may have a collegial atmosphere, but that doesn’t mean we don’t call out the stinkers and failures.
As I’ve said many times before, the decline and crash of GM is the perhaps biggest automotive history story ever, and I will continue to point out where and how GM made its very many mistakes that caused that to happen.
It doesn’t mean that the actual physical car may not have appeal or certain good qualities, so it shouldn’t be taken personally if you like GM DS cars. It’s documenting the decisions GM executives made along the way that caused its many failures.
That the Eldorado was a failure in the market is indisputable; right? So we like to ponder what exactly was wrong about the decisions that made that happen.
Comparing the Taurus to the E-cars by saying both companies took a gamble, and by a spin of the roulette wheel Ford won and GM lost is not at all an accurate representation. The market is not a blind gamble. The smarter, better run companies succeed, and the others lose. The winners may not have a perfect batting average, but Ford’s in the eighties was certainly much better than GM’s; right.
Some other comments further down sheds light on why that was so: Ford already had a near-death experience with their similalry malformed downsized cars around 1979-1981, and they realized that a new design paradigm was needed, one that had a decidedly European influence. They won with that decision; GM stuck with trying to keep their heritage design cues, but on very poorly proportioned products, and they looked bad, and the market responded accordingly.
Or is there some other aspect why we’re “like TTAC”?
“GM took a chance with these and lost. Ford took a chance with the Taurus and won.”
I’m not sure GM really did take a chance on these. Sure, the underpinnings might have been quite appealing (other than the 4.1), but everything visible and touchable on the car was an overt appeal to their existing customers. The only gamble was for Cadillac could put a smaller, less attractive version of the Eldo into the showroom and hope that the target market bought it. Perhaps the difference is that Ford was emerging from a near-death experience, and knew that a fwd LTDII was not going to cut it. GM was fat and happy in the 80s, and there was no need to gamble. Pretty much everything they put out in the 80s and 90s was aimed at existing buyers. Some were better executed (like the H body LeSabre) and they sold well. Others, like this, were not so well executed, and they failed.
Ok, I can buy into this idea.
I suppose the only chance they took was introducing something so radically downsized compared to the past. A not as well done repeat of the B and A body downsizing in the 70’s.
I guess from my perspective I have a hard time buying the “they failed” routine. As compared to what? Tastes changed and they tried to continue to make a real “Cadillac” while people were jumping to get a BMW or Legend instead.
Lincoln is in a similar but opposite situation now. They are still trying to make Lincolns that aren’t really Lincolns anymore.
The Eldo really can’t be compared with the Taurus, the only similarity between them is the year they came out. The downsized for 1980 Continental, Mark VI, Thunderbird and Cougar hedged on evolution instead of revolution as Cadillac in 86 did and suffered same problem the Eldo and other Caddies did; styling aimed at existing buyers in a smaller and awkward looking package.
Ford hit rock bottom with those when they decided to successfully gamble with the 83 Tbird/Cougar and 84 Mark VII successors, as well as Tempo/Topaz twins which all ultimately blazed the trail for the Taurus in 1986. The Taurus was a risk nonetheless but Ford certainly had some positive feedback on the direction the market was going.
The 1980 FoMoCo cars you mention are perfect examples. They did exactly what the Eldo did – try to serve up a 5/8 scale version at full price. They bombed. Actually, the only reason the Town Car did so well is because the “standard” DeVilles and Fleetwoods were downsized further too. The Panther cars were not nearly so successful from 1979-84 when GM offered a full range of the B/C/D body.
The 83 Fox Bird and the Mark VII changed the proportions and the aesthetic of the cars completely. These no longer targeted the same old guys who had been buying a dwindling number of them. Instead, the cars honed in on affluent buyers 20 or 30 years younger. I was a new law grad in 1985, and seriously considered a Turbo Coupe. Had the Bird come with the Mustang 5.0 HO and a stick, I would probably have bought one.
I would argue that Cadillac had been (or should have been) watching Mercedes, BMW and Audi making slow but steady inroads on its turf since the 70s. As for style, when did the Audi 5000 come out? I also believe that CAFE was a real factor here. The 1977 downsizing was voluntary, and to give the customer what they appeared to want: a traditional car in a trimmer package. But the downsizings after 1980 were a different thing. Others dealt better with CAFE, but GM and its increasingly sclerotic structure, could evidently not see another way other than trying what Ford had tried in 1980.
Also, it’s important to note that the Taurus was positioned as a completely new product. Theoretically it replaced the Granada/LTD II, but Ford certainly didn’t make a big point of that — the Taurus was a new car aimed at the Boomers who were buying European sedans like the Audi 5000. I think the downsized Cadillacs suffered from wanting to have everything — wanting to appeal to younger buyers who seemed to like those odd, hard-riding Euro cars while still maintaining the traditional (and by that point aging) Cadillac base and simultaneously meeting downsizing/fuel economy targets and maximizing commonality.
I recall that some of the car magazines at the time tested the Eldorado touring suspension and found it surprisingly competent, albeit paired with an underpowered engine and a lot of traditional Cadillac accoutrements that Boomer buyers shunned. You know what they say about horses designed by committee.
“GM took a chance with these and lost.”
It’s the opposite. They weren’t taking risks at all: GM borrowed from old styling cues, and recycled them by attaching them to smaller cars.
It’s as if GM resented the idea of building anything smaller than a land yacht, and was going to make sure that we all knew it. Since the giant gas guzzlers were the “real” cars to be emulated, the only way for the smaller ones to succeed was to be smaller versions of the same.
At least over at Ford, Peterson understood that the new times called for a shakeup. The risk came from being stuck in the past, not from learning from the then-new tastemakers such as Audi and BMW.
More like GM didn’t realize that they were taking a risk, by not recognizing the changing times and buyer tastes in terms of styling, and by not recognizing the fundamentally malproportioned hardpoints of this body.
While the previous model still has a sense of presence and an essential rightness thirty years later, this one has always looked like an awkward teenager – not fully grown with some parts out of proportion.
Ford exported the Taurus that was a total failure. Right sized rubbish doesnt sell
In the US, the first generation Taurus was a home run. Not an ideal world car, but well suited to the US at that time.
Of course, a lot has changed since then.
I think there were 2 concerns, they had already spent a bunch of money designing these as is for 1986, PLUS all the money that was being spent to build and automate the Hammtramck plant were these were going to be made, along with the possibility that oil might still go up for 1987-1988, kept them the same.
Though in the end, the stylists that wanted to add more length to them before they were relased were right in the first place, and the redesign was pushed through for 1988, the Cadillac getting the CPR first before the Riviera and Toronad.
I think the Toronado wore this downsized styling the best, it adhered to the formal styling cues the least in my opinion, with the hidden headlights and the full width strip tailight, slightly curvier roof line and C-plllar. I’ll bet the bucket seat only interior was a real turn off to the traditionalists too. The Toronado was the only one of the downsized E-cars that still had a column shift, this must have still been a desired feature, when the Eldorado was restyled in 1992, a column shift returned to the base models, same for the Riviera in 1995.
I agree that the ’86 Toro was the best of the bunch. When I saw that blue Trofeo in traffic about a month ago, I was surprised at how good it looked.
One more thing, the ’86-’87 Eldo looks a lot like the ’88-’91 in pictures, but if you’ve ever seen both in person, the improvement is obvious. Not to mention 1988-up models got the much better 4.5 V8.
I wonder what the sales increase was between the pre- and post-facelift Eldos? I remember seeing a lot of ’88-’91s on the road when they were new, and only a handful of 1986-87s. This ’86 was the first one I’ve seen in years.
88s were almost double 87 sales. Never reached 84-85 sales again. Even with the 92 redesign, sales picked up from the dismal 86-91 years but never like it was before. But by the 90s the car was far more of a niche player, and the market for large luxury coupes was much smaller. So even with a hit in 1986, Eldorado sales probably would have started to tail off at some point as the market changed. The Eldorado usually outsold the Seville until the 1992 redesign when the Seville blew away the Eldorado and the Seville or STS continued in the lineup until 2011. Of course the CTS coupe is attractive and popular but coupes in general are now specialty vehicles.
Of course the designers could never have known market conditions in the late 80s in the early 80s but even a home run would have been gone after a while.
Remember, both the Accord and Civics started out life exclusively as coupes and later adopted sedan versions that eventually overtook coupe sales and now most Hondas on the road are sedans. I am sure no one calls the Honda coupes failures even though they sell less now than they did before and are a fraction of total sales.
Tom, I may be an even worse Cadillac fan than you. I even really liked these when they came out. The downsizing never really bothered me like it did those of the older generation at the time. I was instead impressed that GM kept building cars that had more (or, to be more accurate, the perception of more) occupant space than cars twice their size. With less volume, GM sometimes managed greater packaging than cars nearly twice the size (this is why I’m a huge fan of the G & C platform cars, even if they were a bit bland).
But I’m hopeless. I’m still nursing regret over trading away my ’88 DeVille.
A very nice writeup of a terrible failure. This car is a perfect example of how when you aim for two targets, you usually miss both. The car was a bomb with the traditional audience, and the younger audience was not attracted to it. The detail that bears this out is the fender-mounted turn signal indicators that were placed right over the tires. Awful looking placement of something that had no place on the car, but it was there for the Cadillac traditionalists.
In a way, GM was a victim of its own success. Nobody but GM in the early 80s had the resources to throw at new models in these times. I recall the CAFE problems, the fuel price scares, and all the rest. If Chrysler and Ford had had the money, they would have made cars like this too. I don’t fault GM’s reaction to events, they were the reactions that most folks had at the time.
Lincoln made a lot of conquest sales in the 80s. The Mark VII was a much more appealing car than one of these. I do not doubt that the later ones became decent cars, though I would still be afraid of the electronics. But I have never for one moment in my life been attracted to one of these.
I always find it funny on these that they did find a way to keep all the old school Cadillac styling touches, but in a smoothed-aeroed out airplane meal/kiddie sized package, I dont think of them as bad Cadillacs, I think of them as the swankest V8 powered compact car you can get.
Lincoln had a great time, and it barely spent any money on cars in the 80’s too, the Town Car stayed almost the same 80-89, the Continental came and went 1982-1987, the MKVII was new for 84, and then just recieved minor changes and then the FWD Contiental came out in 1988.
+1 And I would add that of course this car was one of the biggest coffin nails in Cadillac’s decline.
I like how small the garnet ’89 looks when surrounded by Intrigues and Malibu’s. Some of these things look positively small when compared to todays “compacts” and “mid-sizes”. Probably weighs as much as a Cruze, too.
I loved the way that Garnet ’89 drove! I still remember the power and comfy burgundy leather seats, despite taking the test-drive over fourteen years ago.
I must heartily concur with TK: this incarnation of the Eldo/Seville was my least fave as well, and I love all things Cadillac. I have to say that I would never consider owning one of these. Is it any wonder that the Lincoln TC and Mark VII sold so well during this time? It’s almost ironic because, other than MB and BMW, it seems like Lincoln was becoming what Cadillac claimed to be in the fifties and sixties: The Standard of the World. After all, Lincoln’s slogan during this time was: “What a Luxury Car Should Be”. Ouch. I have a feeling many FoMoCo/Lincoln execs were very happy during these times. Too bad it seems to be turning back the other way as of 2013.
Anyway, my absolute fave Eldorado will always be the 1979-85 series. Biarritz package, moonroof, Touring Suspension, and Delco/Bose stereo system, please. Barrett-Jackson, Hemmings, Auto Trader, and ebay people: show me one of these in black, maroon, or navy blue, with less than 30k on the odo, and I’ll sell my soul for it.
Yeah, that tail end is ugly. It’s amazing how much a difference the fins made to the smooth Oldsmobile looking rear end when it came out. I don’t think I can recall seeing an early smooth tail one in person, only one I can recall is the one the father drove in the classic movie, Adventures in Babysitting (lots of good 80’s cars in that one).
I think every car in that movie is a GM car, from the Estate Wagon to the red Brougham to the parents baby Eldo, I haven’t seen it in 15 years or more though, so I cant remember anything beyond the cars.
You’re right, all the main cars are GM. It was on Showtime last week so I re watched if for the first time since elementary school. The boyfriend also drives a IROC-Z with the vanity plate “SO COOL”. There is also one chop shop scene with various 80’s classics, RR Silver Spirit, 928, BMW 635i, etc
Adventures in Babysitting is a great ’80s movie. I remember that red Brougham; it and the Estate Wagon were my favorite cars. I think the only non-GM car was the Panther Town Car the bad guys drove.
“How fast do your parents drive?”
“About forty-five.”
We’ll go 80!”
The size and layout were just a bet gone wrong, so I don’t blame GM for that. But it was the styling, lack of presence and, perhaps worst of all, the similarity (as PMC pointed out) to the N Cars, which were no great beauties.
I can appreciate its clean lines and large greenhouse, but it was the odd proportions which let it down most. Whereas the fwd predecessors had proportions closer to rwd cars, the new E cars, with their transverse engines, had typical fwd proportions – long front overhang and front wheel closer to the windshield. Making this worse was the relatively short rear overhang, and the roofline that should have extended further to the rear. This just always looked so awkward to me.
I think the modifications of 1988 went a long way to make what they had better, but it still came off as a second rate version of its predecessor.
Not to mention that the N-cars came out first in 1985, and then these in 1986, giving them a reverse-halo effect, where its normaly the more expensive cars styling filtering down to the cheapers cars, like the personal luxury coupe theme from the 70’s flowing down from cars like the Eldorado and MKIII to the Monte Carlo and Thunderbird/Cougar, this was the reverse of that.
Personally I love the 88 up to 91 models. Give me one with the 4.9V8 and I’d be happy as (insert ridiculous comparison here.) Maybe it is because these were some of the Cadillacs I was most aware of being born in 1977 and becoming truly car aware during the mid 80s.
As a Cadillac fan, I strongly agree with Tom’s characterization: “the worst of both worlds.” While I can see the importance of fuel economy for the “lesser” brands, it probably wouldn’t have been a big deal for Cadillac buyers… but of course, you couldn’t give them their own platform. (Well, you could, but then it would be at the Allante price point.)
These cars are just tragic. Not a “deadly sin” for GM as a whole, but maybe for the Cadillac brand. The Cimarron may have been a joke to most Cadillac buyers and a sign of GM’s marketing cynicism, but at least it didn’t sully Cadillac’s best and most historic model name. This car, on the other hand, was rock-bottom for the Eldorado name–even though GM was genuinely trying hard with this design.
I know I must be in the extreme minority here, but I’ve always loved this generation of Eldorados. The styling always seemed crisp and modern and I especially loved the modern interpretation of the fins – virtually flush with the back end. Too bad that caddy had to acquiesce to consumers and make it more like the previous generation in 1988.
GM was a victim of its own success in the mid-1980s. During 1979-82, GM was the only American car company that wasn’t on the ropes. Chrysler needed federal loan guarantees just to keep the lights on, and Ford probably would have gone bankrupt if its European subsidiary hadn’t been around to bail out the North American operations. AMC survived with an injection of cash from Renault, but we all knew that this really meant the end of true AMC passenger cars.
With predictions of $5 for a gallon of unleaded by 1985 (and that’s in 1980 dollars!), it made sense to bring out much smaller versions of currently successful cars.
Ford couldn’t afford to do this, so it had to make do with the Panther and Fox platforms. Ford repackaged the Fox-platform Thunderbird/Cougar as “aero” cars, and used that styling theme on the Tempo/Topaz and Taurus/Sable. Chrysler simply gave up on the R-bodies and Cordoba/Mirada and regrouped around the K-platform and remnants of the M-body.
We tend to forget that, in the 1980s, there wasn’t much nostalgia for the “broughamy” cars of the late 1970s. They had their audience among older, more traditional buyers, but younger buyers wanted to repudiate the recent past, much as many buyers in the early and mid-1960s wanted nothing to do with the finned behemoths of the late 1950s. Both cars were part of a discredited and slightly embarrassing recent past.
The results were, in some ways, almost perverse, as the smaller GM cars seemed like another way of thinking old, while the Ford “aero” cars seemed like the the future. GM was giving us less of what it was giving us a few years earlier, and a fair number of us didn’t think that what it, and Ford and Chrysler, had given us few years ago was all that great in the first place.
I, too, was not particularly enamored of this downsized Eldo, but as the years wore on, it kind of grew on me. So much so, in fact, that by the early 90’s, with my mother still struggling along driving my late father’s gargantuan ’77 Coupe de Ville, I finally got her interested in this smaller more compact Caddy as a reasonable luxo-replacement that she could navigate around in much more easily. Totally by happenstance, we stumbled across a low-mileage ’89 Biarritz being offered for sale by the owner of our local nursery. We paid about $15K, as I recall (the original sticker was still with the car, MSRP around $33K, likely another huge reason this Eldorette didn’t win over a lot of traditional Cadillac buyers…You want WHAT for this teeny-tiny thing?). Anyway, it was in perfect condition, with the 4.9 engine it drove competently, never any major problems, and we kept it until mom passed away ten years later. Unfortunately, she suffered a stroke after having this car for only a year, so she never drove it again, but I wound up driving her all over L.A. whenever I came to visit. My only complaint, call it my lead foot, but that powerful engine in that small of a car would leap away from a stop like a scared gazelle. I never did master the finesse of accelerating a FWD car, all of my own cars having been (and still are) RWD.
The Biarritz model was, uh, a bit too broughamy for my taste, but I did learn to appreciate this little car. It was rosewood metallic with matching half-vinyl roof and leather interior, with the button-tufted upholstery style, the long shag carpet, the luminescent opera lights on the vinyl-covered C-pillars, the ubiquitous wire wheel covers. I wouldn’t exactly call this car a terrible failure, or tragic, as noted, it served its purpose well for my mom, and it was, oddly enough, a very likeable little car. When she passed away, I seriously considered keeping it, but my partner refused to be seen in it, saying it was far too foofey and delicately feminine. Point well-taken, but I kinda miss the old gal, and the fact that it was mom’s last car always struck a chord with me. We wound up giving it to mom’s long-term caregiver, it being worth only about $3K or so when she died. Sic semper gloria Biarritz!
It is interesting that everyone is calling this car little. It is almost exactly the same size as the latest Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. I guess its the styling that gives the impression that it is little.
i think the fact that it’s the same size as a contemporary Accord is quite telling. For a Caddy to have gone from the size it was in 1978 to this size in 1986 was pretty extreme. I don’t know the heights (or widths), but I’d guess that this Eldo is quite a bit lower than a current Accord, and maybe narrower too.
That’s a telling comment. Somehow the foreign designers, from Mercedes in the 1960s to Toyota in the current era…can make an attractive, roomy, yet smaller-sized chassis that gets approval from buyers with means.
These cars…they LOOK smaller than they ARE. MUCH smaller. Was that done to impress the people who always bought these cars because they were so BIG? Irv Ribecki or whoever was running GM Styling at the time, should have been taken out and drop-kicked out the front door.
The cars were a failure, in large part because they looked like the kinds of cars the brand’s customer base REJECTED.
I’m a little bit confused. How exactly did it fail?
The Lexus SC (comparable to the Eldorado) never sold as many ANY year it was in production as the so called failed 86 Eldorado sold. The also no longer make the SC just as they no longer make an Eldorado.
Lexus never really sold a Seville competator. Unless you consider the LS somewhat a competator, then the Seville outsold the Lexus in that case too.
I can respect that you might not like it, but come on, the world does not revolve around Toyota as you seem to think.
The Vega sold like hotcakes. But it damaged the reputation of the brand and the automaker that produced it.
The same thing can be said of the Pinto, Citation, Cavalier and a long line of other domestics.
You have to move beyond the die-by-the-quarter, volume-at-all-costs worldview that dominated the domestics. If what you sell today guarantees that someone will never do business with you again AND causes them to tell their friends and family to do the same, then that was a harmful sale.
One reason that Hyundai has been able to stage a comeback is that they really didn’t sell that many Excels. Had Hyundai been a much larger, more established firm, then it might be a very different story. The Koreans simply didn’t have enough of chance to upset as many people.
Let me get this right, a company like Toyota is wonderful because it sells many cars that people want.
I make a comparison in sales numbers of the Eldorado to a Lexus or two, and now we must change the judgement from sales number to? the particular posters bias?
I think that the 36000 people who spent the coin to buy the 86 Eldorado actually wanted it, no wait, it was forced on them.
So someone has to make a logical explanation on on how to judge an automobile. Someone here uses numbers, but you show them something with numbers and they say….NOOOO you can’t use numbers for THAT car.
The whole I hate GM thing is getting old here. The so called diehards who will only buy Toyota are acting just like the people in the past who wouldn’t buy German or Japanese because of WWII.
GM has lost more than 60% of its peak market share. That’s a lot of people, don’t you think?
To have had so much share, only to have lost it, suggests that many of their former buyers defected. And you can bet that some of those defectors didn’t just leave, but they had developed some real animosity as a result of their experience with the product.
You may be part of the 40%, but you belong to a minority. You can sneer at the 60% if you want, but do you really think that’s going to persuade any of that majority to return to the fold?
The ’85 model sold about 74K coupes and 2300 convertibles. With ’86 production a fraction of that–21,342 in ’86 and 17,775 in ’87–it seems that a lot of dedicated Eldo buyers went elsewhere–or hung onto their ’85s a few more years.
The production figures from 1985-90 tell the story: Big dip in ’86-’87, and a healthy bump with the ’88 refresh.
Link to production numbers here: http://www.cadillacforums.com/forums/cadillac-seville-cadillac-eldorado-forum/91641-eldorado-production-numbers-start-finish.html
Ok, so we are back to numbers.
I respect the right of choice. I’m glad there is choice.
There is no way for GM to support a 60% market share ever again. No one will ever have that ability again.
To dump on every single GM car that is on here, regardless of experience, knowledge or any other reason is really old. I come read new things and new stories. Sometimes the writers are extremely biased and then the band wagon shows up. Other times there is actually some objective journalism going on.
GM didn’t have 60% market share.
What I said was that GM lost more than 60% of the market share that it used to have.
The point that I was making that there were defectors than there were fans. They used to be with GM, but they bailed out.
They gave GM a chance. They gave GM their money. There doesn’t seem to be any appreciation of the fact that these people made a choice to leave, and that in many cases, it was because they were dissatisfied. Many of them felt burned.
Telling those people to take a long walk off of a short pier is only going to confirm to them that they were right to bail out. It tends to irritate people when they spend a lot of money on something, only to find that it doesn’t work and that no seems to care.
Let me get this right, a company like Toyota is wonderful because it sells many cars that people want.
I make a comparison in sales numbers of the Eldorado to a Lexus or two, and now we must change the judgement from sales number to? the particular posters bias?
A company like Toyota is successful, not wonderful, because they’ve spent the last 40 years going from a small, niche brand to controlling the largest portion of the US market and becoming the most profitable automotive conglomerate on the planet.
General Motors spent the same period of time going out of business – spiraling downward from a peak of having HALF of all auto sales made in this country – and would not exist today, at least not as an independent entity, were it not for a massive federal bailout.
There is a reason for this, and it has nothing to do with bias or some kind of ridiculous non-existent agenda. There is no “I hate GM” thing. You cannot write an accurate history of cars like this without discussing how they put one of the largest companies in American history out of business. I guess you could, but it would be entirely one-dimensional and not very interesting.
The downsized FWD Cadillacs did more to ruin that brand in the long term than even the (horrible) Cimmarron or Catera. If you somehow lived in a vacuum where nothing but pre-1985 American cars existed, then they weren’t “all that bad”; they became reasonably reliable over time, were more sprightly to drive and got better mileage than their BOF predecessors, had an interior that was every bit on par with Lincolns from 4 years earlier and were as refined and solidly put together as anything else Detroit sold at the time. Hoo-ray. I bet lots of folks’ aunties had them and they were mighty swell. I’m sure they continue to make great cheap used cars for many people.
But if anyone stepped out of that bubble for a fraction of a second, and most of the country eventually did, they would notice that this was a car that listed for the same price (or more than) stuff that it was brutally outclassed by – the Audi 5000, BMW 3-series and Mercedes-Benz 190E were all in the ballpark… and in the real world, this era of FWD Caddy had yet to match Nissan Maxima levels of style, refinement and performance. “Wasn’t all that bad” isn’t what people expect to get when they’re paying “Standard Of the World” money – and you can’t be “The Standard Of the World” while trying to be the cheap alternative to better products, which is where Cadillac and the rest of GM ended up eventually. That disconnect is a huge part of why they crashed and burned as well as a crucial element of these cars’ story.
I’m sure I’ve used this analogy several times in response to comments like yours already, but if I’m a fan of the NY Mets, I’m not going to stop being a fan of the NY Mets because they suck; however I’m also not going to pretend that they’re a good team – because they clearly do suck and will finish in the cellar once again unless they stop sucking. The 1986 Cadillac Eldorado sucked, horribly, and in the most objective sense. I could admit that even if I was a fan of it, as I do with many shitty cars I’m a diehard fan of (many of which are GM products).
How did it fail?
Many of the traditional buyers for the models and marque…rejected it. Didn’t buy it.
What are those cars sold for? Basically, image and style. The price stipulates quality (which isn’t always there) but the lineup is to sell image.
Based on tastes, these cars look small…contrived. The article touches on that; one look confirms it for me.
Whereas, various foreign brands, not all of them Asian, were/are able to make similar-sized and smaller luxury cars that do not call to mind the abominable X-Cars.
Comparing what happened to the Eldorado in 1986 and comparing it to the Lexus SC is not a very direct comparison. In 1986, the luxury coupe market overall was still quite healthy. As the sales stats show, the ’86 Eldorado was a big miss, with sales dropping big time from the year before.
The luxury market mostly evaporated in the late 1990’s, which is why the SC went away too eventually. But it was successful in its run, and was very highly regarded.
Not in the same class as the pricey Eldorado and other downsized E-bodies but there was still a substantial (though far less than the late 70s peak) market for personal-luxury coupes in 1986 as Chevrolet still sold over 100,000 Monte Carlos, Oldsmobile sold nearly 300,000 Cutlass Supreme coupes, and Ford was selling about 120,000 T-Birds with Mercury selling about 80,000 Cougars. All of those were rear-drive with V6 or V8 power with the GM cars being 1978-vintage BOF designs and the Fords built off the unibody Fox platform also of 1978 vintage.
The Eldorado was considered a failure because it sold nearly 160K in the two years before and defined a market segment. Everything that made the Eldorado a success in 1984-1985 was gone.
Since Lexus was brand new for 1990 and this was the first time Japan competed on the luxury level, there was no real benchmark, except for the Europeans but they were imports as well. So really any sales were better than nothing. Some cars like the ES250 didn’t amount to much and were quietly replaced by better models. It would have been different if the ES300 was replaced by the ES250, then you might have heard some screaming.
Actually, Lexus become the main successful Japanese brand. Acura sold a lot of cars and still does but never quite became the same thing to Honda as Lexus did for Toyota. It became more or less just a different Honda albeit a bit more expensive and somewhat different. Infiniti at times vacillated between some hits and a waste of time and money for Nissan. Overall though it has been the weakest of the three premium Japanese brands. Some models like the G37 are pretty decent, but a lot of the models come dangerously close to being badge engineering Nissan models.
I don’t think he was saying the Toyota/Lexus was all that. But the SC coupes when introduced got a ton of accolades at their design, and demanded top penny. 20 years later they still look sleek.
And Lexus really had nothing to lose, whereas Cadillac certainly did and has.
Irv Rybicki was a good stylist he designed many other cars during his tenure at GM, it wasn’t that they wanted to make the cars look this way, they were pretty much TOLD to. The styling issues were that the car couldn’t be longer than X, wider than Y, still seat 5, and still make it look “Eldorado-ey” enough to make Cadillac management happy, some of the styling studies for these cars were much more radical, which would have probably helped with the shock of the size, but the styling parameters were firmly dictated, but of course, many of those more radical looking Eldo concepts were rejected by Cadillac management
There really is no one in GM Styling that was ever proud of these.
+1. The stylists didn’t want the ’86 Seville/Eldorado to come out looking like it did any more than they wanted the downsized ’85 de Ville/Fleetwood. The GM brass told them to do it–Rybicki & Co. didn’t have a choice.
I have read that the original design for the ’85 Caddy C-body was very close to what came out in ’89.
Autos of interest is an interesting site, there is a good amount of GM styling concepts there for the C-bodies and other GM cars.
http://autosofinterest.com
I can understand the fear of upsetting the applecart, a guy like Rybicki, a GM lifer, brought up through the system, well paid, now the head of styling for General Motors, meaning, he was made, a millionaire. All he had to do was to ride out his tenure and retire a very very rich man.
These FWD DeVille drawings are from 1978-1979
Another deVille from 1979-80
Here’s a 98 that looks a lot like a 1989-1993 Fleetwood sedan.
All these pics are from Autos of Interest, great site.
This link at the GM Heritage site is actually pretty accurate. Rybicki was an excellent stylist in his own right, but due to challenges from the outside and not having Mitchell’s extroverted personality to get what he wanted, he was pushed around a lot as Styling Chief.
http://history.gmheritagecenter.com/wiki/index.php/Rybicki,_Irvin_W.
It amazes me that these drawings came out when they did, and it took years later for them to go in production. They are so radically different in 1979-80 than any of the big flagships GM had going, almost making them seem archaic! It’s surprising to me as I see the cars GM made then and automatically think they were cutting edge just because, but seeing these shows me that the stylists were reaching a lot further to the future than what was actually being produced. Hard to imagine a 1986-87 model in 1979 or so.
The 2008-2012 Accord sedan was 194.9 inches long. It was also a full-size car in terms of interior volume. Honda actually shrank the car by several inches in length for the current generation.
The Eldorado? 191 inches long. Definitely not a full-size car in terms of interior volume either. Also, it is exactly 1 inch narrower than the Accord.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Eldorado#1986.E2.80.931991
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Accord_%28North_America_eighth_generation%29
And I’ll just add the height difference – the Eldo is 5 inches lower. I think this is probably why people think of it as so small.
It’s always fun to see these. I like oddities and underdogs, so to me, the version to have would be the early one, before they stretched it and added fins (although the 4.1 engine might keep me from actually considering one). It’s just so interesting — the smallest (except for Cimarron) Cadillacs ever! At the time, I was fascinated by the guts it took for them to release this much smaller car (along with the ’85 C-bodies) and curious to see which buyers would trade their larger Cadillacs (and Oldsmobiles and Buicks) for them. A lot of people didn’t, but a lot of people did! It was a bit of an “Emperor’s New Clothes” situation, but from what I’m hearing, the people who went ahead and bought the cars may have had the last laugh. They weren’t so bad, and they were certainly a lot more manageable and maneuverable than the larger cars. If only the new Cadilacs (such as the XTS) were closer to this package in footprint and glass area! One final comment — I like the Seville version of this car much better than the Eldo. It’s an attractive, glassy sedan and doesn’t look as “shrunken” as the coupe.
These eldos make me so sad. They were just the polar opposite of the classic ’79-85 body style that preceded them, and they really killed any hope of making the Eldorado a nameplate respected by import buyers. If only the 79-85 could’ve continued until the 1992 body debuted, with the olds 307, like the Brougham did…
I checked the clue against a dead Seville in a nearby street an ugly rusted hulk of a car, and yegods the car they are off is worse, What were they smoking when this was er, designed it looks like a stoner cut up a 4door lost some pieces and stuck it back together and called it good. Ok I speak from a completely different market but the guy thinking about a new Mercedes 2 door sedan was going to cross shop this, Really. What this awful mess represents is exactly where GM went wrong they debased Cadillac down to Chevrolet levels and its still falling, chock full of Holden parts now mind you that would be an improvement.
By the way thanks to CC and the commentariat I now know why that old Seville and the Oldsmobile lawn ornament thats now gone nearby look like the same car and I can see a Holden statesman in them too size wise that was our big offering from GM
Craig – wonderful summary of a very difficult time!
I’ve taken Craig’s comment down, because he’s going to turn it into a full article at my request, to be run soon.
Craig, I’m turning this into a post of itself; this is way to good to not be seen by everyone. You’ve just been promoted to Author 🙂
Golf clap…..
Its interesting to note all the Chuck Jordan was able to do in his short tenure as Styling Chief, he only had 6 years or so before he hit the mandatory 65 retirement age for GM execs.
Your comment is very instructive, but I do not believe that things started to go bad at GM under Roger Smith. Before him was Bob Stempel, who did not last long, and he was another old engineering guy. In DeLorean’s book, he points out that GM was centralizing even in the early 70s. The divisions were losing their assembly plants to the GM Assembly Division even then. Also, recall that the Vega was a product of GM engineering, and not of the Chevrolet division, which got the car crammed down its throat by none other than Ed Cole.
GM’s management had reached a level of dysfunction long before Roger Smith, even in the 60s. DeLorean tells how it was Ford that was seen as the innovative hard charger, while Chevy was struggling internally to keep control of an increasingly unmanageable organization.
According to DeLorean (who was gone by 1974, I believe) ever since Fred Donner had become chairman in 1958, the company was promoting on the basis of personal loyalty rather than competence or straight shooting. The result was that by the mid 60s, there were too many people in the central office trying to micromanage the decisions that should have been made at the divisional level. The company was starting to rot in DeLorean’s day, but like with a huge oak tree, it takes quite awhile for the signs to appear on the outside.
It is hard for me to argue for or against what you are saying because it is speculation to me since it was before my time. Most of the people around during that time are dead now so its hard to draw in a personal observation.
Yes I am sure there was a lot of potential issues at GM before the 1980s but companies have issues anytime but sometimes they can get around them if the business model still works. For GM, the raison d’etre for being changed after OPEC and CAFE. No longer did GM have the freedom to build cars that they wanted, no longer did styling come from within but became part of a larger more overall corporate strategy.
Some things, were going to have to change, total separate vertically integrated operating units could not have lasted forever. It would have been physically impossible as well as not cost effective to do so. Even with all of the dysfunction that you mention, it wouldn’t have mattered, if GM continued to build cars like they had the public would have continued to buy them. They might have lost some market share, maybe go from 50% to 40 simply because the competition was healthy as opposed to the 50s and 60s when they were still rebuilding from WWII. It wasn’t until domestics started to look like Japanese and Europeans cars when buyers started heavily cross shopping.
Bob Stempel came AFTER Roger Smith, he was short lived and ousted in a boardroom coup in 1992.
Forgot the order. I remember that I had high hopes for him – an engineering guy back in charge. Didn’t last long, though.
In addition to the too small size and problematic engine these items hurt the 86 Eldo and Seville…
* plastic bumper covers
* composite headlamps
* plastic side mirror shells
* elimination of stainless trim on the bodyside lower
All the GM cars shared in these items as they were strong industry trends and Cadillacs lost its look. These areas plus the Bill Mitchell crisply drawn lines provided a signature that was shared between the 79-85 Eldos, Sevilles and Broughams. They even shared a face.
Something else should have replaced the the trim items at least. That didn’t happen until the Art & Science theme was born.
As it was white walls, stand up hood ornaments, grip style door handles and vinyl tops were carried over and married with materials and forms from a new era and it just didn’t work. There was no cohesiveness. Buick did a much better job in the mid 80s.
My grandpa’s last car was a 1990 Seville, and it was an interesting little machine. Like a Brougham but the size of a 1980’s mid size car. The interior was a total throwback to the 70’s, but with digital instruments and electronic climate control/trip computer.
It handled surprisingly well for an American luxury car. Probably more like a contemporary Nissan Maxima than a traditional wallowing Caddy. His car wasn’t even the STS.
The 4.5 liter V8 had more than enough power to smoke the front tires from a full-throttle stoplight departure, which was pretty fun when I was in high school and borrowed the Seville on occasions when I needed a car and my beater Saab wasn’t working.
A small correction for Tom: Bill Mitchell’s famous quote was not about downsizing specifically, but about styling compact cars in general. Downsizing is certainly a challenge — being able to ‘scale’ a design successfully is a great skill — but that wasn’t really what he meant.
Thanks for the clarification. I tried to find a reference for that quote but couldn’t remember if I read it in one of my Cadillac books, a ’70s Car & Driver interview or an issue of Collectible Automobile.
My biggest problem with these downsized E-body cars is less the vehicle, than the marketing. If these had been marketed as new, renamed Cimmaron, I suspect they would have been praised to heaven and sold well. Maybe the old E-bodies could have been then reskinned and updated to sell on for a few more successful years…
Lots of very good points are made by all. I suppose I am just looking at it differently than others are, or maybe from a different perspective. I can see where my point of view was not clearly expressed.
All good though. Good game guys, it was fun right or wrong. I’ve never minded being on the losing team 🙂
I love this generation as I own a crimson etc & polo green sts, too bad these cars were panned and 92+ praised even though the chassis is nearly
Identicle… Funny thing on the vs Taurus i still see quite a few still drivin but first gen tauri are a rarity.
I’m probably in the minority here but, the 86-91 Eldorado & Seville are probably my favorite Cadillac’s. These are great drivers and they still have the traditional Cadillac class in my eyes, chrome door handles, stainless steel trim, hood ornaments, stylish interiors, and enough cursive Cadillac scripts to never question what kind of car you’re driving. I love the low stance of the cars too. I grew up with Seville’s, my parents had a 79 for many years, an 87 Seville & 91 Eldorado. My first car was an 83 Seville Elegante, nice car, but no comparison to my 86 I have now. I liked the 83 when I had it, but the 86 drives so much better, and looks better, sleek, classy and understated. The slashback’s just look tacky to me now and they drive like a barge, I’ve never liked the broughams either. The 92 + Seville’s & Eldorado’s where cheaped up, plastic chrome trim, plastic door handles, boring interiors, and bloated bodies. I guess to each their own, hopefully most people don’t put value on these cars so I can get another nice one for not a lot of money in the future .
GM lost money on every one of the E bodies (Toronado, Riviera and Eldorado) that they managed to sell between 1986-92. They were not only horrible looking automobiles, but they were constructed with budget cut materials (typical GM ’80s era crap), they had technical service bulletins that were pages and pages long, recalls, crappy engines, uncomfortable and UGLY square interiors, power windows that died early, cheap composite headlights that leaked, peeling clear coat paint, egregious digital instrumentation that was trouble prone, etc… The 1979-85 E-bodies were not as hideous as their successor, but those cars were wrought with cheap interior materials, ugly square instrument panels, dangerously underpowered (especially the awful Cadillac 4100, the 5.7 diesel and the infamous 6.0 Liter V8-6-4. Even the Old’s built 307 in the Toronado and Riviera couldn’t pull its own weight. Buick’s 3.8 Liter turbo, optional in the Riviera, couldn’t live up to the challenge either. The only year downsized Eldorado that was somewhat livable was the ’79 model with the Old’s built 350. I briefly owned an ’83 Eldorado that I bought used in 1988. The car had 70K on it when I bought it and I learned shortly after that I made a HUGE mistake buying that Caddy. In other words: JUNK! The paint was almost shot on the top surfaces. it was all checkered and gritty (lacquer) and the leather interior (cheap leather) was heavily worn for a five year old car. The car was cheap at $3,300. The car was quiet and it rode smoothly, but…. The 4100 V8 was just about the worst Caddy engine EVER made. It would go 0-60 in about 17 seconds, with a whopping top speed of 92! The awful digital instrumentation went out on me and cost me $1,300 to repair back in 1991! The level ride feature died (air compressor and sensor) but I didn’t have it repaired, the automatic climate control never worked right. AC compressor failed twice, engine pinged almost constantly, fuel milage was dismal, both power window motors failed, automatic trunk pull down failed, the big trumpet horn stopped working, the engine would run rough and smooth intermittently (my mechanic was even stumped), trunk leaked when it rained, front end shook at speeds higher than 60 even though I had the front end rebuilt and tires were balanced and no alignment problems and the driver’s side power seat motor failed. All this trouble on a car with only 93K on the odometer and not even 10 years old yet. I sold my Eldorado in 1993 for $700.00 and never looked back. It’s no wonder why Cadillac nearly had its “coffin” nailed shut during those horrible years. The late ’70s is when GM began going down the shitter in terms of quality, style and innovation. The ’80s was by far the worst decade EVER in Cadillac’s history. The ’80s is just an all around gross decade for most everything. The 1980 Seville was an omen of bad things to come and boy did rotten things spit out of the once proud division. The UGLY ’80-85 Seville is replaced in 1986 with an UGLY, boxy, little sedan that looked cheaper than a Toyota Corolla of the same vintage! The UGLY, boxy, FWD 1985 DeVille series, the UGLY, boxy, comedy on wheels: the Cimmaron. The first Cadillac that actually looked good in a LOOOOONG time was the all new and larger Seville in 1992. That car actually looked like something substantial. But, alas, it was wrought with CHEAP materials and a troublesome north star V8. Today Cadillac has come a long way from the sh** they were building for the last 35 years, but even so I’d never want a new Cadillac. New Cadillac’s just look generic and oddly shaped compared to Mercedes, BMW and Lexus. And the foreign competition has shown whose boss in the premium luxury field. They don’t have to be pretenders like Cadillac.
I’ve owned several Eldorados over the years. The best ones that I ever owned was a ’68 and a ’70 and a ’73 convertible. The two worst Eldorados that I owned was a ’85 convertible and a ’91. The ’91 was assembled better than my ’85 and quicker, but it was a really homely automobile and had numerous electrical issues.
These cars may have had a better interior design and more interior room than their predeccesors, but that still doesn’t excuse the fact that you’d have to look at the exterior styling before getting into the thing every day. And that would just be too much for me!
Ugly, stubby with a too-short back end and too-upright and insubstantial C-pillar. Cadillac was lost is a surreal kind of never-never land in the 1980s.
Awful cars-everything that was wrong with Generic Motors in one vehicle. Snail-slow, dreadful reliabity, weak handling, wrong wheel drive, “styled” to be aggressively bland, loaded with piles of tacked-on electronic junk that cost plenty when (not if) it failed…tried to split the Euro and Brougham difference, and managed the worst of both worlds.
I would rather have a Chevette.
There’s a review of the current BMW 530i over at Car and Driver where they had negative things to say about the steering feel, essentially that where BMW was once the standard for positive steering feedback of a luxury sedan, that award now goes to Cadillac.
How things have changed.
Had Cadillac been building these driver-oriented cars in the ’80s and ’90s, BMW may not have become so big. But nowadays, even BMW has lost interest in building the enthusiast-oriented “ultimate driving machines” that made their reputation, dropping high-road-feel steering and manual transmissions. Cadillac could be winning over the shrinking number of enthusiast buyers with their current ATS, CTS, and CT6, but low-rent interiors, smallish rear seats (in the first two) and and the awful CUE interface are repelling those buyers, and the presence of Escalades in the same showroom dilutes and confuses the brand’s image.
I don’t know how I missed this article when it first appeared. My late father-in-law purchased a new 1986 Eldorado in late 1985, not very long before my wife and I got married. Big Bob was then in the process of retiring from a long and successful career selling machine tools and automation equipment; most of his customers were suppliers to the automotive industry or the auto manufacturers themselves. He had spent many years making the trip from Evansville, Indiana to the Detroit area, sometimes via air but most of the time over the road. By the time I met him Bob was partial to Cadillacs and had owned several over the years. He was not happy with the new down-sized Eldo at all, in fact he typically referred to it as “that miniature POS”. I never really understood why he bought it in the first place, everyone he talked to about the car pointed out that he was not likely to be happy in a car that (relatively) small. And of course they were right, he didn’t keep the Eldorado but a year or so, trading it in on what turned out to be a series of Lincoln Town Cars. From what I could gather my FIL blamed Cadillac for selling him a car that didn’t suit him; in any event he never bought another GM vehicle.
The problem with these cars is that they looked way too small for what they were trying to be.
Suspend your disbelief for a second…and imagine GM had come out with the 1992 Eldo and 1994 DeVille in 1986. Those designs would have been smash hits in 1986.
The 1992 Eldo/Seville, and 1994 DeVille rode on the same platforms as the 1986 models, and had similar dimensions, but their styling made them look like real Cadillacs and not a rebadged Oldsmobile Calasis.
The greenhouse design and beltline made these Caddy’s look smaller than they really are. It’s amazing how the 1986 Cadillacs look shorter and narrower than a modern Honda Civic, even though they are in fact much larger.
The downsized Cadillacs of the mid 80’s remind me of a Baker who, in the middle of baking a pie, realizes that he is out of sugar so he substitutes salt in the same amounts with predictable results.
I don’t think that even if petrol had reached $6/gallon, these cars would have sold well. As many, many people have mentioned, they were far off their predecessors in terms of image and presence, and they seem to me to be much lower so I am thinking they would be much more uncomfortable and cramped, especially in the back seat. Sure, they may have been justified in stating that they had the same measurements tape measure wise but probably not in real life.
130hp out of a complicated, high cost engine was not a recipe for success, and I don’t think they got all that spectacular mileage. fueleconomy.gov shows the Eldorado with a combined mileage of 18 and the Gunboat Brougham with a mileage of 19. Oops.
Besides, really rich folks don’t really care about mileage, they (used to) drive Hummers and now drive Escalades and Navigators and those awful Infiniti School bus things.
But you will say, the sales of big luxury cars plummeted when oil prices spiked. That is more due to recession and end of product cycles than it is due to oil costs. What about the Mercedes diesel? Whatever virtues people saw in a Mercedes, long life, superior engineering, eyewatering cost, were somehow exaggerated by making it slow, noisy, and smelly. That’s why rich folks eat things like escargots and tripe. Misery somehow makes the experience richer.
These cars were stupendously expensive to produce, as GM had overcome enormous community resistance to build a new factory in Hamtramck and highly automated the factory. The robots didn’t work right. It cost a fortune to relocate and buy out all the residents.
Then the build quality wasn’t there; C/D had a Riviera which failed so miserably in its long term test that it had to be sent back to Buick before it completed the test.
The idea of a more reasonably sized Cadillac with all the luxury trimmings and presence had really reached its logical conclusion with the ’79-’85 models, and Cadillac should have restyled and refined that car. The ’86 only lost about 350 lbs of weight v. the ’85 but lost everything that made the ’85 an Eldorado. So even if petrol had hit $6/gallon, these would . . . actually probably have been even bigger losers than they were.
I’m willing to bet that this car sold a lot of Regal Limiteds and Cutlass Supreme Broughams.
What should GM have done? It could have:
A) kept the basic concept of this Eldorado/Seville as a smaller, traditional car and improved the styling as it did in the ’88 or ’92 model
B) restyled the ’79-85 car in keeping with its traditional ideas
C) gone with a completely different concept of the Eldorado as a modern, sporty, Acura Legend sort of car, possibly based on the upcoming W body or a dramatic restyling of the C body.
A) could have worked but not at the prices GM was charging. I don’t think Eldorado sales ever really recovered to the ’84/85 levels. The two door coupe market was beginning to shrink at this time and as many people have observed, GM’s traditional market for these cars was dying off.
B) this would have been a decent idea. I don’t know what a more modern restyling would have looked like but something perhaps more akin to the ’92 or more aero along the lines of the Lincoln Mark VII although that wasn’t any great seller either despite praise lavished on it by buff magazines.
C) is a really interesting idea. On the one hand, as frequently noted, Cadillac’s market was dying and the traditionalist two door coupe buyers had a decent alternative in the showroom in the Coupe De Ville. So a car more suited for the future than the past, based on the W or C body with much more modern styling and handling, may have been successful. On the other hand, the Legend, in its most successful year, 1988, only sold 70,770 copies – – – over three times as many as the Eldorado in its best year. Cadillac today produces some of the world’s most competitive cars completely removed from its American heritage. . . and no one buys them. The concept of American style luxury is still quite valid as seen in the vehicles Cadillac does sell, like Escalades, so a modern, better driving vehicle with more space than the competition, attractively styled, and with some American style luxury features, like softer seats, real wood trim, moderate use of chrome, and a sense of presence may have been more successful.
Interesting that this cropped up this morning, and unleashed a flood of memories on a rather emotional day. In late 2013 my partner and I relocated from Brooklyn, NY to Central Florida for the first time (we’ve since made the move in reverse and then back again in 2015 due to a family health issue, but that’s another story).
As a Brooklyn boy, “The Other One” was never licensed, and had just enough car knowledge to know what color he liked. After a nerve wracking 3 month period during which we paid a very patient, very brave woman with a propensity toward colorful profanity a sum not worthy of her skill, he obtained a learner’s permit. So of course a car would be required soon, as his plan was to register and be driving his very own first car on the day he obtained his license.
An extensive search for vehicles within a tight budget yielded a few contenders, but much to my near-horror the one that caught his eye and his heart was a 1990 Eldorado Bairritz, in lipstick red with white button-tufted leather seats and a white vinyl half top. “The Other One” was so determined that he’d rock this paragon of GM’s 1980’s engineering that he took several busses in 90+ degree Summer Florida heat out to a rather questionable neighborhood to see and test drive this thing. Of course he was smitten, and the decision was made on the spot, with a $500 deposit exchanged, the final sale contingent upon his securing a license a couple weeks later.
Of course there was the common initial failure of the road test, which delayed the finalizing of this transaction, thus giving me some additional opportunities to offer more reasonable vehicular options for his consideration. By this point the Eldo in question had already been named and was quickly taking on a life of its own. I just decided to go with it,as clearly no voice of reason was going to alter this course of action. So I did some research on the ’90 Eldorado. My only real sense of relief came when I learned of the 4.5 V8’s relative reliability as compared to its 4100 predecessor. This was going to happen, and I couldn’t stop it. And so I resigned myself to it.
Finally the day came, and we headed off together to fetch this wonder of automotive design. To keep it brief, the selling dealer had apparently been deluged with inquiries and interest in the car, as the neighborhood he was located in was a hotbed for DONK’ed older cars, and this Eldorado presented itself as a prime candidate for such a treatment. The rather oily salesman was clearly doing anything he could to steer us toward any of the battered, sun damaged relics on his lot in order that me might sell the Cadillac to one of its many admirers, likely for a fair amount more than the $1700 we’d offered. So after quite a bit of push and pull with regard to completing the sale, I suggested a final once over to be SURE this was the car for him. It looked to be in decent shape, and it did run, and rather quietly and smoothly at that. With a flurry of blinking courtesy lamps and flashing LED readouts the car did run and drive. My ace-in-the-hole came, however when we field tested the electronic climate control system and realized that the AC was not functioning properly (let’s remember that this is Florida, and it’s early September). Well, in the interest of expedience and with his insistence that he was leaving that place with a car of his own that day, and with 9PM quickly approaching we ultimately ended up driving off in a 2003 Dodge Durango, which while not exactly economical, was a reliable vehicle that served us well. “The Other One” was very pleased with his Durango, but still lamented that he wasn’t able to drive off in that red Eldorado.
How does this relate to today? Well, today is the day that “The Other One” signs in to a facility back in his native Brooklyn to work through some pitfalls and troubles that have wreaked havoc on his (and our) life over the past 8 years. My mind is wandering here at work, as I keep wishing I could help him get there, make sure he has everything he’ll need for the journey, and hold his hand as he starts to pick up the pieces. Much the same way as I felt when he took that driver’s test 4 years ago. So when I saw that Eldorado show up on CC this morning my first thought was that if he gets through this and comes out the other side as the man he was meant to be, then fuck it, I’d be thrilled to find a facsimile of that godawful automotive turd, just to make him smile.
Best of luck to the both of you. I don’t think I’ve ever said this to anyone, but I hope you find yourself the proud owner of a 1990 Eldo soon.
Wow MTN good luck with that. What a great story. I think at $1700 the Eldorado was a great deal.
The truth is, with 85,000 miles on it $1700 kind of WAS a good deal, especially considering that its only cosmetic flaws were a bit of sun damage and a few dings consistent with an older previous owner parking by feel. My suspicion is that the dealer started to realize over the course of time that he could probably squeeze at least several hundred bucks to a grand more out of the thing, which led to a rather discouraging interaction at time of delivery. And of course I didn’t want to think about the complications or expense of dealing with a 25 year old pre-134a A/C system with 80’s electronic wizardry.
The ’80s was the nail in the coffin for Cadillac. First came the retina searing butt ugly 1980 Seville, then the horrible 6 liter with cylinder deactivation in 1981, the dreadful 4100 in 1982, the same year the pathetic pos Cimmaron is introduced, 1985 brings out the ill proportioned cheaply built FWD Deville series, 1986 introduces the sinfully lame (ugly) new Eldorado and Seville which have all the grace and quality of a pencil box. What was once GM’s “standard of the world” division became a division of bean counting arrogance, cluelessness and carelessness. When Lexus, Infiniti and Acura came upon the US market it was clear who the common denominator was now. Then Mercedes Benz and BMW updated its products and that was it for the luxury American auto manufacturers.
I still see quite a few 1988-91 examples driving around and in very good condition so they all weren’t bad. Two such examples live down the road from me, one a blue 1988 Eldo coupe and the other a white 1989 Seville by two separate owners. A couple of white coupes in the 88-91 vintage show up at our local cruise in and they are pristine and show lots of love from there owners.
If GM had come out with the 88 model in 1986 with the elongated rear and tail fins sales might have been better. Also it is amazing that it took them so long to come out with the 4.5 improvement. IMO the HT4100 should never have happened in the first place. They should have just kept using the 368 or even substituted the Olds 307 during the 1982-85 model years for the large cars and held off on introducing the 4100 until the new downsized cars appeared. This would have given them far more time to properly develop this engine and would have made customers far happier.
Poor management and even poorer decisions nearly killed this company for good. Imagine how much happier consumers would have been if there 1982-85 Deville or Eldorado instead had a fuel injected 368 fitted to an overdrive transmission without cylinder shutdown. I’m sure they would gladly sacrifice 1-2 MPG for 70-80 extra LBS FT of torque! Also imagine if the downsized 1985 C-body cars looked like the 1989 car with a more developed 4.5 out of the gate. Ditto the 1986 E-bodies. I’ll bet sales would have been far stronger across the range.
Reading this comment thread reminds me of an article in Cycle magazine about the introduction of the first Harley Davidson FXRS. The FXRS was one of their first rubber mounted engine “sport model.” Unlike the touring FHT model, there wasn’t an easy way to hide the new frame and rubber mounting system. It still had to look a lot like the earlier Super Glide/LowRider models. The rubber mount was a huge improvement over the old solid mount models in comfort and handling. It was an evolution that was critical to the continued success of the company.
I remember a quote from an engineer along the lines of, “Our customers want a bike that looks like, feels like, and smells like an orange, but peel it and it’s an apple inside. It wasn’t easy, but that’s just what we did.”
This was a similar challenge that many automakers faced, some attempts weren’t that successful. If the customer isn’t satisfied with the result, then it’s not a success.
I think the central defect with the ’86 Eldorado- and even more so with the Seville- was the placement of the rear wheel openings too far behind the C pillar. You see this on many Advanced Studio renderings leading up to the production models. These were penned by David Macintosh I believe, who was very enamored by the Citroen, a car known for this odd rear wheel placement. So it was not so much size, as it was this Citroën fetish that led to the demise of these downsized E-bodies.
Much has been made of this faceplate by GM; but with the benefit of hindsight it’s certainly easy to dump on it. After all, if gas prices really did go as high as GM was expecting the ballgame would’ve been entirely different.
But my simple solution – what if they’d styled what was sold as the Coupe de Ville a little more edgily and made that the Eldorado? There you go. That Eldo would still have a bit of a platform staring stigma with a different but still very corporate roofline, but at least it wouldn’t be small.
I felt from the start that these models (and all the other front drive replacements of the various GM carlines) were poorly proportioned both in style and box size. Just a half a$$ed effort.
I’ve never aspired to own any of them, then or now.
Not the worst exponent of the trademark GM Goof-E-Roof styling, but certainly the most unfortunate.
I have nothing against Cadillac. I understand the fear of the times; I too lived through that era as a salary-earning young family man. I understand the need of working within packaging constraints, which in retrospect were probably exaggerated on the side of caution, but nobody knew that at the time. I understand that we did not know where car design was heading – more specifically, GM didn’t. And I understand that Styling was caught between Modern Euro (unthinkable for Cadillac!) and Sixties Detroit Traditional – trying to bridge that gap must have felt like doing the splits.
I understand all of this.
But I have nothing but loathing and vitriol for unnecessary ugliness.
I’m not going to complain about the amount of chrome. I’m not going to complain about wire wheel covers. Those things aren’t the issue, much as the enthusiast press liked slinging off about them at the time. They would be an easy fix, and anyway I don’t think they’re too bad on this.
The issue is the overall form and proportions.
That goofy long front overhang (Yes, Lincoln was just as bad). That was unnecessary. Lengthen the wheelbase, push the wheels and power package forward, fix the dash-to-axle ratio to bring it in line with the Expected American Prestige Look, like the previous Eldorado. If you’re going to waste space, waste it behind the wheels, not in front of them. It wouldn’t have been hard at the design stage. This is supposed to be a Cadillac. That used to mean something.
The hacked-off-with-a-meat-cleaver roofline. Yes it gave the appearance of a longer trunk, but the roofline touched down over the centre of the rear wheels, which gave the Eldorado the awkward proportions of an extended-cab pickup with a chopped off bed. It coud have reprised the origingal Eldorado roofline, presaging a move away from the generic GM look which did so much to link the Eldo to the lesser cars – not a good thing. This is supposed to look prestigious – how?
This car is supposed to have been a Cadillac – a car inherently worth aspiring to above and beyond other cars. Not merely a more expensive take on a GM Anycar you need to be advertised and arm-twisted into wanting.