(first posted 1/12/2015) Here we go again. You know the drill. If there’s a Cadillac out there in that classic light yellow paint and matching Sierra grain leather, I will be all over it. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Chris-Craft sized ’70s Eldorado Biarritz, a Mini-Me Seville, or even a Cimarron (yes, they came in this color too!), I will immediately love it. I’m funny that way.
You may recall seeing this car on Paul’s Car2Go post. How bad does Klockau have it for cheesecake-colored Caddys? Well, I had to email Paul and see if he had more pictures of this car. He did not (let’s just say he is not as enamored of ’80s Cadillacs as I) but offered to get some shots the next time he was out for a walk. Cool! I was so excited, as this one appeared showroom new, and most of the 1985-88 Cadillacs have disappeared from my part of the world.
1985 was the year Cadillac put it all on the line. No longer would a yachting cap be necessary for ownership of one of GM’s finest, as the 1985 Sedan de Ville, Coupe de Ville and FWD Fleetwoods (the RWD Fleetwood Brougham carried on in Bristol fashion) were remarkably shorter and lighter, but still with Cadillac-sized room and comfort. The only thing I don’t really care for on the ’85s is the narrow little strip of chrome on the rocker panels.
It seemed chintzy for a Cadillac in my eyes, especially when its cousin, the Buick Electra Park Avenue, got nice wide chrome moldings. The FWD Fleetwoods did get a proper broad chrome molding, however.
The 1985 Cadillac de Villes sold too. The last of the “biggies,” the 1984s, sold 68,270 Sedan de Villes and 46,340 Coupe de Villes. Not bad for a big, imposing luxury car. But to correct those who like to re-write history and say the ’85 C-bodies were a failure, that is a bit out of left field, for the ’85s sold to the tune of 101,366 Sedans and 39,500 Coupes. Now, that figure DOES include the FWD Fleetwood Coupe and Sedan, but still, it is pretty clear that these cars found buyers. They certainly didn’t languish in the showroom.
For 1986, much was the same. The 4.1L V8 gained ten horsepower, to 135, and the 85-hp diesel available for 1985 was dropped. Sedan de Villes and Coupe de Villes did gain a proper wide chrome side molding, however. So much better looking–the ’85 version looked like a Calais or Series 62 to me, with its lame chrome trim! Production (again including the FWD Fleetwood) came to 129,857 Sedans and 36,350 Coupes. I imagine most of those were De Villes as folks wanting a Fleetwood probably went for the big RWD Brougham.
A 1986 Sedan de Ville weighed 3,378 pounds and had an MSRP of $19,990. I think the ’86 got it just right. Enough chrome to not be mistaken for a Chevrolet Biscayne, but still remarkably clean and modern. The fine mesh grille, simple vertical taillights with inset Cadillac emblem, and plush interiors were “just right.”
Well, except for one thing. That pesky 4.1L “High Technology” V8 engine. Yes, it was a Cadillac engine, not shared with lesser GM marques, but it had a problem with something one who purchases a luxury car shouldn’t have to deal with: an unreliable slug of an engine. While it undoubtedly was sprightlier in the smaller 1985-87 FWD Cadillacs (it first appeared in 1982 on the land-yacht De Villes and Fleetwoods, along with the Seville and Eldorado), it still had a problem with running when its owner wanted it to.
What kind of problems, you say? You could take your pick of oil pump failure, blown head gaskets, or the head bolts stripping out at most inopportune times, like when going 70 mph on Interstate 80. This led to terms such as “hand tighten” for the HT4100. Supposedly the engine was much improved around 1985, but I have heard of engine troubles with the engine on Cadillacs right up through 1987, its last year in the De Ville.
To me, this color always said “Cadillac.” I was in kindergarten when these cars debuted, and I do recall seeing them when they were new. The prominent use of one in the 1988 movie “Twins” also cemented these cars into my childhood memories. The only problem was many of these cars also sported hideous fake Rolls-Royce grilles, carriage roofs or–worst of all!–fake continental kits. Fortunately, this example has suffered no such dealer-installed abuse! Slick top, factory wheel covers and factory grille–just the way I like it.
Apparently I am not the only fan of these cars.
Even the driver’s seat is pristine–no wear on the driver’s bolster at all. Only some wear to the door armrest keeps it from near-mint condition. While the exterior of these cars changed a bit between 1985 and 1993, the interior stayed largely the same. I have driven a number of 1989-93 Sedan de Villes and can tell you they have not only excellent visibility, but tons of stretch-out room and extremely comfy seats!
And look at all that legroom out back. This has to be one of the last cars that really could seat six people comfortably. Yes, the Panthers technically do too, but with their RWD, the center-front passenger is not going to be the happiest camper in a contemporary Town Car or Grand Marquis–there is a rather prominent hump for the transmission on them. These C-bodies had remarkable room, and of course a nice flat floor up front.
And yet, on the outside, they were remarkably trim. That Taurus in the background looks bigger than the Caddy, but I know which one has more room inside!
You have to remember that when the 1985 FWD Cadillacs were being designed, GM was freaking out over a future of $6 a gallon gas, fuel rationing and other things that appeared to spell the end for the giant luxury car. They were not alone; pretty much all the car companies were figuring on Gas Crisis III by 1985-87, when no one would buy anything approaching gas-guzzler status. They were wrong, and so these cars get knocked on by folks who weren’t yet born when these cars were being designed.
Of course, said gas crisis never appeared, so GM looked stupid. But if it had happened, today auto blogs would be blasting Lincoln for the gigantic Town Cars they had in the ’80s, instead of Cadillac with their mini-Broughams.
Cadillac did address the, ahem, compactness of their bread and butter De Villes, however, starting in 1987. A new eggcrate grille and composite headlights appeared up front.
image: www.eBay.com
While out back, the rear fenders were extended by a couple of inches, and the taillamps now wrapped around a mini “fin.” It did improve the looks, but wasn’t quite as clean as the 1985-86 model. This 1987 was on eBay last year. This was the last year for the 4.1L V8; 1988 models would receive a heavily reworked version of the V8, now bumped up to 4.5 liters–and much more reliable to boot.
image: www.eBay.com
This one was interesting in that it had the yellow interior in cloth! Never saw that before. I like the two different types of cloth used. Also note the vintage lace-up steering wheel cover. Guess they didn’t have one in light yellow
The FWD Sedan de Ville was the future of Cadillac when it debuted, but nearly 30 years later only the XTS, the spiritual successor to the Sedan de Ville, remains with front wheel drive. And most of Cadillac sales are now SUVs and crossovers. No, Cadillac is very different from the ones in my childhood, but I will always have a soft spot for these downsized ’80s Sedan de Villes and Coupe de Villes. We grew up together!
Related: 1985 Buick Electra Park Avenue 1988 Cadillac Coupe de Ville 1990 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency Brougham
Cheese color looks so ’70s and ’80s on cars, as this color usually sticks to DeVille, New Yorker such old timers. And it’s so rare nowadays.
Dude I love my baby . 1986 deville white leather top 38k miles so smooth almost mint condition as well with the factory 5th wheel have had multiple people offer me 4k just for the back wheel but have refused. Love taking her out on Sundays and going 55 on the high way haha (she’s doesn’t like going over 60) but still fun !
I have kinda a soft spot for these. I’ve never seen that cloth seat design in the 3rd to last picture either.
One thing I noticed about both of these particular Sedan de Villes is the rear window. It doesn’t have a vinyl roof, but it does have a metal surround panel making it smaller and more “formal”. I’ve never noticed this on non-vinyl roof models, and it clearly isn’t on this Coupe de Ville, which has a full-sized rear window. Was that a sedan feature only?
I noticed that “window plug” when these came out, though it was usually covered with a vinyl roof. I was never sure of which models it was or was not on, but considered it a noticeable “cheap-out” by Cadillac. This was a Chrysler-move (Studebaker, even). In the old days, Cadillac might have used a filler panel, but would have filled the seams to a smooth finish. Even worse, the plastic welting that filled the seam would deteriorate with age and start cracking off.
Of course, Lincoln would soon do the same thing where the C pillar meets the roof panel in the 1990 Town Car,. A great construction method – for a Taurus, but not for a Lincoln. At least the Ford plastic filler material aged better.
I’m no expert on all the yearly changes in this series, but if I recall correctly, the Fleetwood version had the smaller rear window for 1985, and the SDV (and CDV?) did not. It was added to the de Villes later, in 1986 I guess (since this yellow car is one), along with the wider chrome rocker molding (which was also an improvement – I’m with Tom on this). I think they initially cheaped out on these trim pieces in order to make the Fleetwood look more special.
jp:
Hey, I wonder if that rear window was meant to
be kicked out “in the event of an emergency”.
??? lmao!
No I have the exact same car but the coupe with the small window.
My 86 Coupe de Ville.
Back View
Interior.
Nice car. Love it
Grant, I love your car! Which is curious…cause when these bad-boys came on the scene in late 1984, I thought we’d been tricked! The Sedan Deville – with its diminutive size and dwarfish proportions – was especially heinous.
But, for reasons I may never understand, I find the Coupe Deville – with its simplicity of line & titanic rear (side) window – positively beautiful.
Naturally, most owners opted for the God-awful “cabriolet” or landau option which effectively shrunk the one thing that makes this model so distinctive. Finding one sans the gaudy add-ons is a (rare) & wonderful thing indeed!
Front
That’s almost the Laramie “Biege” / Arizona “Biege” I happen to be fond of….
I have a 1986 Sedan DeVille, yellow, mint condition, with only 11,170 miles.
While I’m not exceedingly enthusiastic about the exterior color, I quite like these late 80’s “small FWD Cadillacs”.
About a year ago, I got very close to buying an ’86 Eldorado, but chose against it – mainly because of visibly leaking cooling system of its HT4100… but I quite like the way the car looked and rode.
I’m talking here from a European perspective (where one has to consider questions like “where am I going to park it?” and “how am I going to feed it?”), but I think that, in a way, these cars are just right – large enough to be comfortable, but not too thirsty (in comparison with many other American V8s) and also not excessively large in exterior dimensions (they’re about as big as the larger(st) modern European sedans and station wagons)
In many ways, these Cadillacs were sized very well. The problem was people here were so conditioned about a Cadillac equalling big that seeing a downsized car, especially a downsized Cadillac, was a double shock to the system.
Tom is correct on the 4.1 liter engine. My wife’s parents had an ’83 Seville whose engine suddenly and without warning crapped out at 55 mph. However, it may have been an outlier of sorts as it had 177,000 miles on it at the time.
I remember being amazed by the first round of downsized Cadillacs in 1977, I was utterly shocked with the 1985s! The 1977-1992 Cadillacs went on to become some of my favorites. This generation took awhile to grow on me. When new I thought that Buick pulled it off better. In hindsight, the reason It took me awhile to accept these was that the RWD Brougham were still in the showroom. Style wise I would love to have one of theses (or the 1990-93 version) over ANY Caddy made today! P.S. I also prefer the “old” style steering wheel. The first Cadillac airbag version look like it was plucked out of a Plymouth Sundance.
So true, James – that 1990 Cadillac steering wheel with the airbag was hideous. My Dad’s 1990 Coupe deVille was a beautiful, luxurious car, but I always hated that steering wheel with a passion!
For such a clean car, it sure has a lot of junk on the floor. Nice Q-Tips! Apparently, this owner isn’t worried about dating. 🙂
It’s owned by an older couple (in their 70s). I’m guessing they bought it new. It’s their daily driver. And I’m guessing they’ve been together for a long time.
For a car in relaxed Eugene, this is about the tidiest interior I’ve ever seen in an old car. The standards in the Midwest must be quite different. 🙂
Oh, many of our cars are treated like trashcans for sure. I just wouldn’t expect to see all the general garbage, like cups and wrappers and Q-Tips, in such an otherwise well-kept vehicle.
I don’t get it either. Whether my vehicle is one year old or fifteen, it is clean inside. I had a neighbor step gingerly into my then 10 year old F150 and comment that he’d never been in such a clean truck before. IMO, if you care for your vehicle, and your image, you’ll keep it clean.
You forgot to mention a trim variation higher on the pecking order: Fleetwood version. It’s more posh version with rear wheel cover skirt and other luxurious items.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4054/4455558761_7258dcd68e_o.jpg?width=1024&height=770
http://www.carid.com/images/chrome-accessories/cat/1985-cadillac-fleetwood-chrome-accessories.jpg
If you are thinking of the rear-wheel-drive Fleetwood that was selling along with de Ville during late 1980s, it had been renamed as Fleetwood Brougham as to avoid the confusion.
If I recall correctly, the rear fender skirt didn’t appear until the 1989 refresh, when they stretched the front and rear overhangs. Did they also stretch the wheelbase?
My grandmother had a 1987 FWD Fleetwood d’Elegance in the same colors as the e-bay car. Hers did not have fender skirts, they came in 1989. The wheelbase was the same as the deVilles too. She loved that car more than anything, and at 93 when she could no longer drive she was devistated that she had to sell it. I should have bought it and put it away, but unfortunately my Uncle got hold of it and sold it for next to nothing to her next door neighbor. They beat on that car – seeing it die a slow death was horrible. It only had about 45,000 miles on it when she sold it, and that was in 2005.
If my mother had to sell her Mercury, which she loves, I’d certainly be sensitive to her attachment to it, and not subject her to seeing it be destroyed. I refused to sell my ’86 LeSabre Limited to a neighbor for exactly that same reason. He was a slob who beat his vehicles to death.
Nice find Tom – and I like this color too. But I can’t help but post this again – it says it all……..
Indeed it DOES “say it all”.
I’ve always wondered how many mid/late 80’s Town Cars the downsized Caddy sold.
Also why the RWD Brougham stuck around, Not only was there still demand, the tooling was paid off by then. Ford and GM were wise to hang on to the Full Size RWD luxury sedans, Chrysler had only the Mid sized Fifth Avenue to sell to the traditional buyer. (Not that I toss a FA out of the garage)
I’ve always wondered about that statement. Didn’t they still make the RWD Fleetwood Brougham? If you were a hardcore big Caddy fan, I’d think you’d just pick the Fleetwood Brougham.
Yes I agree when i had my 2000 town car it was nice but what the hell is Lincoln doing now v6 power glorified Taurus… looks like 80’s Cadillac all over again. At least Cadillac had the v8.
I miss a tasteful yellow color on a car, especially after owning my 1964 Chevy Impala SS all those years ago.
Thing is, few if any large car could wear that color nowadays. I can’t picture my 2012 Impala in yellow, for example, but my old Chevy? It was beautiful!
True, about the only modern large car I could see in a color like this is maybe, maybe a Rolls-Royce or Bentley, and even then it would be better in a more muted yellow such as the one on your Impala,
Might be a personal thing, but I think it has to do with the relative lack of angles on today’s cars. To my eyes, these colors look cartoonish or “cute” on the rounded blobs that most cars have become.
This is very similar to the yellow color originally worn by my ’79 Malibu. Depending on what source you’re looking at, it was either called “light yellow” or “yellow beige” in Chevy-speak. It was a little lighter and had a little less tan that the color on the feature Cadillac, but could be mistaken at a glance.
There were a couple of these in my family, including one yellow one like shown. One thing that I always thought was wrong about these is the way that the wheel openings always made it look like the back end was sagging.
Also, I feel that the plural should be “Sedans de Ville” and “Coupes de Ville.”
The first Cadillac that I found truly attractive since the 1958’s. I adore the simplicity of line, the lowered beltline, and the real windows that actually provide visibility. Thank you very much for putting paid to the Internet “truth” that these cars were utter failures in the marketplace. You read enough blogs and you start to get the idea that the car sold less copies than the current electric coupe.
And as to that “you can tell what it is” Lincoln, of course you can tell what it is. Overblown ugliness is always easy to pick out in a crowd. Cadillac came up with a modern American luxury car, while Lincoln was doing the best it could with yet another overdone brougham.
There is part of what you say that I agree with. The car was not unattractive. Actually, it would have made a fabulous Seville.
However, those sales figures need to take into account that 1985 was a big boom of a sales year, so even though this car did well, it should have done better. In my admittedly small and localized sample size, I knew several people who were Cadillac owners in the 80s. None of them bought one of these. They either kept what they had, or replaced it with a RWD brougham, or with a Town Car. One guy even went to a Honda Accord, and drove Hondas for the rest of his life.
If I recall correctly, these debuted in the spring of 1984 as 1985 models. Much like the 1980 GM X-cars, their sales figures are inflated by the simple fact that their model year was an extended one. I believe that, after the initial rush of sales, GM had to offer hefty incentives to move these cars off the lot.
Like it or not, these cars handed over a large portion of the luxury car market first to Lincoln, and then to Lexus. They looked like a cartoon version of a standard Cadillac. Shrinking the Cadillac design cues and basic shape to a much smaller platform that featured a different drivetrain layout simply didn’t work.
It could have worked. Look at the various sizes of Mercedes sedans, for instance. None of them are ill-proportioned and ungainly. For whatever reason, GM’s designers just weren’t up to the task of producing an attractive downsized design with ‘correct’ Cadillac styling cues. Personally, I think a slightly lower roofline would help a lot to restore proportions.
Dad bought my Mother an 87 Coupe DeVille in cranberry red metallic with white Vinyl top and white leather interior. He said it was the most beautiful car he’d ever seen. Mom called it a “show boat”.
I thought it beautiful and the perfect size for a “large” car. Great packaging. The current cars look like Hyundai Sonatas.
An neighbor of mine had one like this only it was a light beige with the same cloth interior. The beige was actually classier than it sounds, not quite as boring as a beige Camry.
The tan interior was also very nice.
He also has a 77ish Seville in green. Both cars look showroom and are all original.
These cars had a weird stance until the ’89 restyle. The front end seems to be lifting in almost all of these shots, sort of like the engine’s been pulled…or else there are some unwilling passengers in the trunk.
Yeah, the front wheelhouses have more clearance than the rear.
I think the disdain for these cars has less to do with the size than with the peculiar styling. A lot of FWD GM cars of this period have the same issues, including a greenhouse that seems to be out of scale for the body and the odd relationship between the position of the backlight and the rear axle line, which inevitably makes these cars look like the victims of a bad photochop. This car’s oddly wide window garnishes don’t help either.
I’m all for wanting to provide decent headroom in a modestly sized package and a low beltline with big windows — I don’t like the modern gunslit/bunker fetish either — but there is ample evidence that those qualities don’t have to look this awkward. B+ for function, D for form.
I feel like I read somewhere that the modern gunslit/bunker look is borne of side impact regulations more than anything. I wonder if that’s true?
That’s often cited as the reason, but there are a few vehicles that avoid the look, such as the recently discontinued Nissan Cube. I hesitate to include the Scion xB and the Kia Soul, because in their latest generations, their greenhouses have started to shrink.
Perhaps side impact standards play some role, but I believe that styling is the primary reason.
I don’t think it has anything to do with side impact standards, which as far as I can see haven’t changed much in recent memory. It might have a bit to do with the European pedestrian safety rules, which tend to produce blunter noses, but I think it’s a styling thing and also dictated by the need to maintain adequate wheel travel with gigantic wheels. I was looking at parked cars with this in mind and noticed that the relationship between the top of the hood line and the top edge of the front wheelhouse hasn’t changed much, but the wheelhouses are significantly bigger to accommodate bigger wheels.
Looks a lot like the earlier Seville, but with nicer looking slightly rounder windows.
I had an ’89 Sedan DeVille in medium blue with medium grey lower two-tone, pretty car IMHO. Fantastic highway car, at least for those in the front seat. I rode in the back seat a couple of times coming back from various NASCAR races and hated it, as GM managed that wonderful legroom by making the seatback almost bolt upright, a lousy trick if you ask me. Made it nearly impossible for me to doze off. The back seat in my ’91 Grand Marquis may have had somewhat less legroom but it had a comfy backrest angle for snoozing 🙂 .
True. The first downsize in ’77 pretty much preserved all but shoulder room. But these were kind of a trick, the numbers were there on paper but not in actuality. Plus a much smaller trunk.
I own a 89 Deville and 93 Grand Marquis. This is correct, the Deville has lots more legroom but the Marquis is more reclined. I don’t think either one is better than the other, they’re just different.
Even though this car is nice, what always striked me about this model was the smallness of it. Not one of Cadillac`s best efforts, it is a prime example of what went wrong in the eighties.
This car is an excellent example of a quickly dying breed, a tasteful color and in excellent condition. Pity it drove like such a slug. I suspect many of the buyers of this car (when new) would had preferred the previous year’s model?
I would rather have the Buick pictured in this article. This generation of Caddys do nothing for me.
The Buick/Cadillac pictures in this article prove (to me) the old advertising slogan “When Better Cars Are Built Buick Will Build Them”.
True. There used to be quite a lot of these around, but they’re getting quite rare now.
This was a sad case where GM did everything right from the worldview of 1980-82. Unique V8 engine. Front wheel drive. Great gas mileage for its class. Clean sheet design. Sadly GM muffed half of the car, and the combination of the marketplace and the nearly broke competition who couldn’t afford to replace their cars did the rest.
Cadillac’s execution was off on the engines, the styling was not universally satisfying, and by the time these cars came out, fuel prices were plummeting and what had 4 years earlier been a horrible excuse for a Lincoln suddenly looked very good to a lot of people.
Nobody, and I mean nobody in the auto industry forsaw the combination of dropping fuel prices and an economy that finally burst out of its early-80s torpor. If Ford and Chrysler could have afforded to remake their cars, they would have copied these, and probably not done as good of a job. But as things turned out, sometimes standing still and doing nothing actually turns out to be the right move.
As much as I like the looks of some of the 1980s luxury cars, more than the 70s to me the 80s* was truly the era of diminished expectations.
Ford kinda-sorta did…the alternate-reality 1985 is one where the 2 biggest American cars are this FWD DeVille/Fleetwood and a Fox-body Continental as the flagship for the Blue Oval.
Exactly – this was why Fox body cars were renamed Continental, Marquis and LTD in 1983 – they were supposed to be the flagships. Not perfect flagships (far from it) but they were the best Ford could afford. The only difference between Ford and Chrysler was that Ford elected to keep the Panther around for a bit, probably mostly for law enforcement business. Ford got lucky and sales started to improve. Chrysler killed the R and J rear wheel drive cars probably a year or two too early.
I don’t dispute that this is a nice car, but I was one of those actually offended by these things when they first came out. They were -not- “Cadillacs”. They simply don’t project the image of success that Caddy ownership pretended to. The front of the car is fine, but the roofline and backend treatment always screamed “K car” to me. It’s as though a farmer grafted two cars together – did a clean job, but it just ain’t right. This thing was as much a Cadillac as Buick Apollos were Buicks.
Cadillac had already long since blotted their copybook by the time these came out. The brand had been cheapened and simply become another trim line rather than superior to a Buick or an Olds IMHO. There was no difference in performance, luxury, or quality….or parts. The Cimmaron was an admission that Cadillac as an image was simply that – an illusion. Pretty much anyone could get financing to buy one. Still, the battle for Caddy’s soul wasn’t over at that point. Yes, the Seville was small, and yes it was a Nova underneath, but it still had presence and was totally visually distinct. The Seville gave hope for the modernization of Cadillac to meet the time without losing the meaning of the brand.
Thus the 85 redesign was Caddy’s big chance to redeem themselves – to stand out again- and return as does the prodigal son. Instead, they put a grand facade on the front of the church but it was still strictly cheap prefab housing in the back. Sure, they sold a lot of them.The name still had residual cachet from the 60’s, and why no go for the name? Didn’t cost any more than a Buick so why not?
These cars, coming after the Citation debacle, pretty much convinced me that GM had lost the thread. The accountants and planners had won. The marketers still held enough sway to insist on the nose, but they couldn’t save the rest of the car.
It would be another generation until the CTS appeared and by that point it was resurrection work rather than rescue.
“…..totally visually distinct.”
You nailed it. This is a generic GM design with a side serving of half-baked Cadillac cues. Unfortunately GM did it a lot in those days.
I feel the exact same way as you about these cars. For all the carping on how they look silly and too small they were amazingly roomy inside, had visibility that was second to none, ubber comfortable seats and drove really well with a smooth silent ride. And they were terrific in the Winter months with 14″ tires instead of today’s insane 19 and 20″ rubber band crap that spell all over the road terror when the roads get snowy. And sales rose considerably compared to there land barge C-body predecessors from 1984. These cars were a huge breath of fresh air at the time and most people really seemed to like them, my parents included.
Another missed opportunity. The HT 4100 was revamped for FWD service and Cadillac actually improved the block and made it more rigid. But in traditional GM cheapness they kept the same anemic TBI system and intake and power was back down to 125 and torque 190 on 1985 models and 130/200 for 1986/87. The Allante was being introduced for 1987 and with that car came a much peppier 4100 with tuned intake runners and port injection. Hp was 170 and torque 225. This engine should have been what Cadillac was using in the Deville/Eldo/Seville/Fleetwood line also along with the superior sealing techniques of the 1988 design 4.5.
‘…….today’s insane 19 and 20″ rubber band crap that spell all over the road terror when the roads get snowy.’
I have a horrible premonition of a huge class-action lawsuit against car manufacturers for equipping their cars with super-low-profile tyres…..
Buick’s 3.8 V6 engine of this period may not have been a high revving, screaming monster; but it did have gobs of bottom end torque needed in “Real World” driving conditions. Coupled with the 4 speed automatic overdrive tranny, it was a smooth, pleasing and tractable powerplant (again, for the time period.)
Unlike the “Hand Tighten” 4.1 Caddy engine, it was reliable and stayed together.
and had more power and go better MPG
I always liked the yellow too. Can you even imagine anyone choosing this color today on an upscale car, even if it was offered?
I was never a fan of these, as I just thought they were too drastically downsized from their predecessors, and while clean looking, they just didn’t look as distinctive as a Cadillac should. The later revisions – longer overhangs and wheelbase (on sedans only, I think) – improved things, although they did make them look a bit older-fashioned.
I think my favorite element of the design were the doors, with the aircraft style frames and large, chrome trimmed windows. Beautifully done, perhaps a bit overscaled for the earlier, smaller versions, but they were just the right design – very clean and elegant.
I am sorry Tom. I love that generation deville but I have always thought that bird crap yellow color was disgusting.
“Evv-ahhhh buddiez diffnt”!
🙂
This is the very last Cadillac body style I liked. The 85 and 86 was a terrible start with many problems and they were not as comfortable as the 87. It seemed to all come together in 87.
I never warmed up to the restyling in 89 and never owned another one of their sales brochures after 1988. Cadillac has not existed for me since this car.
I have technological and left-brain admiration for these (which were everywhere from when I was little to about 2000), while my right-brain says “meh”.
It really was impressive how roomy GM managed to engineer a much smaller car, and incorporate FWD….though certainly there were some compromises in shoulder room and trunk space from the ’77-’84 models. I also agree the Buick came off best of them all.
However, even from an early age it was these cars I thought of as the “little old man” Cadillacs. Sure, plenty of big Fleetwood Broughams were driven by old geezers as well, but in the right colors they still carried some cachet and certainly they had some presence, even if it was a Texas oil kind of presence, because they were the biggest cars out there.
These always just said early bird special to me, Cadillacs driven because they had Cadillac badges on them, not because they had any other Cadillac characteristics. It’s easy to attack the RWD cars as stretched Caprices but there were some solid features, sturdier construction and bracing, more wheelbase, nicer upholstery. Some effort. These? Their elderly drivers would find them easier to park than the bigger predecessors, but they didn’t move style forward and weren’t that much better on gas. They adapted to Taurus size without abandoning the trimmings of their predecessors. You might like vinyl roofs and I wouldn’t always disagree with you, but while it works on the big RWD cars it looks damned foolish on these little ones.
To me, these are the cars that lost the up and coming yuppie generation on Cadillac. They should have tried a little harder to bridge the generation gap with these revised models. They still had the Brougham around for the traditional-minded buyer, and he likely would have been very satisfied with that, especially if GM had simply put a better fuel injected engine in, and brought back disc braking.
A final thought, the boulevard ride of the big cars never quite successfully translated to these (another argument for abandoning the effort and trying to bridge the gap better with the Eurasian competition). The ride was so floaty as to be nausea-inducing, a problem I’ve never had in the bigger cars, and the suspension really seemed to snap around over bumps in a way the big cars never did. It was a car that wasn’t meant to ride as softly as they attempted to make it, in my view.
Love the coupe. Nice that they still made them back then.
My favorite color on a Cadillac, but I associate it more with a ’79, say.
These cars weren’t bad, the problem was the name more than anything. These cars should have been Sevilles, while the Fleetwood Brougham should have simply carried on as the Sedan De Ville. Instead of being a replacement for the traditional full-size RWD Caddy, they should have been marketed as a modern, trim alternative alongside it, especially since since both remained in production anyway. A double whammy, rather than a letdown for the FWD cars and an afterthought for keeping the Fleetwood Brougham.
I think they could have gone a long way by continuing to sell the RWD car with a decent engine, even with the 307, and sold the DeVille Touring Sedan version of this as the new Seville (in other words, producing something like the STS about 8 years earlier).
I’m not saying all the 35-45 year old professional people buying Benzes in 1985 would have been snapping up DeVille Touring Sedans but if the primary marketing and quality effort went there rather than to making miniature-Broughams, I’m 100% confident more of them would have, and yet the traditionalists would still have had the “real”, full-size Cadillac too. GM could have afforded to do that.
This car truly has a special place for me in my heart – my grandmother had a 1987 FWD Fleetwood d’Elegance that she bought when it was 2 years old with 14,000 miles on it. Hers was a toned down version of that yellow color, similar to the e-bay car – more of a tannish yellow color – not quite as bright but still looked somewhat “yellow”. Her interior was the same color as the e-bay car too, and it was extremely rare in velour with the Fleetwood d’Elegance package. She LOVED that car so much, it was incredible. She would always brag that she had a Caddy, and loved that it wasn’t a huge land yacht like her ’79 Sedan deVille was but still was roomy and luxurious.
Her car originally came from California. The story behind it was that the original owner, an elderly gentleman, had special ordered it in California, and then drove to Rhode Island to visit family and suddenly passed away when he was here. The family drove the car for about a year and then sold it to the local Caddy dealer. One day I was out doing errands and saw it for sale on their front line. The dealership let me take it home to show her and once she drove it she fell in love with it! It was ordered strangely too, as it had no rear defroster and the vinyl top was deleted, but was totally loaded with practically everything else available for that model. I drove that car many times, and put a majority of the miles on it as she would always have me drive if we went anywhere far. In comparison to my father’s 1990 Coupe deVille it was very underpowered, and the rear suspension was not as controlled as his car was. It felt a little more wallowy and floaty in comparison. Still, it was a nice road car and was very trouble free, only giving her some little problems in the final years that she drove it.
When she could no longer drive, she decided it was time to sell it. My Uncle decided to sell it to the neighbors next door to her. To say they beat on that car was an understatement. To see a car that was garaged and babied be slowly destroyed is truly a heartbreaker, especially when it was owned by someone you were close to.
Ironically I just checked the 1987 Cadillac paint brochure and there is a color called “Yellow beige”. Thats the color for sure!
The sales numbers stated to persuade that these cars weren’t flops are deceptive. The ’85 had a long production run, while the ’84’s was abbreviated. Most of ’84, both generations of De Villes were in Cadillac showrooms, and then the ’85 stayed in production for its own model year. When I returned from Europe in June of 1984, the rental car we were issued at the airport was a white ’85 Sedan de Ville. That should have been no surprise, since production of the ’85 started in December of 1983 and was fully ramped up by April of 1984! No wonder ’84 de Villes weren’t big sellers.
To get a better idea of the relative success of these awkwardly proportioned cars, the de Villes they replaced sold 234,171 cars in their introductory year. In their last full model year, 1983, they sold 174,674 cars. The ‘success’ of the ’85 Cadillacs was achieved by rolling Fleetwood sales numbers into the de Ville total and selling the ’85s for almost two model years.
I saw tons of these on the road back in the day, so I personally don’t think they were a bad seller or a flop. Maybe they could have done better initially but they certainly weren’t a total dog. Once the public accepted the fact that cars would be somewhat smaller moving forward, sales got better. We have to think back to 1984-85 when the American public viewed luxury cars as mostly “big” and rear wheel drive. A small Cadillac? Front wheel drive? For such a drastic change I’m surprised they sold as well as they did!
When they were stretched in 1989, GM actually took an older design and resurrected it. Those 89-93 models sold extremely well and put Cadillac back on the map. My Dad was a proud owner of a 1990 Coupe deVille and raved about that car all the time.
And what is more important is that Cadillac sales overall were in a bad downward drift. One has to look at total division sales, as these new FWD cars clearly ate into Cimarron, Seville, and Eldorado sales.
Total division sales never recouped their recent 1979 peak when Cadillac sold 382k units. By 1986, in a strong economy, it was only 284k units. And then it continued to slide downwards from there.
It’s quite clear that these new FWD Cadillacs failed to maintain Cadillac’s position in the market.
So true, Paul. One of my Dad’s closest friends was a Cadillac salesman for over 30 years. I remember him being scared that the new smaller Caddys were going to kill his job! Plus we forget that at the same time that these smaller deVilles came out the Eldorado and Seville were also downsized. He lost many customers because of the smaller Caddys. True, the larger Brougham was still available, but the overall perception of Cadillac was marred. He somehow muddled through the mid-eighties downsizing, but when the larger 1989 deVilles came out he said it resurrected the brand and some of his older customers somewhat.
Cadillac had downsized before, in 1936 a new Series 60 was built on 121″ wb with a new mono-block 322 cid V8, compared to the 1935 Series 10 on 128″ wb with a 353 cid V8, so there was precedence. The 1977 models did so very successfully by reducing all metrics by reasonable percentages, yet holding the basic elements acceptable to a luxury car.
But the 1985 took too great a reduction all at once. True, they sold well but become a detriment to Cadillac’s prestige image. The concept of a small Cadillac wasn’t anathema but a tiny one with caricature-ish application of traditional Cadillac styling hallmarks was simply a move to far too fast. A very acceptable Deville could have been developed off the ’80-’85 Seville platform.
I’m with Tom in an appreciation of lighter yellow GM cars. The color had quite a run at GM, roughly 1976 through about 1986 or so.
It wasn’t my first choice, but my second car in high school was a ’76 Cutlass Supreme Brougham in this color (maybe a shade darker and more yellow). I would have picked most colors over yellow, but I couldn’t resist the car I found: I answered a classified run by a gas company executive, and his pristine, loaded Buckskin vinyl (tannish) over Yellow car became mine. I liked the car so much, the color sort of grew on me.
The Buckskin color top was very common on the earlier pale yellow cars, a lot of early ’80s Buick Regals also seemed to have this color scheme.
I actually sort of liked the ’85 DeVille on paper. It reminded me a lot of big Volvos of the time – maybe why Tom likes it! A college professor that remarked that Cadillacs were now the size of the table he was sitting on didn’t exactly make the car more exciting to me. The car is quite space efficient, and avoided the awkward styling of the contemporary Seville.
I don’t believe the ’85 had the insert designed to shrink the rear window – I think it was originally part of the ’85 Fleetwood trim, and I was not a fan of it, and the gasket around it is prone to some ugly deterioration.
As others have noted, weak drive trains and the Lincoln Town Car put the smack down on this car. JPC’s comment about this car making a good third gen Seville is spot on, and remaining committed to proper stewardship of the big RWD cars would have kept Cadillac much more competitive in the late ’80s.
I keep on meaning to get a picture of an 85 or 86 down the street from me that is in great condition. Original blue California plate starts off 1P the same as my long gone 1986 626.
I should have recognized the radio speaker as GM. I now see that design in memories of my ’80s Pontiac.
I can appreciate the fact that its a well-kept, 30 year old survivor, but having grown up around those cars, what I mainly remember is that they all seemed to be rod-knocking, front-end heavy torque steerers.
If it has to be from 1986, I’ll take a Town Car or a Fifth Avenue.
Yes, or perhaps the Fleetwood Brougham, which went over to the 307 that year.
I always appreciated the 1985 downsized DeVilles and Fleetwoods. I believe that they were the first cars to ever have a third brake light !!!
Does anyone remember the awful factory vinyl roof that was offered on the 1985 (or maybe the 86) Fleetwood Sedans? The vinyl only covered 1/2 the roof, and it was added to the rear doors, totally surrounding the windows to make them look like opera windows. It was hideous !!!!
Speaking of vinyl roofs, the 1985 Coupe de Ville was offered with two different styles of factory vinyl landau roofs. One style was lightly padded and had larger opera windows, while the other style was heavily padded and had smaller opera windows.
GMDude, my grandmother’s ’87 Fleetwood d’Elegance had that roof deleted by the original owner when he ordered it. Although it made her car look more like a regular deVille, it was nice to have the clean steel roof and still have the Fleetwood d’Elegance interior. I remember going to the local Caddy dealer to have routine maintenance done, and one of the older salesman that was there forever kept looking at her car. He said he had never seen another Fleetwood in that color combination or with the vinyl roof deleted. It was originally a California car so it didn’t have a rear defroster either.
I’m happy to see I had guessed it right in the clue section!
I like those Devilles but struggle with that light yellow paint. Surprisingly, 67 and 68 Firebirds in about that shade (Mayfair Maize, per Pontiac) have just appeared in town. The 67 is an original 400–and for sale–which makes almost any color look good.
Oddly enough, my grandmother had a friend with a 1987 Oldsmobile 98 Regency. His car was charcoal gray and was very rich looking in that gray color. Whenever I saw another 98 in the color of my grandmother’s car I thought it looked horrible, and for some reason I didn’t like her car in the charcoal gray. He often commented on the same thing, saying his car looked better in gray and hers in the yellow beige.
http://lasvegas.craigslist.org/cto/5207907592.html
I have one for you! 1987 Cadillac Fleetwoood de Elegance.
It’s FOR SALE!
http://lasvegas.craigslist.org/cto/5207907592.html
Has anyone got a photo of an ’85-6 de Ville 4-door with the original cast wheel ? I can’t locate the image I have in mind, a dark-colored sedan which is “all wheels and glass” . . .
Steve
I have had several Cadillacs over the years and one of the best was an ’88 Sedan DeVille, silver with a deep red cloth interior of the same design in this yellow ’87. I had that car for years with absolutely NO issues except for routine maintenance. I wish I had kept it.
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I have one 88′ in Poland and i love it! It’s only 76K miles and caddy drives great!
On spot.
We bought a used 87 fleetwood in 1993. It was a good car. Smooth, good power for the time and would get up to 26mpg. We drove it for years. The head gaskets did go out and I ended up installing a used 4.5 engine in my driveway. Dark blue with wire wheel hupcaps.
Lol! White Castlemobile. That’s what I call those little Cars2Go because of the paint job and size.
Had Checker decided to modernize the immortal Marathon in the 80’s and move it upmarket, this could have very well been the best car for the job. It was a better luxury Checker than a Cadillac.
Cadillac, Cadillac, Cadillac style? No way. The only part of it I thought was styled well was the front clip. The rest of the car suffered from a serious case of malproportionitis. To add insult to injury, the trans grenaded in our 85 after just 25,000 miles and the serpentine penny pincher belt and the alternator pulley just didn’t get along. Missed opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the Gen 1 Seville and make a more modern, high quality car.
This Cadillac doesn’t say, “we’ve succeeded” – instead it it says, “we’ve seceded”. This car is a major retreat from its own history. This car is ashamed of itself. It couldn’t even muster up a slight forward cant in any of its external lines. It looks like it is dead in the water, floating among the other cheaper GM versions of itself.
You sit in this car. It was designed to sit in. It didn’t have to even have wheels. RVs have about as much get up and go as this Cadillac.
This design was fine and many other cars have similar style, yet other cars in this style have heft while this generation of Cadillac does not. The result is a car that looks about as luxurious as a Nissan Sentra. Lightweight.
Yes, Cadillac zigged instead of zagged and missed the optimistic future and hopeful present the latter 1980s brought. If all the experts from a decade earlier were correct, then this car would have fitted their dark dreadful prognostications of disaster. Cadillac needed to provide a symbol of American panache, instead GM covered Cadillac like they were ashamed of it.
Perhaps that is why Cadillac lost favor – it lost its nerve. During this decade, Cadillac tried to retreat into Cavaliers and Caprices, instead of showing Chevrolet what dreams were made of. It wasn’t as bold as a Lincoln, as smooth as a Lexus, as satisfying as a BMW, or as robust as a Mercedes. Instead Cadillac cowered and hoped something would happen to let it be itself again.
No one wants a car with that image, do they?
I wonder what would have happened to Cadillac sales if they had never offered the cheesy, fake wire wheelcovers and half vinyl roofs. There would probably have been enough aftermarket ones to keep scaring away snooty import buyers.
My long time mechanic and a darn good one that used to work for an Oldsmobile/Cadillac dealer warned us to stay away from these engines for our used car lot. For his customers that had one of these engines he would do coolant changes and the GM stop leak pellets and check the intake manifold bolts torque and this kept many going for well over 100K. But it was certainly not a guarantee and these were often referred to as a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. He also said that they mostly corrected the issues by around 1987 and after and if we found one with a GM Goodwrench motor it had all the updates.
The guys at the auctions used to pull the dipsticks looking for anti-freeze mixed into the oil and drive these cars around to see if they had any power as a perfectly good running engine could have little to no performance because the cam was wiped out from the anti-freeze and the smuck dealer changed the oil to make it seem okay. Many of these went for a song through the auction lines because of this.
1986 Cadillac Deville Touring sedan edition with 58k original miles.
Downsized 77 Cadillac was somewhat acceptable. But The STANDARD OF THE WORLD was on a slippery slope with disastrous engines after 1980. At least there were still full size RWD DeVille and OTT luxurious Fleetwoods .To me Downsized FWD Cadillacs was another step down, ESPECIALLY switching Fleetwood name to these models. Last REAL Cadillacs ended in 96. Had beautiful 89 Brougham deElegance 🏆. Should have kept it, but traded for 93 Brougham which had problems. Sad to see what now wears Cadillac name. Lincoln Town Car ad shown was right on target! 😎