For quite some time the popular consensus has been Cadillac spent the 1980s squandering their brand equity in the grandest of fashions. With such product offerings as the not yet ready for primetime V8-6-4, the finicky HT4100, and the badge-engineered Cimarron, their formerly sterling reputation certainly acquired a goodly degree of self-induced tarnish.
With the highly visible use of long dead styling details, this Fleetwood certainly did nothing to eradicate this quick growing cancer of brand diminishment. Or did it?
One could just as easily make the argument Cadillac hit a major league home run with this series of Fleetwood by tapping into traditional Cadillac strengths such as continuity of styling and unabashed comfort.
It is accurate to state I am rather torn about this Fleetwood. To determine whether this Fleetwood should be classified as a General Motors Deadly Sin or Greatest Hit let’s gather these various thoughts and discuss them in a somewhat organized fashion.
This Cadillac is as good a representation as any for the concept of cars being a microcosm of the world at large. As with life itself, this Cadillac has so many various elements to challenge any predetermined mindset.
It’s a Greatest Hit; How Could It Be Anything Else?
Like people, car models can have a bad day or two. Sure the 1980s saw such things as the downsized 1985 DeVille and the HT4100. Realizing the error of their ways, in the four model years following the downsized DeVille, Cadillac had been diligently working to overcome their styling and mechanical hiccups, knowing it owed their customer base something better.
One of the seven habits of highly effective people is the ability to learn from mistakes. Given the changes seen at Cadillac showrooms it was obvious Cadillac had learned a hard lesson. People were also responding to Cadillac owning their mistakes as sales were rebounding.
When this Fleetwood was introduced for model year 1989, demand quickly outweighed supply. How often did that happen at GM during the 1980s? That alone should be an overwhelming indicator of how Cadillac had tapped into a solid stream of market desire. Such strong desire for any particular model is a rare occurrence and it should be the envy of any automaker.
One of the more obviously contentious pieces about this Fleetwood is going to be the exterior styling. Okay, that’s fine, fender skirts and quasi-tail fins weren’t the hottest styling trends of the time. Upon that we could all likely agree.
But think about it. Cadillac had enough balls to offer something that was highly and memorably divergent from the sterile and homogeneous exteriors being offered by rival luxury manufacturers, primarily those certain two from Germany. Those at Cadillac knew they were selling cars to the public, not the fickle and prissy automotive reporters at Car & Driver, Motor Trend, and their ilk. Cadillac was richly embracing their heritage and keeping things traditional.
It seems some, such as said automotive reporters, often derisively scoff at keeping anything traditional in the automotive world, as if doing so is indicative of something undesirable and contagious. This scoffing also seems to contain condescending insinuations how anybody wishing to maintain some degree of tradition is a luddite, backwards, fearful of change, whatever.
However, as we’ve established, Cadillac had the last laugh. Customers responded to the daringly unique styling of the Fleetwood. What’s even better, Cadillac maintained some of the styling elements of the Fleetwood on the next generation DeVille that debuted in 1993.
Remember these? While we have yet to cover one at CC, the fender skirted look remained. While it was more in the idiom of the 1960s Cadillac by being incorporated into the fender in lieu of the visible seam, they remained nonetheless. Thank you, Fleetwood. Your predictiveness is inspiring.
That alone is proof the market had responded in an affirmative manner. Had it not done so this styling element would have been unceremoniously jettisoned.
No doubt Cadillac was enduring a few less than stellar years during the 1980s, but who hasn’t? Hasn’t Honda had that automatic transmission thing? Didn’t Toyota have that rusting frame fiasco in their pickups? All makes, regardless of price, have their issues. Think about it; they all have service departments full of mechanics. Piling onto somebody having a tough time, such as Cadillac during the 1980s, is such an easy and fun thing to do.
This Fleetwood was a GM Greatest Hit.
It’s Nothing But A Deadly Sin
So what if labeling any car as a GM Deadly Sin is walking a virtual mine field, in which any article containing those two magic words will raise the ire of many? This Fleetwood is a Deadly Sin if ever there was. It was like a ball-and-chain affixed to the ankle of General Motors, providing nothing but a dead weight to curtail whatever forward momentum Cadillac may have been generating by 1989.
Let’s not forget the established definition of a Deadly Sin: It is any car that didn’t specifically counter GM’s downward spiral. This Fleetwood is a poster child for that definition.
This poor Fleetwood has so many styling traits screaming for mercy, where does one start? This entire series of Fleetwood is ripe for derision, the most obvious of which is those insipid fender skirts. Cadillac had jettisoned that styling trait in, what, 1976? That was thirteen years before this Fleetwood was born. In a sense this Fleetwood is what it would have been like had music group Wild Cherry waited to release Play That Funky Music until 1989. It wouldn’t quite have fit, would it? Not quite fitting is the embodiment of this Fleetwood.
If Cadillac was out to alter their self-induced trajectory, this retro-grade mobile wasn’t the mechanism for doing so. A person would have better luck driving bridge piling with a claw hammer. What exactly did the Fleetwood contribute in providing General Motors, or even Cadillac, with wider market penetration or in improvement of their financial position? Selling 30,000 cars in 1989, with volumes dropping precipitously each of the next three years, is not a contribution to either of those metrics in any way, shape, or form.
Cadillac wasn’t wrong to call it “America’s most distinctive full-size luxury car.” That isn’t a compliment.
Taking the entire 1989 Cadillac line into consideration, this Fleetwood is simply an awkward player in a line that otherwise makes some degree of sense. Even the antiquated rear-drive Cadillac Brougham, a throwback to 1977, presented itself in a less contrived fashion than does this Fleetwood. With the various and painfully applied visual doodads, this Fleetwood looks like the girl playing dress-up with her mother’s clothing and makeup. It isn’t convincing.
What is also not convincing is how the various nuggets of foofaraw on the Fleetwood could add nearly $5,300 over the $24,960 base price of the Sedan DeVille upon which it was based. Let’s also not forget the Fleetwood Sixty Special whose base price was nearly $4,000 above the Fleetwood’s $30,300 base price.
Let’s think of this another way….the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that $30,300 base price of the Fleetwood equates to $64,200 in August 2019. That’s on parity with a current CT6; that’s a lot of money for an otherwise dolled up car of lesser value.
Is that any type of enviable business model?
Well, at GM it is. We ought not forget about the Escalade. It’s simply a different execution of the same thought process.
The Fleetwood is yet another member of GM’s Deadly Sin parade.
The Conclusion?
Tackiness will always have an audience. Cadillac simply decided to tap into this market with the Fleetwood. Was it successful? That is debatable; while there was no direct follow-up with the next generation of DeVille, some of the (worst) visual elements remained.
At the beginning I said I was torn about this Fleetwood. I’m still torn but I will say this….
This Fleetwood is like a train wreck. It’s a disgusting mess but I can’t help but view it with a cocktail of incredulity and admiration. Perhaps it helps if one isn’t so cursed as being able to see both sides of most situations.
Found August 2019 in Jefferson City, Missouri
Try as I might, I just can not see this as a serious luxury contender for 1989. Its appearance is distinctive, sure, but that’s because it was so far out of the mainstream of automotive appearance for its era. I mean, this or a first-gen Lexus LS400? No comparison, right? And the Lexus’ styling was derivative at best, but this? Lexus had absolutely no heritage of any sort, let alone as a luxury car. And Cadillac had been at it since, what, 1902? Customers had a right to expect better.
The problem goes back to the fact that General Motors’ styling as a whole had been wandering in the doldrums for the best part of a decade or so. While this Cadillac is distinctive in that it looks less like a Buick or an Olds than past models, it still looks awkward. That frontal overhang is waaaaaayyyy tooooo looooong, almost as long as the rear. This gives the design as a whole a rather unbalanced and clumsy look, and makes one wonder at the amount of front legroom. Although the roofline would be great for headroom in the rear seat, and no longer shows the extreme cubist fetish of earlier GM designs, it still looks weird in comparison to other 1989 designs. Especially when seen through the eyes of a non-American who has never seen these cars on the roads.
You can afford to be out of the mainstream when you’re a sales leader trying to start a new trend, but not when you’re an also-ran fallen on hard times and trying to re-establish squandered prestige.
Agreed 100% – you hit all the points I thought of when looking at this Cadillac. Oh, except you didn’t mention the interior, which is another thing that mystifies us furriners about these. That style looked gaudy and passé by the late ’70s, but here it is still applied in the early’ 90s. Matched the rest of the car, I suppose… Another one to put in the Deadly Sins category.
As an aside, I can’t believe the successor 1993-96 model hasn’t had a proper CC as of yet. There must be one or two left out in the wild on the North American continent.
+1 on the interior, I didn’t get that close. 🙂
I agree with you on some of the things. However the LS was not even a factor when the 1989 Deville arrived. The LS arrived months later in Sept 1989 as a 1990 model. When the 89 Deville arrived, GM was trying to sway folks to ditch their Lincolns and to convince folks that this was better then the Benz S- Class.
Besides, the folks buying the Caddy were not the same folks buying the LS. In 1989-1990, the folks buying the Deville, were people that fought the Japanese in WWII.
And that was Caddy’s problem. Having one model in the line to appeal to the older, traditional buyer is absolutely fine, but almost everything Caddy was doing apart from the STS and Allante was playing to the base; and the ’89 STS was really just what the ’86 (or even ’80) base Seville should’ve been, still saddled with styling too formal for its’ mission, while the Allante being a two-seater was niche by definition.
The operative word in eckell3’s reply is “trying”.
I worked in the local Lincoln-Mercury’s “New Car Get Ready” department for several years in the summers between college semesters.
Out in “The Real World” decades loyal Cadillac customers were dumping their Caddys for Lincoln Town Cars in record numbers. Most disgruntled, former Cadillac owners never returned to the GM “family”.
Employees were offered their choice of Cadillac trade ins at cost. They were clogging up the used car lot of this Lincoln dealership.
The “downsized” Caddys only accelerated the dumping.
A bigger immediate problem for Cadillac than the debut of the first Lexus LS was the arrival of the restyled Lincoln Town Car for 1990. That was a very handsome and effective redesign of an already popular model.
Reading your viewpoint, along with those of others who haven’t seen umpteen examples of any given car, is always refreshing. It does prompt a person to look at things differently.
Case in point – the front overhang. Seeing these for 30 years I’ve never noticed that but, yeah, it’s there. GM styling did seem to be spastic during this time. While I’ve never viewed the DeVille upon which these are based (see below) as a losing effort, it has always seemed to be a placeholder as much as anything. Perhaps because it was an amended text design.
I drove a similar vintage DeVille long ago. The front legroom was astoundingly ample although the example I drove ran awful (likely some kind of sensor or some such that had crapped out after 150k miles).
It’s basis:
It was probably camshaft position sensor which would have cause the car to run like crap and buck at times. The CPS was in the distributor and tended to roast due to the heat
It was easy to replace and you did not need the dist to be removed but it needed a lot of patience as it was a held in with screws that were at an angle that you needed to have a bent wrench to get at the thing.
I can attest that those camshaft position sensors tended to fail easily, but were swappable by even the most inept mechanic (i.e., me). I think I replaced the one in my old ’91 DeVille four times and could eventually do it in 30 minutes.
Excellent article Jason, and you make compelling arguments for this Fleetwood being either a Greatest Hit or Deadly Sin. I’m honestly torn, and I guess I’d say it’s neither.
Given its history throughout the 1980s, I don’t think a either a radical restyle in either the unique and distinctive form or the derivative of other luxury brands form would have done the Fleetwood any better. The Fleetwood was always one of Cadillac’s most traditional cars with the most traditional buyers. A unique and distinctive restyle was better suited for the Seville, and indeed when this happened in 1992, it was very successful.
Perhaps a third GM tier needs to be created – the “Swing & A Miss”. It seems like Cadillac swung little heart out on this but all one could hear was the ball landing in the catcher’s mitt.
Another thought on this also….yes, they indeed tapped into a market but it also appears they ran it dry given the way sales on these dropped so quickly. Those who wanted one got one and that was that.
When new it seemed as if these were trying to compete with the Brougham (or whatever they were calling the rear-driver in 1989). The DeVille was aimed elsewhere; the DeVille derived Fleetwood was like golfing with a hockey stick.
I like the idea of a Swing & A Miss category 🙂
With cars like this generation Fleetwood, American automakers tried to gain one last hurrah with their ultra-traditional, often Brougham-like front-wheel drive full size cars. Chrysler also did this with the 1990-1993 Imperial and Chrysler Fifth Avenue.
Indeed there was very little bit of buying market left for cars like this, but it was clearly drying up and all but gone by the mid-1990s.
I’m kind of thinking the same. When this car came out, Cadillac was losing sales to Lincoln, and remember by the late 80’s the Lincoln Town Car was getting pretty dated with styling that hadn’t really changed much in about a decade. So a car with lots of traditional details and a few modern styling touches made a lot of sense to try to get some of those buyers back.
However, it was a miss. It wasn’t the lack of traditional cars that was driving people away from Cadillac. Perhaps the formula could have worked anyway, but right after this car came out, Toyota introduced its Lexus lineup, and Lincoln redesigned the Town Car (finally) and many buyers found those options a lot more attractive than this Fleetwood.
As others said, if Cadillac came out with the STS a few years sooner it could have been the game changer Cadillac was looking for.
Excellent article Jason – this is the stuff that makes CC so great. You make a good argument for both sides, but for me this car definitely falls more into the deadly sin category than the greatest hits. The 1985 C-Body Cadillacs were a flop, and this 1989 restyle was just a half-assed effort at regaining sales. Cadillac was going for the low hanging fruit IMO.
The 1985 Cadillac C-body was an improvement in many ways over the RWD D-body it was to replace, but it wasn’t a great car. It was saddled with out of date styling. It didn’t really appeal to younger luxury car buyers being too “traditional” while it was too small for the traditional luxury car buyer to be a luxury car. It was also saddled with the horrible HT4100, which was neither overly powerful or efficient, and certainly not the most reliable. And while the chassis moved forward from the old BOF live axle design, it was still stuck with circa 1975 chassis dynamics.
So for 1989, what does Cadillac do? Take there poorly executed car and make it bigger, and slap on a bunch of Brougham cues. Seems like a page out of Lido’s book. Sure, those changes were enough to bring back the traditionalists, but did it do the brand any favours in the long term? It did give the brand a quick sales boost, but the only persons I remember being interested in these cars when they were new were well-off elderly people. Not exactly a business model for long term success.
For 1989 they should have bit the bullet and started from scratch with a new car. GM still had the money to do that at that time (even with all that they squandered on GM-10). Cadillac probably couldn’t have followed the Germans to a “T” like they do today (that hasn’t worked out for them either) but this car was the wrong choice. Cadillac needed to move more in the direction of the 1992 Seville in 1989. Lots of “traditional” luxury American car buyers bought post 1992 Sevilles, but not many progressive luxury car buyers were buying 1989 Fleetwoods (or Devilles).
As mentioned in a comment above, the Lexus LS was the way to go forward in 1989, the Fleetwood was stepping back in time. Even the 1990 Town Car was a better effort and execution at traditional luxury than this Cadillac. So while there is a compelling argument that this car was good for Cadillac, in the big picture I see it as a another of GM’s many cuts.
Terrific point about taking a page from Iacocca.
This Fleetwood simply infuriates me while thoroughly infatuating me. It fully embraces the traditional Cadillac style of semi-vulgar and over the top in appearance. Yes, I find that quite compelling and can see myself cruising around town in this rig. However, what was Cadillac thinking? One’s customers in 1975 aren’t necessarily your customers fifteen years later. They gave it their all in appealing to them but does playing to an empty audience generate any momentum?
Perhaps imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I see no point in flattering competitors the way Cadillac has been imitating the Germans. How hard is it to be original? Cadillac does have some history in being original; seems like perhaps those steering the ship are followers rather than leaders.
I believe my comment was caught by the anti-spam software… If found, pls retrieve. Thank you!
It appears to have been swallowed by cyberspace. Looking in both the spam and deleted comment folders didn’t reveal it, although if one is curious about pseudo-languages, tick bites, or mail order brides you are golden.
I found it buried in the spam folder — restored above.
I am surprised that there has not been a review of the 94-99 Deville.
I guess I will review mine. I have a 1995 with the 4.9l. The only issues i have had with it was that the stupid skirts made using the alignment machine a pain in the butt.
I have always felt that the 97-99 Devile should have been a different generation instead of being lumped in with the 94-96 as they looked different enough in the exterior.
Don’t worry, it’s at the top of my list!
Loved them ever since I watched Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn crash one in the Out-of-Towners remake.
We did have this Outtake last year:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-outtake/cc-outtake-1998-cadillac-deville-delegance-a-genuine-cowboy-cadillac/
Great article – but the choice seems easy to me – definitely Deadly Sin.
As has been mentioned, the front and rear overhangs on the short wheelbase. The overly tall greenhouse. All the tacky accouterments. Yuch.
The Lincoln Town Car, in its final model year before a full-body refresh, was a much more compelling American Luxury choice.
But most buyers would have to have known the LS 400 was coming in a few months – I’m sure those that pulled the trigger on this Caddy regretted that decision when they parked next to the Lexus down at the Country Club…
LoL as if the abomination that Lincoln passed off as a Continental with a Taurus hiding underneath with the horrible 3.8 under powered V6 was anything that even remotely competed. the Town Car was aimed at the Fleetwood RWD Brougham. The overhang front and rear on the Taurus body looked just as silly ditto the K-bodied stretched New Yorker.
What I find most amazing about these is that they continued to exist. Cadillac (all of GM really) was working on wrong assumptions about future fuel prices when it designed the 1985 version. Once those assumptions were proved wrong, Cadillac kept trying to make lemonade out of this platform, and kept trying for years.
Go back to, say, 1950 – would Cadillac have allowed a disaster like this to go unchecked for so many years? Absolutely not. That this car changed so little by 1989 is a testament to GM’s diminishing stature (and Cadillac’s diminishing stature within the company).
By the 1980s Cadillac was reacting to earlier compromises by continuing to compromise. The basic hardware was not bad but there was nothing about the packaging that really said “Cadillac” the way it had once been said.
Remember that during this era, GM was still reeling from the massive – but botched – reorganization effort launched by Roger Smith in 1984, while also spending buckets of cash to bring Saturn to market.
Given the chaos that was GM during this period, it’s amazing that this facelift made it from the drawing board to the showroom.
> Go back to, say, 1950 – would Cadillac have allowed a disaster like this to go unchecked for so many years?
They wouldn’t, and funny you mention 1950 as the ’89-’93 DeVille/Fleetwood have long reminded me of the 1948-50 Packards, which like the ’89 Caddy got an expensive major facelift of an old (1941) design that still wasn’t enough to keep it from looking old, and instead wound up looking awkward. Like the ’89 Caddy, they really should have spent a bit more to fully redesign the car to keep it competitive.
My guess is they were caught in a financial Catch-22. The 1985 downsizing, which must have made great sense in 1980 resulted in a car far too small for Cadillac buyers in a resurgent economy coupled with the collapse of fuel prices. So they sold less cars than they planned, which meant justifying a full replacement became financially harder, and so on. The bean counters always rule at the General, and they’ve had precious few leaders who had the vision to see the bigger situation, and the strength to override the finance folks.
This is my favorite 1980s Cadillac. Admittedly, that’s not a very high bar. Now I wouldn’t say that Cadillac hit a major league home run with this car, but it wasn’t a strike-out by any means… maybe a ground-rules double?
This car avoided the pitfalls of many other 1980s Cadillacs… the 2nd generation Seville and later on the ancient RWD Brougham became grotesque caricatures of Cadillac’s past, while the bland ’85 DeVille/Fleetwood, the 3rd generation Seville and the pathetic Cimarron were hauntingly corporate and undistinguished. This car was neither.
Viewed in the context of the non-fenderskirted DeVille (which outsold the Fleetwood probably 10-to-1), I’d say this car was a success, within the framework of the dwindling market for traditional luxury cars. It was distinctive, reasonably well built, comfortable, etc. And I loved how it completely thumbed its nose at any kind of newfangled foreign-car-style luxury. Ha!
Of course, this car probably attracted Zero new customers to the Cadillac brand. But really, that wasn’t this car’s reason for existing anyway… it was to provide a safe haven for Last-Time Buyers. And it succeeded. OK, so success in attracting geriatric buyers isn’t too complicated, but GM had fumbled that ball before, so success is better than failure, so let’s celebrate that. And regardless of what others say, I like it, and the fender skirts that come with it.
Agree with you entirely. They appeal to me because they embraced the modern, but held on to tradition.
Jason, to qualify as a true deadly sin, you have to look further than just the surface. Most of your argument (on that side) revolves around dated style; The mechanicals of the car were never discussed here. They should be if you want to truly take this car to task.
Here’s the thing about the styling: It wasn’t directed at you. It was directed at the elderly, who were thrilled to see design language harken back to what they thought of as a “real” Cadillac, particularly after the 80s Caddies had shrunk so dramatically.
Maybe nobody wanted more music from Wild Cherry in 1989, but Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. still ruled the roost with a particular demographic who was quite happy with more of the same.
In “The Blues Brothers” movie the band went on stage at Bobs Country Bunker to play their set. A few bars into the music, among the boo’s, the house shut off the stagelights. This was not a blues audience. Quickly regrouping they started playing the theme from “Rawhide”. The audience cheered and the stagelights came back on. They then went into their rendition of “Stand By Your Man. The crowd loved it. They were able to salvage the show by playing to what they knew the audience wanted. Cadillac did the same thing with this car.
“Chicken wire?”
GM played to the past. Those rear fender skirt seams are horrible to look at. Looking at the rear I was reminded more of my grandmother’s ’69 Olds 98 (which was a great car with presence) than a Caddy. My other grandmother had a Cimarron which according to my dad really was a rolling turd.
“Those lights are off on purpose man”
Mechanical and dynamic shortcomings aside, these Cadillacs had a grossly bloated look… they always suggested to me a car with a case of the mumps.
Maybe they weren’t a mortal sin, but in sum they were more than just a venial sin. An actual sin, perhaps?
Great article, Jason! My opinion is that the Cadillac C body started off as a Deadly Sin in 1985, where trying to fit the styling cues of the 1977 era D body onto a far too small size made it look like a child’s toy. By 1988, the extended overhands and softened contours (which this example carries on) made the look much more natural and attracted buyers back, with the help of the 4.5 and (especially) 4.9 V8s. I would call this a Greatest Hit, as it carried Cadillac through to its styling renaissance of the early to mid 90s.
Regarding those who have said this was uncompetitive with cars of the day, like the LS400, there was a time when I would have agreed. Throughout the 90s, I would read in car magazines how the target market for cars like this was dying off as those in their 60s and older aged. They claimed nobody was replacing buyers for those cars. At that time, my parents were in their 40s and driving 2 door sports cars with manual transmissions (Saturn SC1, Toyota MR2, Corvette), so I tended to agree. However, now that they are in that age range, I have seen a decided shift in their preferences (Cadillac CTS, Buick Verano). Sure, these examples are more advanced than their predecessors of 30 years ago, but so is everything else. My point is that I think to a large extent, there will always be people in the market for selling points like comfort and refined style as long as they are offered, and this is what those attributes looked like in the late 80s.
Hold on. This car is definitely a greatest hit. My mom purchased an ‘89 Fleetwood Coupe new, $32,000. I still drive this car. (local trips only) it is one of the most comfortable full-size riding cars you’ll ever sit in. I replaced everything but the kitchen sink but at 180,000 miles the original engine is still running well. There is obviously an emotional attachment and this car will be with me forever.
I would have to agree. I drove an ’89 SDV and it was, as you said, roomy and smooth as cream, with very comfortable seats. These ’89s were a big improvement over the shrunken and boxy 85-88s. And Fleetwood coupes are RARE–only 4,108 produced in ’89.
In Madison, NJ there was a dark red Fleetwood coupe with doctor’s plates. The car was in mint condition. The interior was extremely lush. If you wanted something truly unique, with “jewel box beauty” in the American vein, this would be the way to go. Not an aircraft carrier like the old Caddies, but not too small either. But with production so low, how many good ones survive in 2019?
I wonder if that’s the same car I wrote up a few years ago here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1991-cadillac-fleetwood-coupe-turning-the-clock-back/
Looks awfully similar, and I found that one parked in Atlantic City (different part of NJ, but it could have moved… and how many of these red Fleetwood coupes could there possibly be)?
Not the same. The one I saw had a matching red velour interior.
Well, I guess there are two of these Fleetwood coupes in New Jersey!
I had an ’89 Fleetwood Coupe, like the pictured car but black with red leather inside. The 4.5 liter engine was a great improvement over the 4.1 in performance and reliability, and gave 20-25 MPG depending on driving mix, which was pretty good for a big car at the time. I always had the impression that GM tried really hard to dial in the ride and handling to feel as much like the pre-1976 land yacht models as possible. However, you never quite forgot that the front wheels were doing ALL the work. Unfortunately, the ancillary electronics were not as good as the engine, and a lot of issues started cropping up at the 100K mark. Two different Cadillac dealers could not fix the digital gas gauge.
I don’t actively dislike the car itself but do not believe keeping it around was in the company’s best interest. Sure, there were some incremental sales to be had but to continue being a viable entity it must be forward looking, not just dwelling on the past. After all the audience will eventually die out otherwise and at that point it’s getting to be too late.
Even if it is only in one corner of the showroom, it and what it represents will repel just as many or more than it will attract, thus taking away from the forward march that is needed. A few makers can pull this off but really only with “heritage” models that somehow have tapped into the psyche of consumers, such as VW when both watercooled and aircooled models were available, the same with Porsche, but note, the air-cooled cars at VW were not really viewed with fondness or considered a viable propostion by the company at that point, and Porsche had been actively trying to remove/replace theirs – in the end instead of removing the line (911) as originally intended they replaced the offending part, the engine.
I believe Cadillac really thought these were great which only held them back longer than they should have and it’s still hurting them today as a brand that is perceived as not having much direction or idea as to where or what it wants to be.
How about…neither? It was an okay placeholder that appealed to the dwindling number of Cadillac loyalists, but was not the new direction that the division desperately needed.
The handsome, next-generation Seville would better fill that role, although it would then be saddled with the Northstar, which was a long-term Deadly Sin.
“Neither” is pretty close to where I finally arrived somewhere between finishing this and it running.
But it’s made for some good conversation. 🙂
The car itself seems neither greatest hit nor deadly sin. Just another GM variation based on perceived brand positioning. But to launch something like this in 1989, with Mercedes, Audi and BMW booming and Lexus just around the corner, was certainly a deadly sin. Cadillac could have created a game-changer for the luxury class, like the Chrysler minivan or a few years later, the Explorer were for family cars … but they didn’t, and that’s why they are where they are now.
The initial Acura Legend was sold starting in 1985.
In my opinion, a much better car in all ways, loved the original The 2.7 l v6 is still my favorite, mine was a 1989 LS coupe.I did not like the gen2 90-95 as much. The 3.2 l was much less fun to drive and the car was bloated. Still far superior to GM offerings.
Dave
As a DeVille it’s a GREATEST HIT.
If you asked me to choose between this and the DeVille immediately before it or immediately after it I’ll take this one ALL DAY LONG.
Especially if it is the slightly later model with the 4.9 V8.
I’d still love one as a highway cruiser/Sunday go to church type of car.
GM seems to believe that if they produce the greatest buggy whip possible, people will still buy one. That was the case with this one, and at the time, there seemed to still be a few buggy whip buyers out there. Was this a bad car? No. Was it a bad luxury car? I will even say no to that. But it was not what younger luxury brand buyers wanted, and catering to seniors may work for a while, but the replacement seniors will eventually bring the tastes of their generation to the party and kill off the brand. Ask Buick if you’re confused….
I neither find the sin of these deadly or the hit of the 89 restyle great. I think the styling is a very successful improvement over the awful 85s, which are solidly deadly sins, and this was a relatively successful damage control effort. The 89 how the 85 should have looked from the start, 4 years later
I think to look at these as having regressive in styling is to look at the 85s with rose tinted glasses. The 85s weren’t progressive designs, they weren’t even toned down designs from the big 84s really, just smaller to a fault. Boxy ugly and traditional Cadillac in a way that wouldn’t at all stand out and look futuristic in the 1975 lineup, but most certainly be the runt of it. I don’t know what Cadillac could have actually done in the 80s stylistically to avoid DS status besides make a tracing paper Mercedes Benz clone like the Lexus LS, but that’s my luddite side speaking I guess, favoring individual brand identity over copy the cool kid, as Cadillac has proven to be far less successful at for the last 20 years, driving away both the traditionalists who and still facing the upturned noses of the import snobs.
This was the anti-Mercedes. They were available with some 20-way seats in front made of amazing leather that this car doesn’t have, and a Delco-Bose CD stereo that this car also doesn’t have, but it was just built overall to be a nice place to sit while you move from place to place. By then the 4.5 and especially 4.9 were well figured out, smooth, and quiet. It wasn’t meant to be an S-Class like so many later Cadillacs. You could find nicer cars to drive, but you at least got a nice place to sit.
“Demand quickly outstripped supply” doubtless because the personal mileage of the average interested party was such that they had no expectations of having time to be a repeat buyer, making the car a sinful GM exploitation of their customers imminent deadness. For sure, with that velvet n’ wooden inner and sombre exterior of rectilinearity complete with shiny handles, a thrifty-minded purchaser could have been lowered six feet under whilst still inside when the time shortly after arose, and few mourners would have thought it inappropriate, or even noticed.
A rather limited market outlook, then.
Old Pete compares these to the neat if visually dull LS 400, and when the utter professionalism of that car – let alone the quiet-riding effectiveness of it – is placed in context as an available competitor to this amateurish monstrosity, the contrast is stark, and bleak.
It is not possible to take this car seriously.
My grandfather, a faithful Caddy buyer for decades, switched to Lexus in the late 90s and became a faithful follower of that brand until his death. For him, though, the switch was predicated more by lousy customer service at Cadillac and superlative service at Lexus rather than the products themselves.
My Grandfather-in-law went from an ’86 Cressida to a last year ’93 Cadillac CoupeDeVille and then from there to a ’96 or so Lexus ES300. I guess the Caddy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be but I enjoyed driving it to and from Las Vegas on occasion for in-law-family trips.
I would say neither. The 1989-90 New Yorker/Imperial V6 K-cars would far better fit that definition. This was simply a much improved FWD V8 Cadillac compared to it’s short stubby HT4100 predecessor of 1985 but with tacked on fender skirts and extra glitz. It was the anti- Mercedes/BMW of the time which was far more prevalent then than now.
I spent quite a bit of time in a 1991 version of this exact car with the 4.9 and it might as well have been a Bimmer compared to my 1990 307 Brougham. Power was almost slingshot like in comparison and the handling was light years better. Yet it was just as classy and comfortable. That is a winning combination for me. Just make it a Deville with the alloy wheels and uprated suspension and I would drive one even now.
The styling of this car is an epic fail to me, as it did nothing to advance the look or form of an American luxury car for modern times. True, it may have been simply a backward-looking attempt at recapturing past glories for an aged customer base, but the resulting awkwardness did not appeal in any way to the younger people who would one day aspire to own one of these. There is nothing wrong with building a car fit for the conditions of the typical North American climate and road network, but to burden it with the tacky pseudo-luxury trappings of the bloated 1970s C-bodies seems to be a lazy and cynical move at best. GM simply took a pass on the hard work of defining a new luxury car idiom for the 90s when designing this Fleetwood, so I think it deserves the title of Deadly Sin.
Great article! I loved the debate with yourself, pro/con format. I think there are probably a number of cars from that era that could be seen both ways.
I would call it more of a hit than a sin. Cadillac’s original sin with this car was in 1985 and all the Cadillac C-body’s shortcomings. Short of a completely new design, everything they did with the car was to improve it and increase sales. A classic case of making lemonade with the lemons you are given (not saying the car was necessarily a lemon). I don’t see anything wrong with repackaging a product to increase sales, even if only short term. Sure, Cadillac needed a new direction, but if they weren’t going to be all in on that, why not at least do everything they could to milk the old direction.
I never really understood the appeal of the car, personally. If you like that style, why not get a RWD Brougham? So much better looking. I can see the practical appeal in hindsight, though. The Fleetwood was for those who liked that old fashioned style but wanted more modern mechanicals. They were more efficient, easier to drive, faster and probably more reliable.
As a classic car now (it is 30 years old, if you can believe it!) it doesn’t hold a candle to a nice Brougham for charisma or charm. The practical concerns are irrelevant now, so it is just a rather homely historical curiosity.
A buddy of mine bought one of these (same color, same everything) when he did well on the stock market. It was his FIRST and his LAST Cadillac.
He had more issues with the car then it was worth: trim falling off the rear doors, A/C going out at 45k miles, leather seats splitting at 40k miles, electrical issues, etc. One day, he drove my Toyota Camry with a stronger A/C, better seats, and better handling. The Cadillac was ditched and an Infinity was in the driveway within 30 days.
Nothing represents American like owning and driving a Cadillac…period, even with it’s many faults that appear over time, Cadillac is still KING in my book.
If or when life does happen to serve you lemons, make lemonade, KEEP LIVING THE DREAM!!
Cadillac really was caught between a rock and a hard place in the 1980’s: insurgent import sport sedans diverting the youthful money, aging traditional customers grabbing their last luxury car before the end. The former wouldn’t even consider latter for their next purchase. Cadillac then adopts “if you can’t beat ’em, imitate ’em…but try not to alienate the last of your old base. Was there a viable avenue for them to pursue?
These Fleetwoods were a caricature joke to those of use who remembered what a genuine Fleetwood 60 Special or Brougham was in the 1950’s-’60’s. They were just a sad, tiny imitation. But I suppose someone likes them, they can have mine.
I’ve wondered why Cadillac didn’t simply reskin the FWD Seville K-Body platform for the latter half of the 1980’s, walk their customers to downsized cars more gradually.
The problem for Cadillac was GM. GM treated Cadillac as like the top step of a ladder too long, rather than the lofty chandelier you’re trying to reach with it. Cadillac shouldn’t look like an obviously dolled up Olds 98 or Buick Electra, but there’s no getting around it with these and especially the 85s. Everyone criticizing Cadillac for not responding properly to the Germans would never buy a Cadillac if they did. Cadillac isn’t, ever has been and shouldn’t be a sport sedan company, Cadillac’s wheelhouse is the luxury niche occupied by Rolls Royce, Bentley, Maybach etc that all managed to remain viable through the 80s to today remaing LARGE ostentatious, silent soft plushmobiles. What’s closer to classic iconic Cadillacs: 2019 RR Phantom, or 2019 BMW 330i?
The large plushy end of luxury never went away from the market. GM out and out turned their back on it in a kneejerk response to the energy crisis and apparently antitrust paranoia about exceeding CAFE standards with a brand whose demographic doesn’t give a damn about mpg. They expected every turncoat buyer to flee their competitors to buy their new rolling couches with all the presence and style previously around them sawzalled away into a nondescript box. A box that was obviously making the most out of the engineering effort put into the Citation’s FWD/unibody architecture.
Everybody, old and young, knows how much more special Cadillacs were from the 60s and earlier. People buying Cadillacs since 1985 either genuinely only cared about comfort, and nothing more, or later just begrudgingly accept the German sports sedan influence in the non-Escalades. Cadillac as a brand would have been better off spun off from under the GM umbrella. Post downsizing Platform sharing doomed it.
I agree with almost all of this and if I were to try to answer 58L8134’s question of “Was there a viable avenue for them to pursue?” I’d start exactly where Matt did, with avoiding platform sharing.
One has to remember that at the very same time they were letting Cadillac and its massive margins die on the vine they were spending billions of dollars creating Saturn, a division that would share nothing with the rest of GM in the process of making small margin economy cars that, in order to be competitive, would need to be refreshed substantially on a four year cycle. If, hypothetically, that money had been used to recreate Cadillac as a modern luxury brand with unique and desirable platforms across the spectrum of premium at the time perhaps we wouldn’t have to ask if a stretched 1985 Buick is actually a good Cadillac.
I’m not saying that would have worked, it’s pretty obvious that there was a tremendous lack of market awareness at GM at the time (as Paul asked about the Reatta: “Who is this car for?”) and it’s doubtful given even unlimited money and time they could have produced a car that anyone outside of Grosse Pointe would be excited about, much less an entire line expecting to be a benchmark of excellence but Matt is essentially correct here: The only way out at that time would have been to lead the industry to a clearly defined vision with well executed products over an extended period of time. I doubt Roger Smith’s GM was capable of that.
Neither a Greatest Hit nor a Deadly Sin. The 1985 was certainly a Deadly Sin, but the 1989 facelift at least had some niche appeal, even if that appeal was limited to older buyers. Making lemonade out of lemons as others have said (not saying it was a “lemon” in terms of quality), or making hay while the sun shines. On a much shorter timeframe, it’s very similar to what Chrysler did with the Aspen to Diplomat to Fifth Avenue changes – even if Chrysler’s 1976 platform was ancient by 1989, the Fifth Avenue had found a niche of conservative older buyers, and the bugs had been long worked out. At least the Fleetwood got substantial powertrain updates.
You might want to see this:
I had an ’89 Seville with the 4.5L. It is a smaller car than the Fleetwood, but my mileage was always in the 20s with a mellow foot. I thought it was a great engine. Nice torque when pushed and efficient and quiet. It got better mileage than the Viulcan-powered ’05 Taurus it shared curbspace with. It was a cheap work car to keep miles off the then-new Ford, but I ended up liking driving it more anyway.
Can’t believe no-one else has commented on the new-to-me “foofaraw”! That word in itself is a Greatest Hit! Unlike the Caddy…
We never got these Cadillacs in NZ, but in the most bizarre CC effect yet, I was driving along a back street in my small rural town yesterday and saw an ’89 Cadillac coming the other way. I recognised it as a Cadillac, but had to do a rego check to see what model it was – a Sedan De Ville that’s been here since 2001. I find the ’89 Cad proportions awkward in pictures, but now that I’ve seen one in the metal they’re even more odd.
It was certainly distinctive as it headed towards me, being much smaller and lower than I thought from seeing pictures. It looked surprisingly narrow too, and the headlights and grille looked too squashed, and the windscreen looked too tall. The overall effect was distinctive but quite disproportionate. I didn’t see inside it, but going by the pictures above, the ’89’s interior looks very outdated compared to other manufacturers at the time.
So, nowhere near a Greatest Hit, but not really worthy of being a Deadly Sin either. Just a misguided attempt to find a place in a world that had moved on.
Cadillac is American, to be American is to live life free of worry about what others think, you do you, i do me is how we do it in America!
More often than not, those who prefer owning and driving a Cadillac prefer LEADING a certain lifestyle, a lifestyle where life is good. As for those who merely seek a place in the world around them they are followers NOT leaders! Back in the day Cadillac did NOT follow a trend, it WAS the trend!
“Those at Cadillac knew they were selling cars to the public, not the fickle and prissy automotive reporters at Car and Driver, Motor Trend, etc…”
I spent most of the 80s and 90s reading the derisive garbage that the likes of Patrick Bedard and Brock Yates spewed with regularity upon the pages of the car rag they wrote for. I found their constant ire with traditional American cars tiresome and smacking of unabashed snobbery. If those two “car snobs” had their way, every American would be driving a Benz or a Bimmer. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not entirely, but not every American is the Benz or Bimmer type. I sure as hell can tell you I most certainly am not.
You can’t dispute the engineering that goes into a German car, but it comes at a great cost unattainable for a good share of people. German cars also require expensive upkeep and when not properly maintained, are prone to have a German-built hissy-fit that usually results in the owner forking over substantial amounts of their income.
Say what you will about traditional American luxury cars, but they don’t have the outlandish expense to upkeep, the socio-political emotional baggage, or the snob factor that German cars possess. Cadillacs and Lincolns were elegant machines driven by conservative folks who worked hard their whole life and wanted to reward themselves with a plush, pretty, comfortable car. The average buyer of a BMW or a Benz was a disenfranchised snob at least, or a liberal Democrat elitist at worst; the kind of person who got their lofty station in life by screwing others over and taking advantage.
At least that’s my take on it. Either way, I was very pleased with one letter writer’s snarky reply to a Patrick Bedard article where he devoted an entire page to his childish, whiny dislike of stand-up hood ornaments on cars, citing them as “tacky, ersatz, unnecessary.” To which clever letter writer replied, “Hey Bedard, if the stand-up hood ornament in question had been a three pointed star, you’d be genuflecting before it in idol worship!”
Ouch. Epic burn on Bedard.
PantherFan I agree with you 100%.
The times I’ve paged through a Car and Driver or Motor Trend magazine I just rolled my eyes at the absurdities of insistent bashing of traditional American luxury cars. Snobbish, arrogant, opinionated, and not at all objective.
Road and Track and Automobile are two other magazines that are only good for lining the bottom of a bird cage with.
Reading commentaries and auto reviews by Brock Yates, David E. Davis, Patrick Bedard and Csaba Csere, to name a few, most often left me with a bitter tatse in my mouth.
The infatuation with BMW’s and Mercedes Benzes has always perplexed me. The old ones had a pretty solid reputation but, when more and more electronic gizmos were engineered into these cars they became monumental money pits overtime. Overrated? Certainly.
In the long run I think Cadillac attempting to outgun (or keep up with) the German brands as a hyper high performance luxury car maker has only hurt them.
There’s nothing wrong with a flagship performance model for the division to showcase, but they’ve made all of their cars ride stiff, they’ve put hard seating in all their cars except for the Escalade and cabins that aren’t all that quiet for a luxury car.
Not everyone wants a luxury car to ride like a go cart and have seats that necessitate seeing a chiropractor after a few hours of driving.
PantherFan you are so right.
I say phooey to the auto media. I never identified with their fringe views or absurd commentaries.
Former Car and Driver editor, the late David E. Davis, was one of the most pompous fellows in auto journalism. He even looked the type with that silly, smug, smirk of his. Csaba Csere is another Car and Driver alumni that rumbled my gut.
The late Brock Yates and Pat Badard’s views were akin to swallowing bitter tables as well.
I quickly learned not to put any faith in those “auto enthusiasts” magazines. It’s just opiniated, bias content to appeal to a fringe of the car culture.
Thomas and Stephen, thanks for having my back with this. When I was growing up, the walls of my bedroom were festooned with images of Cadillacs, Lincolns, Monte Carlos, Grand Prixs, et al. My peers dreamed of Lambos and Ferraris, Corvettes, Camaros, and Firebirds. While I like those too, I’m more into the plush isolation of a big American car.
I also recall another Patrick Bedard rant about the 2nd Gen Monte Carlo. He spent his entire op ed page carping and whining about what a grotesque automobile it was; baroque and gothic all at once, and dismissed it as little more than a tacky marketing scheme to get buyers into the showroom.
With one article, Bedard insulted literally hundreds of thousands of happy Monte Carlo owners (and potential owners) with his blind arrogance and total lack of objectivity. The Monte Carlo built between 1973 and 1977 was one of the better-handling big American cars at the time. It was also one of the better performing and better built, as well. Rather than looking at the whole package, Baby Patrick instead chose to fuss, whine and cry about its styling and how it represented everything wrong with the Detroit mantra of automobile building.
I too would read the articles from all of the aforementioned gentleman that I and both of you mentioned, and I was usually left with a feeling of contempt toward these men and their myopic views on American cars. One of C/D’s writers, Rich Ceppos, bought a Buick Regal Limited in the 80s, and loved it. Ceppos was routinely lambasted for this vehicle purchase not only by his peers but also by the small lunatic fringe of readers who shared the views of Davis, Bedard, and Yates.
One snide reader of this ilk commented in a letter, “Rich Ceppos’ love affair with his Buick Regal is disgusting. You will soon find him wandering the aisles of K-Mart, looking for Blue Light specials….”
Understand, I am paraphrasing here. I’m pulling this information from memory that is dated some 35+ years ago, but I can recall these things in such lurid detail because of the level they impacted my spirit. When I would see a nice, older, conservative couple tooling around in their 98 Regency or their Fifth Avenue, it always brought a smile to my face. They reminded me of my grandparents, a comforting, homey type of feeling. Whenever one of these smug, so-called “auto-journalists” would lob their snotty diatribes at one of these fine American cars, I felt like they were also insulting an entire generation of people I admired.
Let me know if you feel the same.
While derisive, Ceppos et al were probably reflecting a national disappointment, no, disgust with GM-led Big 3’s rapid descent in design, build quality, handling, etc.
I loved Gram’s ‘77 Regal. But in short order it was a reliability nightmare. Close friends, one with a new ‘78 Trans Am and the other a ‘80 Mustang, showed me and many others the way forward was coming from Japan.
Had they still made a more modern but anvil reliable Duster in the early 80s, I truly would had considered one.
I knew GM’s boat sailed when my aunt and uncle, lifelong GM buyers, bought a Sentra for him and a few years later a Camry for her. My uncle fought in the Pacific theater in WWII.
So Ceppos et al may have been channeling that collective disgust. I know the experiences of those around me certainly shaded my vehicle decisions.
TRUE, you can’t dispute the engineering that goes into a German car, but it certainly does come at a great cost, especially for a car likely driven on the autobahn where 70% of the autobahn there is no speed limit and drivers can go as fast as they want, the average travel speed of automobiles on unrestricted autobahns is 141.8 km/h (88 mph) which is much faster than most speed limits in other countries. Cadillacs are not intended OR designed to be race cars!
Cadillac has been faltering for decades now. The once prestigious automaker has had an identity crisis going back to the 80’s. While some of their current offerings might be deemed “world class” their low sales figures speak for themselves. Even though sedan and coupe sales as a whole have declined in all luxury car markets, it’s the European brands and Lexus that have stayed strongly afloat in that market segment. Most younger luxury new car buyers nowaday’s wouldn’t bat an eye at the Cadillac brand. The few late model Cadillac’s I see here in California are often driven by drivers from livery services. Cadillac missed their mark a long time ago and diverted their customer base to other luxury brand imports. And just like old Humpty Dumpty, he couldn’t be put back together again, neither can Cadillac.
Y REPLY:
YES, time does march on while only HISTORY remains behind.
Cadillac represents an era in America much like that of the muscle car era did! While things do change with each passing generation that change is more to do with evolution, as evolution is a process of gradual change that takes place over many generations, during which species of animals, plants, or insects slowly change some of their physical characteristic
Cadillac is NOT the baby being thrown out with the bath water here but rather a part of overall change in ways beyond just with automobiles and their roles in our lives!
I vote “Greatest Hit” – About a year ago, I purchased a 1991 SdV even with reservations after reading some of the comments on this site about this era deVille/Fleetwood.
And you know what? I friggin love the car. The 4.9 has lots of punch, the car rides great (yeah, like a marshmallow), and the interior has room to stretch out in.
It’s not a Bimmer or a Lexus. But it is a car I can drive all day long and not be tired or achey when I get out.
I tried putting it up for sale, but every time I get behind the wheel and settle in…I yank it off Craigslist or FB Marketplace. Especially now that I have a modern stereo in the car feeding the Bose speakers.
Yeah, the plastics are a bit cheesy and I wish it didn’t need so many parts – but it makes me happy. And so few other things do, so it’s worth the headaches.
I’ve ridden in and have driven various BMW and Mercedes models over the years, even some later model versions, and all I can say is that I really wasn’t very impressed with these cars. The BMW’s drive better and the Mercedes ride nicer. Neither BMW or Mercedes offer much in the department of seat comfort, especially Mercedes seats. Hard!
Some of the loveliest seats I ever spent hours of travel time in was in my beloved ’81 Buick Park Avenue. They were those plush, pillowy, velour sofa style seats. Boy they were nice. I sure miss that car.
Of course my Park Avenue didn’t have breakneck acceleration or razor sharp handling, but I’d gladly sacrifice some of those Germanic g-forces for a super quiet, ultra comfortable, smooth riding, big old American luxury car.
BOTTOMLINE, at the end of the day, my old Cadillac is old and outdated but so am I!
https://i0.wp.com/…/wp…/uploads/2019/09/IMG_0369.jpg
Not a deadly sin. It was a huge improvement over the 1985 abomination and it looked like a Cadillac. The 4.9 was a better version of the 4.1.
Greatest hit. No it was not up to the Lincoln Town car or crown Vic or grand Marquis competition. It was delicate in comparison and compact full sized cars are never good sellers
I recently bought a 1989 Fleetwood and it’s my 5th. The car has only 64000 certified miles and I’m the second owner. I have only replaced the battery and tires, whitewalls of course. When I drive it I get honks and thumbs up. I even got a compliment from a guy in a 2019 Lamborghini on Lake Shore Drive. It’s a pleasure to drive and the ride is as good as any of the broughams I’ve had before. I really like that it’s front wheel drive and pulls the car through turns at high or low speeds nicely. Oh, by the way, the car’s ashtrays and lighters have never been used, leaving the headliner intact.. Perhaps you all need to own and drive one for a period of time before you bash or praise it. My one complaint is that it doesn’t have the Corvette engine that would be under the hood Ina few years time!
I spent a bunch of time in one of these this spring (a ‘91, same color) while on tour and was surprised how much I liked it. My tour mates picked it up cheap in Wisconsin; they go off and buy old luxo barges that were some midwesterners’ Sunday drivers every few years. Surprisingly rust-free, silent, reliable, comfortable, great sound system. If one showed up at my door I wouldn’t turn it down. I was also surprised at how many people commented on it, how much they loved it, or that they had one and wished they still did.
This car is a neat, clean and well preserved slice of Eighties memorabilia. It’s attractive and has many virtues. I would encourage readers here to appreciate it as an interesting collectible and write about it accordingly rather than slam GM’s alleged marketing missteps from 30 years ago.
This car is well-done, its lovely with nice details and a quiet, soft luxury ride. So many of todays cars are firm riding searingly ugly like monsters from sci-fi movies, this car is a beautiful retro breath of fresh air. I love it.
I happen to own one of these Fleetwoods and have owned 5 80’s Broughams, to tell the truth I have enjoyed them all. My current Fleetwood has less than 65000 miles on it and no rust. I have gotten nothing but thumbs up while I am driving it up and down LSD in Chicago. The front wheel drive pulls me through those two stupid turns at Oak Street tightly and goes where I point it. It is a pleasure to drive on and off the highway and the gas mileage is just fine for it’s size. I plan on keeping this one. There is one thing I would have done differently is the arm rest in the front could be a bit more substantial to allow the passenger to use it. Since I am the driver it’s all mine anyway, so there you go.
My mom purchased an ‘89 (fwd) Fleetwood coupe . It was a year old trade in at local Cadillac dealer. She paid $14000. Good deal I thought. We both loved that car.it had real wood(walnut ) trim, digital instruments and plush leather seats. She had it for the rest of her life. (. 30 years) issues were ..around five years in, it leaked oil from everywhere. 2 main issues killed it. Head gasket leak and the abs brake system failed .