When you look at this land yacht, do you see a Queen Mary or do you see the Titanic? I see a little bit of both when I look at 1965-68 Cadillacs: there’s still the magic, but something is starting to go ever so slightly wrong.
Cadillac was at its legendary pinnacle in the early through mid 1960s, considered the choice far and wide as the best choice for your luxury buying dollar. With strength, style and even a decent amount of substance, you could really say that early 1960s Cadillacs were the standard to measure luxury cars to. That amount of clout allowed Cadillac to get away with minor missteps like the short deck Park Avenue sedan above.
Being number #1 in the luxury field, while being at the top of the General Motors dynasty when General Motors was still at the top of the world gave room for Cadillac to play it safe when it was redesigned along with all B and C body full sized General Motors cars for 1965. But therein lies one sign of complacency that started the seeds of ruin for Cadillac.
While this futuristic mid 1960s Concept would have gone completely over the heads of the motoring public, other possible innovations were left on the design table or in the engineering lab.
One of interesting note were the series of prototype V-12 engines developed between 1962 through 1964, which would have been a showcase in the 1967 Eldorado. For a variety of reasons, the program was scrapped. Front wheel drive was innovative enough, one guesses, for one part of the Cadillac empire.
Cadillac had probably learned far too of an expensive lesson with the Eldorado Brougham in the later half of the 1950s to really be bothered with being a technological tour de force for all automobiles. General Motors, as a rule was becoming more conservative about doling out serious innovations to its regular cars. Relative failures like the Corvair, the Aluminum Block V-8 and oddities like the Dynaflow and the Pontiac Tempest’s “rope-drive” were phased out in favor of mundane technology perfected.
And why mess with a successful formula? This advertisement wasn’t as over the top as it might seem in nearly 50 years hindsight. Cadillacs indeed held their resale value better than just about any domestic car based upon a combination of image and deserved reputation. A six-way luxury sedan showdown in Car & Driver magazine ranked the Fleetwood tested as second, only to the vastly more-expensive Mercedes 600. Not only was that a ranking ahead of its two domestic rivals, but also ahead of Rolls Royce.
But another contemporary review from Road Test Magazine brought up a sore point: What did you really get with a Cadillac that you didn’t get in a range topping Oldsmobile Ninety Eight or Buick Electra 225? A few snide remarks about sliding workmanship that was not any better than its less pricey siblings might have stung a little.
Also, both 1965 and 1966 were excellent sales years for Cadillac, with both years coming close to 200,000 Cadillacs coming off the line. But one of the benefits of luxury is exclusivity, and DeVilles were more common than Mercury full sized cars in these years. Also, the price of a new Cadillac hadn’t dramatically increased since the beginning of the 1960s, to the point that they were $1,000 or less above the base price of the best full sized Medium priced cars before you added options.
As we are well aware, the seeds for the great luxury sea change that came in a tidal wave in the late 1970s started with the premium price many of the well to do plunked down on a variety of Mercedes Benzes and their meticulous craftmanship and aura of old world wealth. But underneath that little engineering features like 4 wheel disc brakes and fuel injection where simple ways Cadillac could have taken heed to the engineering trends that were slowly passing them by.
What did Cadillac offer as a engineering innovation for 1966? Heated Seats. All fine and dandy and luxurious (just like the addition of climate control for 1964) but how hard would it have been to substitute those drum brakes for at least one set of disc brakes for the front wheels to keep up with the nearly 5,000lb curb weight and best power to weight ratio in the Luxury field?
(Un) fortunately Cadillac had a good 10 years left to really rest on the laurels surrounding its crown. Improvements for the rest of the 60s included larger displacements for the sturdy V8 (that ate away at the “advantage” of 12-16mpg you could expect from Cadillacs earlier in the decade) and automatic level control suspension.
It would be a few years before the expected feature content of luxury cars fully made it to those Mercedes Benzes, but as soon as power seats and an effortless V8 became part of German recipe book, the DeVille was doomed. The workmanship slide continued into the early 1970s, as the cars grew more monstrous in size and more excessive than the 1950s cartoons Cadillac had graciously been stepping away from during the 1960s.
Little did this King know that it would soon have to give up the throne. Being at the top of the world allowed it to not realize this until too late. To you I present the blissfully unaware last great mainstream Cadillac Sedan.
Laurence, I think that you have hit it squarely: Complacency was setting in, and it would eventually nearly kill Cadillac. Those were boom years for the economy, and although Cadillac management was understandably going for higher volume, GM’s central brass should have been positioning Cadillac into higher exclusivity. Selling 200 thousand Cadillacs should have been a warning signal – 100 thousand of those cars should have been Buicks, and the other 100 thousand should have been more expensive and higher quality Cadillacs. But with the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that GM’s 14th floor had become a dysfunctional, clueless mess.
I recall spending some time in a relative’s 67 Cadillac Calais. Base model with crank windows. Sure, it had size and that Cadillac V8. But inside, the car could have been just as easily a nice Olds or Buick. It was certainly nowhere near as “special” feeling as the 63 Fleetwood I later owned for awhile.
These were good looking cars, but very conservative, both inside and out. This series (along with the 67-68 models) are the last Cadillacs that even remotely interest me.
Exactly. GM should have used pricing to keep Cadillac exclusive and open up a spread among Cadillac, Buick, and Olds. And, they should have plowed back much of the profit into keeping Cadillac “The Standard of the World”. Some division of GM should have had an eagle eye on Mercedes too – match them size for size, feature for feature, quality for quality, etc. With their profits in the 1960s this would have not been a problem.
We have to remember too that the 1965 LTD put a lot of pressure on other luxury cars. GM really should have responded by making their top lines even better.
Family story: Around 1955 my wife who was four and zero idea about cost or status implications told her parents “I think we should have Cadillacs”. After much laughter they asked why. “Because they have the most beautiful colors”.
This 65-66′s were always pretty much my favorite Cadillacs. I was just a baby then, but it only took a few years until I knew these were special, even if, in a kid’s eyes, they were looking a little dated by say, 1970.
These just seemed much more modern to me than the early 60s models, and much more restrained and subtle than those, as well as the successor 67-68′s (which have grown on me over the years). I think the styling of the Fleetwoods, Eldorados and Coupe de Ville convertibles worked better than the Sedan de Villes, the proportions of which look a little off to me. The green house is just too small for the rest of the body.
I know the downfall of Cadillac has been discussed many times here before, but seeing that Mercedes picture highlighted something for me. Mercedes and Cadillac were like VHS and Betamax – same idea, but just executed differently. Mercedes and Cadillac both evolved along their respective paths, but it soon became obvious that buyers just preferred the Mercedes approach. Had Cadillac maintained quality and luxury standards, perhaps things would have been different, but somehow people just came to prefer the more connected driving experience of Mercedes. It took decades for Cadillac to embrace this.
One more thing – that ’65 Olds 98 is one gorgeous car, definitely the peak of that model.
You’re right JCP. Cadillacs best years were where there were not enough Cadillacs built to meet demand, years in which the assembly line only moved fast enough to make sure the cars were put together with exacting care, no faster. The resale value of used Cadillacs stayed high and Cadillac was truly a sign you had arrived. Now the “Crest & Wreath” mean little. When I see the beasts of the glory years of Cadillac and then see a base model CTS I want to hang my head and cry.
The CTS is only a plebian Holden in an ugly suit hardly an exclusive luxury car
The CTS is not a Holden underneath, we’ll keep doing this until you learn.
Learn what Carmine the CTS is like the Camaro on a Holden developed Chassis
Bryce, the VE and Camaro are Zeta platform, the CTS is Sigma platform. Holden looked at using the the Sigma platform for the VE early on but the interior packaging of the Sigma platform, especially over the rear axle, is simply not spacious enough for what Holden wanted (particularly for the ute). The other issue is the cost, the Sigma platform has more (expensive) alloy suspension components.
The loss of exclusivity was a big factor in Cadillac’s decline amongst its target market. I think they’ve finally got the quality issues addressed, now they have to address regaining that exclusivity…at least with a couple models. That Ciel concept would be a nice place to start.
Somehow chasing market share and being “Standard of the World” seem mutually exclusive.
So how many of you have ever seen a ’62 Park Avenue in the flesh (other than Laurence, who photographed this one so superbly)? How any of you knew it existed when you were young. Somehow, that slipped by me at the time. But then I guess folks in Iowa weren’t the intended buyers. But if I had ever seen one, its startling change of proportions would surely have sent me to see a doctor. Great find; great article.
I’ve never seen one in the flesh Paul and only seen one a time or two on Auto Trader Classics/eBay motors. I have heard it was an early attempt by Cadillac to make their cars easier to park among the “wealthy widow” set. The Seville (combined with the rise of Mercedes) was the ultimate fruition of this desire.
There was one on display at the Petersen Museum in LA…parked in a garage to demonstrate the rationale of the short rear deck for the city dweller or owner of an old house with garage proportions of an earlier era.
Strange looking in the flesh.
I used to see one of these in my teenage years – a metallic pink one, no less (1961, iirc). I knew that it looked off somehow, but never understood what it was until several years later. I think that was the last one I ever saw. It was my understanding that the target market was rich people in older homes with smaller garages. My grandparents actually had a well-to-do friend in the early 60s who bought a Rolls instead of a domestic luxury car because the Rolls fit her garage better. But I guess this turned out to be a pretty small demographic.
It also was to cater to the well to do clientele that still lived in town, especially New York, Boston and San Francisco where some of the nicest parts of town have the most atrocious maneuverability in and out of parking accommodations, and were some of the first people switching to Big Benzes, which still were close to 2 feet shorter than the Park Avenue (which seems “small” since it’s only 6 inches longer than an Impala of the same year), for practical reasons. There were valid complaints about the 1959-60 models being too big, so shaving 10 inches off the rear was the answer.
But Like JP Says that demographic was pretty small, and you didn’t get a price discount on them either, (I think their list prices were equal to a “regular deck” 4 Window hardtop). To me the 1961-1962 Cadillacs in general seem the least bulky in dimensions since the 1948-49 models, and due to the sharp fins, the impression of the Park Avenue I get is that it’s almost 1976 Seville size, although it’s not. It was parked on Shotwell St. in SF (which if you know is barely an alley) and didn’t seem as out of place size wise as most other Cadillacs of this vintage roaming San Francisco.
Interesting that you should mention the Seville, since part of what led to the creation of the K-body Seville was another marketing survey in which people complained (again) that the big cars were too hard to park…
I never knew these even existed until a few years ago, when I was just perusing some site with old Cadillac brochures and info. I don’t ever remember seeing one. I get the point though – my 1928 garage is way too short.
I have to say these days it looks normal! Even in context to 1960′s cars it looks a little short – but on the other hand the rear overhang of the 65-66 looks ridiculous to me. I imagine that in places there would have to be problems with it grounding.
How about parking – does a car space cater for these behemoths? I can only suppose there isn’t a lot of parallel parking?
Ok, I’m a little biased. Yes, by that time the interior wasn’t what it used to be. But the lines of the ’67-’70 added so much character. I do prefer the stacked headlights of the earlier models though. I guess my perfect Caddy would be a ’68 with the tail lights of a ’69.
Agreed that the styling after ’66 was much better. The ’67 was my all-time favorite. For me, the sharp body creases, forward-leaning stance, stacked headlamps and the straight-across egg crate grill are quintessential Cadillac. I owned a low mileage ’67 Fleetwood Sixty Special in the late ’90s. Beautiful car.
As I noted above, I generally always preferred the 65-66′s over the 67-68′s for some reason. I think it was the forward leaning nose, which somehow bothered me as a kid, and then I thought they looked too dated when the 70s rolled around. But over the years, I’ve come to really love the 67-68′s, again, especially the Fleetwoods, which have just so much presence, and the coupes/convertibles. I love that sloping character line across the sides, and the kick up at the rear compartment area.
To me, 1968 is everything the 67 could have been, I like the kick-up in the center part of the gille and the hidden wipers, not to mention the introduction of the 375hp 472.
“over the heads of the motoring public”.
No, it’s just stupid. Only a moron would design a car with a 9-10 foot hood.
I’d love to have see someone try to make a right on red with that turd.
I turn right on red all the time in mine. Can do u-turns too! The turning radius is surprisingly small for such a large car.
I can attest to that too. Having owned a “rat rodded” 67 Coupe Deville for a short time. It was surprisingly easy to drive.
Big RWD cars generally have a pretty good turning radius (W126 Benz, etc). It’s the big front-drivers that have atrocious turning radii.
Does anybody know if the wood grain trim in the Fleet was real wood? It really looks great with that matte finish. I had heard somewhere that they did sometimes use real wood, but it’s kind of hard to believe.
And…man did they ever dumb-down the interior quality starting in 67. At least in 74 they improved the dashboard, and again in 77. I always liked the glossy plastiwood in the 77-92 cars…
One thing I know Cadillac did do, up until the 77 redesign, was use real leather on all models…what I mean is, the strip between the seats (or, the center seat) in both the front and back was always leather, even in the cloth interiors.
Real wood was used on Fleetwood series cars until 1969 or so and then real wood didn’t return again until the 80′s again on the Fleetwood, Eldorado Biarritz and Seville’s.
My favorite use of real wood on these is in the interiors of the ’66 Fleetwood and Fleetwood Eldorado. The giant plank on each door looked great, kind of like a Chris-Craft speedboat.
I have probably seen the Park series model, but never noticed the shortened rear deck – it actually looks more proportional to the rest of the car.
Back in those days, we lived in an inner suburb bordering the City of St. Louis – Jennings – half of the town was working-class, on the south side of the Wabash RR that split the city. We lived on the north side, and even though we were working poor due to certain circumstances.
All in all, there were few Caddys in town, but lots of Buicks and Oldsmobiles for those that had the money.
For the record, I have never been a fan of anything above a Chevy, Ford or Plymouth/Dodge – I just didn’t see the value in them.
I have few qualms with Caddy from 61 to 68. 1969/70 was the first of many Cadillac heartbreaks for me. When they went to the generic front end I started to lose interest,1971 to 76 was so bad in my eyes that I would only have considered one as a drivetrain donor for a smaller car(I really wanted to build a 500 Cad for my Chevelle at one point in a bad way.). The Seville and Eldo were neat but never “my” Cadillac Style.
If you plotted the ups and downs of Cadillac over the years you’d probably have something that looked like the blade of a Bow Saw!
I’ve always liked the looks of the 1965-1966 Cadillacs. I remember in the 1980′s a dealer in Tacoma who always had a few nice older cars had a gold one on his lot, a 4-door deVille with white leather and gold brocade upholstery. Well, I was interested enough to take a test drive, but not impressed when I found that the exhaust emitted a good deal of blue smoke, and the car handled more like an old Chevy, an impression no doubt heightened by the bald tires. When I returned with it he told me that he was planning to take it to the Portland Swap Meet the next month. I said “Well, bring three or four spare tires and a case of oil and you should be okay.” I ended up never connecting with a good one, and after all these years the only Caddy I’ve ever owned was the black 1953 sedan that I had for about three weeks in the late 1960′s.
I seem to recall that the main issue with the V12 was that it barely made anymore power than the new 375hp/525lb ft of tq 472 V8, with extra cost and complexity, the 472 was designed to go as big as 600cid if the needs called for it, I dont recall what the displacement was for the SOHC V12.
Extra cost and complexity be damned. We’re talking King of The Hill braggin’ rights here. It has *twelve* cylinders, and that is better than *eight*, even if it makes as much power. If they had debuted this with fuel injection at the time of MB’s V8… ah well, if wishes were horses.
Well they did make the largest displacement engine in the world, thats gotta be worth something.
Fiat S76: 28 liters. Others were bigger too. Anyway, its a dubious distinction, especially when the Caddy 8.2 ended up making barely more than 200 hp
Fine POST WAR. or at the time, yes there were zepplin engined pre WW! race cars with bigger engines, and they were of course of the vastly superior European variety
There, better?
Ended up making 200hp, well 215 with fuel injection, Its started off at 400 gross in 70. Dont like that it made 200hp, blame the gov not Cadillac.
I’d blame the govt. for the net hp ratings, and drop in CR for unleaded fuel, but other manufacturers still were able to keep their engine power up in the face of tightening emission controls. The 1975 BMW 3.0 L engine made 176 hp; the 2 L made 125 hp; and the 1975 Porsche 2.7 L made 143 – 167 hp.
I realize that these are not perfect comparisons; the point is that some manufacturers saw little if any hp drops in their engines from 1970 to 1975, others saw massive drops. My guess is that the Big Three were in bunker mentality mode then, focusing on the cheapest way to possible to meet the emission regs, rather than looking at their engines’ performance in a holistic way. Within some more years, Detroit did figure that out; it just took a little time and R&D effort. And why did they do it? for the usual reason: they were being left behind in the dust; in this particular case, performance-wise.
Oh, and there’s the Dodge Viper engine: 8.4 liters. Post WW2.
Again though, it was the largest production engine at the time and for quite some time after that.
Are the hp figures you quoted european or US, because I remember their being drops in power when car came over to the US, I think sophisticated Europe was still all lead gas, so there had to be some drops when the cars came over tuned for lowlead-nolead and cats.
At least you saw the mostly pointless comparison of 2.5 litre 6 bangers and 8.2 litre V8′s, both had to meet the same emissions, which do you think would be the engine to suffer most?
Even with only 200hp, the 500 still manages to put down about 360-380lb ft of torque at a diesel like 2000 rpm.
US hp numbers. Euro numbers were higher yet, because of higher CRs, and different tuning.
It’s not the direct comparison that’s so relevant; it’s the fact that the Big Three did eventually figure out how to make their engines, even fairly large V8s, put out respectable power levels despite ever-tightening emission regs. It just took until the late eighties for it to happen.
FWIW, without getting off on an anti-B3 rant here, I do believe the failure of the B3 to make a more concerted effort at this challenge hurt them quite substantially in the latter seventies and early eighties. It contributed directly to the growing sales success and performance image of many of the import brands.
They had to jump from one hoop to the next and dance to what ever tune the gov was going to cram down their throats, bumpers, airbags, CAFE, emissions, labor, etc etc etc, all while downsizing and re-styling practically every car in the line up, and yeah you could say “but look Honda had to do the same thing”
Yeah, its easy when you have a 3 car line up, its a little harder when you have 30 models and 8-10 different engines, GM did an admirable job, and in fact it tried to get ahead of the game by trying to anticipate what was comming down the road in the 80′s, only to get bit in ass again.
While I agree to your assessment of Detroit’s problems caused by Govt and labour (the latter not affecting imports or transplants), GM did NOT do an admirable job AT ALL. It did not do a very shitty, suicidal job, as some others may claim, but you err on the other extreme. Sure it had to make do with what it was given, but it was given a hell of a lot. For a company synonymous with excellent engineering and pioneering marketing, and not just in cars, but in buses, trucks, locomotives, airconditioning, batteries, defence, you name it, GM sure destroyed its legacy. 30 car models? What about 10 locomotives as well, with submarine engines at the side. GM was the Champion of Internal Combustion, not just cars. Wonder why people preferred to buy GM cars and looked strangely at Mopar products? Because GM made *good* cars, just as it made good refrigerators and good locomotives. Indian Rail still majorly runs on EMD power. Because they’re good. GM kept on selling units to prop up the failing car business, but did not simultaneously invest in engineering to boost the car business. To have squandered that legacy is the biggest sin, which no spin can hide or deed atone for. Esau had nothing on GM, sir, and you claim it did an admirable job!
PS: GM may simply have been the victim of stupid American engineers or greedy American managers, but that doesn’t cover up mistakes in hiring policies. There is nothing inherently American about being stupid or greedy (unlike what hippies claim), but *hiring* those people is stupid.
Although it’s still important to be clear about whether the ratings being cited are gross, SAE net, or DIN. Some British (and possibly other European) manufacturers continued to use gross numbers for a while, although it looks like most had switched to DIN by the OPEC embargo.
Nonetheless, a lot of sources from the period interchange the three rather freely, which can be frustrating when it comes to making direct comparisons. Gross and net figures are obviously quite different, and SAE net horsepower is not quite the same as DIN — although it’s close enough to be REALLY confusing!
Also, the iron block 4.5 liter Benz V8 with overhead cams in the 450SEL, 450SL, etc made 180 hp (US net) until 1980.
This thing looks as if it were built using the fuselage of a P-47 Thunderbolt!
The initial displacement of the V-12 was about 450 cubic inches, later expanded to about 500. (I’ve never seen bore and stroke dimensions, so I don’t know the exact figures.) According to Karl Ludvigsen, they never quite got 400 horsepower from it; if those are SAE gross figures, that isn’t great given how much it would have cost. Not only was it a V-12, it was all aluminum, with no cylinder liners, chain-driven OHC, and a 75-degree bank angle that required a split-pin crank.
To be fair we should note that front disc brakes became optional in 67-68(standard for Eldorados in 68) and standard by 69 or 70, The Eldorado moved to standard 4 wheel disc brakes in 1976, the Seville and Fleetwood Brougham got 4 wheel discs standard for 1978 I believe.
Fair when Studebaker was offering them in 1963? No doubt helped by the fact they were Mercedes Distributors… but still.
Didnt really help Studebaker much did it though?
It’s not whether it “helped” Studebaker, it’s more that it was an option (and a better braking solution than the Drums Cadillac used) as an option in $2,300-$4,500 Studebakers 4 years before it was available in a Cadillac. It looks a little Lazy on Cadillac’s part when you could get more modern brakes on a Lark….
Even the Flair Bird offered Disc Brakes before Cadillac. Cadillac had stopped leading on true engineering when it had no excuse not to.
I think Rolls Royce had drum brakes well into the 60′s too, I believe the big Phantom V limo had drum brakes, in the front, untill it ended production in 1991.
Cheap GM cars like Vauxhall and Holden had discs by the mid 60s why not the range topper?Ford Zephyrs had disc brakes as standard equipment in 63 how far behind was Caddy?
Same could be said for others.
But We’re discussing Cadillac, the self heralded standard of the world circa 1965. There were cars outside of its class (The Lark) And cars that were indirect or direct competitors, Such as Mercedes and the 1964-66 Thunderbirds that got a jump on this modern feature.
It was doing Cadillac harm to be playing catch up on technical innovation when a Thunderbird buyer could say “I spent less than you did on that Calais and I got Disc Brakes, and IT’S A FORD.” The fact that Bryce points out those features were available on workaday Vauxhalls and Holdens prove that complacency and arrogance had started to set in at GM, and the seeds of the eventual bankruptcy 4 years ago started with throughly competent, but not particularly innovative cars like the 1965-66 DeVille.
General Motors made enough profit on tarted up Impalas with options alone to stick with some of the 3/4ths baked technology it introduced between 1957 and 1963 until it actually worked. But in the pursuit of the almighty profit they let innovation pass them by. This is where Mercedes stepped through the door, and a host of Japanese imports followed.
1965 the year when Jaguars and Vauxhall could cruise at 100mph of course Jags had discs all round Austins and Wolseleys had front discs for 4 years so they could be driven at high speed any of these 6 cylinder cars could out pace a Caddy on a public road in comfort just what standard was cadilac the front runner of?
In 1965 Cads had no issue hitting the century mark. Jags were still considered exotics in the states. They did cost about as much as each other, the E type at 5400 and a Coupe DeVille at 5500 but the Cad cost a heck of a lot less to maintain. The big difference was that the Caddies could seat six while cruising at 100.
Lincoln offered standard disc brakes starting with the 1965 model year; Chrysler Imperial made them standard for 1967. Cadillac didn’t follow suit until 1969.
What happened to the spirit of the “Penalty of Leadership,” let alone upholding the image of the “Standard of the World”?
I still haven’t found any indication that discs were offered on regular Cadillacs until 1968. They were definitely optional on the ’67 Eldorado, but the brochures I’ve seen don’t mention them for ’67 Calais/De Ville/Fleetwood models, and I haven’t seen any mention in period road tests (although the regular line was overshadowed by the Eldo). I thought that was odd, considering that they were at least optional even on the A-body cars by ’67; about the only thing GM car that didn’t offer at least front discs as an option by then was the Corvair.
This is my first post to your website, I have been an avid reader for several months now, love your site, and it is such a kick to read everyone’s comments. You’re like a big fraternity all chiming in, you all write so knowledgably about every flavor of car, I am impressed!
To answer Paul’s question, the Park Avenue and its somewhat downmarket twin, the Series 62 Town Sedan, were not all that uncommon in the Los Angeles area as I grew up. Not ubiquitous, by any stretch, but you would see the odd one occasionally. My father came within a whisker of buying a new 1962 Cadillac Series 62 coupe when I was 15, I was so enthralled (Mom ultimately put the kibosh on it though, and he had to wait until 1977 to get his first Cadillac). I remember so well frequenting the Cadillac showroom in downtown L.A., and seeing the Park Avenue and the Town Sedan on display, and thinking they appeared oddly truncated. But I thought at the time, and still do, this was the most beautiful and perfectly designed Cadillac of all time.
Fast forward to now, and just a month or so ago I was pulling into our local Ralph’s grocery store, hadn’t even gotten out of the car yet, when across the median in another aisle was a 1962 Park Avenue pulling in. I was astonished, couldn’t believe my eyes, and I ran across the parking lot to say hello and admire this car. It was an elderly lady and her caregiver, and they had come steaming in to do her weekly shopping. I said excitedly, “You have a very rare car.” And she answered back, “Yes I do, and there were only a couple thousand of these made originally.” She was quite on top of the story, the originial owner, and she still loved her Cadillac. I said it was a beautiful car (although a little down at the edges, but still in relatively good condition), and wished her many more years of enjoyment with it. It was blue with a white interior, and how I wished I had had my camera. Suffice to say, now I carry it to Ralph’s every time I go, hoping to see this car again. We live in the Palm Springs area, fondly known as “God’s Waiting Room,” both for people and cars, it seems, so there are many opportunities for classic car spotting. Just encountered a 1953 Mercury Monterey hardtop the other day on the road, perfectly restored, so they’re out there!
Great site, keep up the good work, guys!
Don, thanks for your comment, and welcome.
It’s possible (probably likely) that I may have missed one somewhere along the way, maybe not looking at it from the right angle or so. I bet Palm Springs has some fine CCs. If you ever want to do a write-up of one of your finds, we always welcome submissions. Just send a text and pictures to me at the Contact form.
Great to hear the story of the lady & her Cadillac Don, thanks
I really can’t fault the styling of any ’60s Cadillacs. From year to year, they changed just enough and kept just enough the same, and were unmistakable for any other car.
After ’70 every GM full-size seemed like a blurry photocopy of all the others.
I rather like a short deck. I’d prefer it to be the shortest possible with an acceptable boot space, and no larger. I’d also like the bonnet to be shorter, VERY short. Only cars with mighty straight-8s are worthy of the long bonnets. Others are just faking it, especially cars with the poor man’s V8 masquerading as luxury. The only V engine I consider worthy of an ultra luxury car is a V16, followed by a V12 for a less exalted model.
Luxury cars in America died with Locomobile and Packard (senior) and Duesenberg and Pierce-Arrow. Unlike marques like Rolls-Royce cars, which fell on hard times and were forced to decontent to survive, Cadillac was always a fake, a mere also-ran among Titans. It was the sheer engineering depth (and financial wherewithal) of General Motors that pushed Cadillac ahead of its rivals (see Cadillac V16). Mercedes-Benz realised this early on, and threw what resources it had into engineering a better car, while the bastards at GM basked in the glory of past years. In this market segment, it is necessary to keep pushing the envelope, regardless of success or failure of specific models or features. For example, neither GM nor MB had a good suspension for a top-of-the-line car. GM had failed with air susp, while MB hadn’t even tried. So MB did the smart thing and copied and refined the best suspension, Citroen’s, for the later models. Its amazing Citroen had it since ’54, and GM didn’t even bother a looksee.
Even now, GM has no true exclusive, i.e., halo luxury brand. Ironically, Mercedes Benz is in the same situation now, trying to push at once for volume (A-C class) *and* exclusivity within the same brand (S-600). The Maybach experiment is now officially a failure. BMW has Rolls, VW has Audi for volume and no real halo brand, although it is trying to make Bugentley into one. With the direction Caddy is going in with the volume-chasing BMW-fighters, GM should probably buy a real luxury brand like Duesy or Packard and make a hell of a large, gas guzzling, floating, barge of a car that can whip a lesser sports car, and look good while doing it. The only car that is moving in this direction seems to be the 300, but that isn’t from GM, nor is it a full-on luxury brand.
Sorry for rambling, but I hate to see a mid-level brand like Cadillac elevated to `Standard of the World’ (GM marketing BS), or called a `floating barge’ (MB marketing BS). There is no luxury without engineering.
American luxury depended on the Lido effect of hanging FAKE touches all over enormous cars comfortable ride thru soft mushy suspension was cheap and easy. Making luxury car drive properly like a Benz or Roller costs money on the engineering side MB copied Citroens system RR licenced it and consequently both those cars handle well at autobahn speeds and stop and steer properly.
I’ve driven an older Rolls, its just as soft and as mushy as a Cadillac, but with 10x’s the headaches.
Thats the real difference Carmine those that can really afford luxury cars let the dealership worry about the faults if you have problems with repair and running costs you should stick to simple peasant cars
As they used to say, a Rolls Royce never breaks down. It only “fails to proceed.”
and they “fail to proceed” quite often.
They aren’t that complicated, at least the old ones,a 70′s Rolls is like a big American car with a few odd bits in it, hey the air conditioning and automatic trans are GM units I’m sometimes tempted to snag a 70′s vintage old Rolls of craigslist for like $5k and go to town on it.
The suspension and braking systems are complicated and expensive if they go wrong the rest is simple but the cheap purchase price is only the down
RR is exactly the same kind of fake luxury as Cadillac. As a commenter on the RR Corniche said, apart from the wood, the interior is straight out of a Checker Cab. RR’s reputation is not based on the shitty 70s cars, but pre- Silver Ghost cars. Of course, going further back we run into Daimler, the *real* McCoy, to which RR was a recent pretender.
The only big mystery I’ve seen in the luxury field is that even though the age of `engineering is luxury’ came into full force, Citroen did not become a world beater. So much wasted potential. Maybe the buyers want innovation, but not too much of it eh?
Sorry, but Cadillac from the late 1920s through the early 1960s really was the “Standard of the World.” It was not a fake, and the cars were far superior to anything from Europe. Their only equals were Packard and Lincoln (through the mid-1930s).
Standard of the World due to a steel roof and mass production? Applying modern manufacturing techniques to a pseudo-luxury brand did less for Cadillac than the demise of Duesenberg, Pierce-Arrow, Locomobile &c. Packard barely survived for some time but at the cost of serious brand erosion (similarly to Rolls Royce). Any of those brands of automobile was luxury. Cadillac was an upstart also-ran. Presidents and Royalty travelled in Pierce-Arrow. The lesser said about Lincoln the better.
I’ll reiterate that there has been no true top of the line luxury marque from GM, ever. All the American and European luxury autos are dead. Cadillac, and to a lesser extent MB, simply filled this vacuum with marketing BS and high prices. At least their cars were well engineered at first, until the Japanese showed everyone how its done. As for Cadillac initially being superior to European marques, that’s definitely true, but I’ve not mentioned any old European luxury marque. However, Hispano-Suiza, Delage, Delahaye, Bugatti, Daimler were dead or dying and Alfa Romeo, Rolls, Bentley were severely moving downmarket in the quest for survival. The chronological list of Japan’s State Cars is a veritable barometer of luxury marque prestige: Daimler, RR Silver Ghost, MB 770 (W07)/Packard, Cadillac Series 75, Nissan Prince Royal, Toyota Century Royal.
The President of USA travels in a Cadillac, sure, but he should be in a Pierce-Arrow, like Woodrow Wilson. GM should probably buy Packard if it feels capable of building a new true luxury car to show Lexus, Bentley and others how its done.
“GM should probably buy Packard if it feels capable of building a new true luxury car to show Lexus, Bentley and others how its done.”
50 years too late for that, bro.
As I’ve remarked elsewhere, I bought a 66 Deville convertible in 1980. It had been a little old lady car, and spruced up by the second owner when I bought it. Baby blue with a leather interior, sporting new paint, top, and new front bumper ends, it was an impressive machine. I was 28 when I bought it, really thought I’d arrived.
Mileage was 8 MPG. That 429 was thirsty. The day I bought the car, I watched the gas gauge drop. Shortly after I bought the car, the brake pedal went to the floor. It seems that the entire brake system needed replaced. Everything from the wheel cylinders to the hydraulic lines leaked. A $ 600 repair in 1980, a great deal of money. Front shocks were bad. At a car show, a Cadillac owner asked me if I wanted to know if I had a good one. I replied yes, and he lifted the rubber trunk mat to show me the huge holes in the trunk near the wheel wells.
I owned the car for 5 years, and when I sold it, it still looked and drove great. I wish I had kept it and fixed it further, but one day buying tires finished me. The brackets holding the rear fender skirts were rotted away, and held only by the center locking mechanism.
Mechanically, the car drove flawlessly, had 70K miles when I sold it. Unfortunately, that Caddy was the only “antique” car I’ve ever owned that would be worth any real money. A semi rust bucket, but I’d buy it back now in an instant. Cheers!
Forced to admit that I owned one. IIRC it was a 78 fleetwood with a 425. I know it had a 425 but not sure about the rest. It was my social climbing ex wifes first shot at luxury. I actually have to admit that I liked the way it drove but agree with a previous commenter that it would have ben best used as a driveline transplant. Preferably in a chevy truck I had at the time. A few seconds worth of inattentive driving and she rear ended a large chrysler. The shift to lincoln towne cars was underway in my family.
To answer the opening question, I think I see an iceberg. It did nothing better than the 85 and 86 lincoln town cars that came next. It did have massive torque but the lincolns had a better gearbox that seemed to make up for a lot of that. I had a hard time seeing it in a light that made it better than various olds and buicks that were available. Of course I thought the towne cars were no better than a lot of Fords that were out there. Just more expensive.
One thing is certain. Things always change. In my opinion Ford and Chrysler were better adapted to suit changing needs whether that showed up in sales or not. For a guy that started with a misfiring 46 studebaker flathead six, when I look back the Nissan Cube and the S10 in my driveway are engineering marvels.
These ’65-66 GM big cars are some of my all-time favorites. These Cadillacs were very understated compared to the big fins that came before, and the every bigger and gaudier boats that came later. Dad drove a ’64 Continental, which was even more elegant.
Engineering-wise, GM did enter a very conservative era, and despite the critics here, It worked very well for the times. ’65 marked the beginning of the TH400 for one thing, replacing a variety Buick, Olds and Chevy units. Cadillac retained its own exclusive engine, The Buick Electra 225 still had a “nailhead”. An Imperial had nothing, except a 1950′s BOF structure, over a Chrysler, or even Dodge, when it came to mechanicals.
Theer is a pretty clear demarcation between 1966 and 1967 in quality, in and out. The 1966 Cadillacs are the last year to have interior fitments that I would be willing to put up against absolutely anything, including any Lexus you want to put up for comparison. 1967 marked the noticeable beginning of a long shift to more plastic and generic GM parts bin stuff. Outside, the 1966 cars had better paint jobs (1967-68 seemed to fade fast). Most importantly, the 1965-66 Cadillacs, especially the eight window Fleetwood Brougham, have timelessly elegant styling that you could still sell today — not in mass numbers maybe, but to enough people to make it worth doing as a low production ultra exclusive halo car. I’d like to see someone take a ’66 Fleetwood, drop in a more up to date drivetrain, and otherwise modify it to be legal as a new car today while making the least possible change to its appearance inside or out. Just to show it could be done.
I suspect the commenter who got single digit MPG in a ’66 had a car with a worn engine or out of tune. I owned a couple of 1963 Cadillacs and generally got around 15 MPG.
What if GM had the guts to do something like Chrysler did with the Challenger…a very updated big body Cadi with completely modern running gear, a big displacement small block Chevy (sorry-GM engine), and sleek modern lines to go along with those original styling cues. Oh, and make it as long as a city block, with that giant gunsite hood ornament proudly holding up the long flat hood.
Add a dose of cool, charge $75-100k for it and be hailed as the greatest brand revitalization/halo car ever. Rappers will completely forget the Escalade ever existed.
If only the asses weren’t out chasing BMW, of all things. But we can still dream.
I once read that the Cadillac 390 of 1959-63 was significantly better on gas than the 429 in the 1964-67 models. That said, my own 63 never hit double digits, although I am sure that it needed carb work.
So we’ve seen various Caddys spanning several decades and commented on them extensively. Being the old GM fanboy I am, I routinely scour eBay Motors for old Cads, Oldseses and Buicks. Tonight, perhaps my favorite lead-in…ever…to an ad for a used Cad., and this kind of sums thing up well, I think:
Seller is describing his lightly used 91 Eldo. First three words are, and I quote: “Nice Little Car!”.
Hehehehehehehe
Thats the thing with Caddys now theve gone from being huge to tiny I saw a CTS parked next to a Holden last week and the Holden was bigger while the tanks of the 60s were mostly wasted space tiny cars are hardly luxury
…will live in a mews in Mayfair for the sake of the ‘W.1′ on his notepaper….
– George Orwell.
Luxury has nothing to do with size, or strength, or utility. Just like a Gucci handbag can’t hold more stuff than a regular one. It would probably be made in China too. GM tried to the last to build traditional luxury cars, but the buying public stayed away in droves, going to tiny BMW and Mercedes cars instead. This is the market reality, whether you and I agree with it or not. I like large, comfortable cars, where large==interior space, not wasteful pomp, but I realise I must be in the minority, considering the largest sellers in each price segment.
I’m wondering if too much has been made about Caddy being behind technologically. It’s true enough, but did it really matter to most buyers? Was the average Caddy buyer really interested in disc brakes? Did the avg. Caddy buyer even know what disc brakes were?
I suspect a sub-set of Caddy buyers went to MB because Caddy wasn’t exclusive enough. If they sold 200K units a year some were being bought by people who didn’t even belong to the country club.
This is not to say that there wasn’t a small cadre of luxury buyers who appreciated the refinement of a MB. But the idea of mass defection from Caddy because of technological features strains credulity.
Not technological features by themselves, but the marketing that goes with it. Read the MB ad in this article itself. How would a socialite feel at a cocktail party if she was the only one without four wheel disc brakes and fuel injection? Not that she gave a damn about them herself. At first she could counter by climate control and power seats, but once MB had them, the game was up for Cadillac. The auto snobs set trends, and the rest buy like them. Caddy was once the snobs’ choice, now its MB, or BMW for the gauche. Audi’s still an also-ran in the prestige stakes, but any German luxury car is better than a Caddy.
Refinement of MB? Oh please. The early MBs were (luxury) penalty boxes, upto and including the Heckflosse.
A female socialite circa 1965 would never have been talking disc brakes and fuel injection.
What the MB owner meant when he spoke of disc brakes is “You won’t see any people of color driving one of these”. (I’ll leave it to you to translate that into 1965 language) Caddy’s association with African-Americans (exaggerated as it may be) was a big reason for some to go to MB.
Let’s face it, the Caddy was way more comfy, more powerful, and just generally nicer. You’re right, MBs were penalty boxes in the early years (sold at Stude dealers) and for the most part, the disc brakes were not making up for the lack of comfort and convenience.
Another big reason was that working class folks who were careful savers just might get hold of a 98 or a 225 and they had an almost Caddy. Our neighbor, a carpet installer, had a new for ’72 Olds 98. How I admired that car. My parents preferred more kids toluxury cars. No blue collar guys were rolling in a MB in ’65.
Socialites in the 1960s let their husbands do the driving and car buying, and you can be assured that their husbands DID know about disc brakes and fuel injection.
And the idea that people bought Mercedes to avoid driving cars being bought by African-Americans is just plain silly. There were valid reasons to prefer a Mercedes to a Cadillac by 1965, and vice versa. By 1973, however, Mercedes had the definite advantage.
Cadillac had long been a brand that targeted and sold to well to do African Americans since the depths of the depression, so it’s a bit silly to think that any racist buying habits all of a sudden took hold in 1965 when The Supremes mentioned the Cadillacs they bought with their first royalty checks from “Where Did Our Love Go?”
Given how racially segregated classes were and with an overwhelming lack of media knowledge of what African Americans drove, I’m pretty sure very few people turned their noses up at Cadillacs because “Well to do” people of color drove them.
Here’s an interesting article on the subject: http://faculty.quinnipiac.edu/charm/CHARM%20proceedings/CHARM%20article%20archive%20pdf%20format/Volume%2013%202007/165-169_myers_dean.pdf
The truer assumption was Cadillac’s time of being that “aspirational” brand for American car buyers was quickly coming to an end by the mid/late 1960s for a variety of reasons I cited: quality slides, lack of leadership and lack of exclusivity. Mercedes was the one that brought all of the goods people looked for as tastes changed.
While the automatic was still harsh and the inline 6 was still too high strung for American tastes in the 250S in the ad, the 280SE 4.5 was the first bullet. the 450SE/SEL of 1972-73 was the fatal shot. And the Oldsmobile Ninety Eight/Buick Electra 225 factor is not ignored either, as it’s well known that Oldsmobile still had its image as a well engineered car, the Ninety Eight’s appeal as a “smart mans Cadillac” in full force by 1965.
Just imagine if Cadillac had debuted a fuel injected Double Six in time for MB’s V8 in a new, low car! Olds and Buick could have kept their V8s.
That was an interesting article.
I think you are underestimating how powerful race/class was (and is) as a factor. I’m not suggesting it suddenly started in ’65, the attitudes had been around forever. You’re right, no one rejected Caddy because a few well to do Black entertainers had a Caddy. It was the less well to do Black “nobody” as well as the White working class “nobodies”. The need to set one’s self apart from the “common” man was always part of the luxury car market.
Yes MB was a better car, from a gearhead perspective. It drove better, it stopped better. That was genuinely appreciated by a small number of MB buyers. But I don’t buy the idea that people who had always enjoyed boulevard cruisers suddenly started to care about handling and braking. The buyers had to have some way of explaining why they’d shelled out for a car that had less power and less comfort – engineering was the “rationale”. A bit later, “driving experience” would be the rationale for BMW. The real reason was to set themselves apart – Caddys were being bought by people who were too ordinary. I will say it was in large part class prejudice as well as racial prejudice. The desire for exclusivity was part of it and Caddy was becoming ever less exclusive – both in real cost terms and in terms of how the cars looked and felt. People were starting to notice the sharing of parts between GM divisions.
It’s a complex subject, and necessarily somewhat subjective. There are contradictory indicators. In some well to do neighborhoods I’m seeing more Caddys – these are neighborhoods that are 99% white and where 5 years ago everyone had a Lexus. The models are SRX and CTS. No Escalades, but then, no other big SUVs either. I’m seeing more Lincolns in these same neighborhoods too. It looks as if the well to do are shifting to a buy American attitude (but this is Mich so it might just be a save Mich attitude)
Can’t agree with you on the last comment – 1950′s M-B’s were not plush but hardly a ‘penalty box’ in the sense of a Chevette or the like.
If we are talking mid-late 60′s, M-B’s had changed by then, and I imagine that once people had a test drive they would struggle to go back to a lumbering Cadillac.
I agree. And by 1971, the big C body Cadillac became a juddering, shaking, quivvering blob of Jello. The Mercedes, meanwhile, sounded and felt like an expensive car should sound and feel. By 71, a lot of the stuff you touched in the Caddy felt cheap, or at least very average. The stuff you touched in a Benz felt like quality, expensive stuff.
I would go so far as to say that if the 71 DeVille had been built like the 61 with the exclusivity of the 61, it would have been a lot more successful.
MBs were a “penalty box” well into the 80s.
As a current owner of a 1981 280E I beg to differ….
sean: I wouldn’t call them penalty boxes. Post 60s MB cars were either industry-leading or at least as good as the competition. If quality had not taken a nosedive in recent decades, they would still be far ahead of others. At present, though, an MB is as good as a BMW is as good as a recent Cadillac. Lexus and Honda are better cars, if only they could get a coherent design out.
On the other hand, MB (and BMW) cars *were* awfully small and cramped, especially their non-flagship models. While that may be excellent for the narrow cobblestone streets in MB’s corporate office, the rest of the world wants bigger cars. We are seeing this in every passing generation of cars which seems to get bigger and heavier, to the chagrin of some people, not me though. I like big!
Then you haven’t ridden in a nice V8 W126 car. A 560SEL was undoubtedly the best luxury sedan of the 1980s from any carmaker.
It took Toyota’s engineering might distilled into the the the Lexus LS400 (sold well under cost at its introduction in 1990) to knock the S-class off its throne.
John H: New 50′s MBs were penalty boxes in every sense of the term, though leather-covered ones. No aircon or even an automatic here, and priced ridiculously high. These cars are similar to the Japanese phase of the 80s, when they made very well engineered shitty cars. The *real* luxury cars were the prewar design 300 Adenauer series, which were horribly obsolescent, but kept in the market by continuous improvements and the patronage of the Sultan of West Germany. It survived a decade until the 600 put an end to luxury pretenders worldwide. Most of MB’s modern reputation is based on the 600 and contemporaneous S-Class. The comparison with a 70s Chevette does not seem relevant to me. Compared to a 50′s Ponton MB, a Chevy Tri Five seems the better car to me, luxury or not. By the late 60s, with the powerful engines of the 300 series combined with engineering advances of the Ponton in new, smaller bodies (muscle car?), the writing on the wall was clear. V8s and up-to-date creature comforts finally sealed Caddy’s fate.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nuzz/4752770913/
Look what I found! Very similar photo by a different photographer. That’s cool. If I were there I probably would have taken the same picture without knowing about the other two.
Great photo. One of my all time favourite designs. I like me some garish fins! This design era is perhaps the last time Mercedes copied Cadillac, although they won’t admit it to this day.
Edit: My new wallpaper!
I own a 1966 fleetwood 2 door cadillac hardtop with green interior (original). I am looking for green rubber floor matts with cadillac logos. I am unable to find these items and it would be very helpful if someone could help me find these items.
One design innovation that made its debut in the 1965-66 Cadillacs: curved side glass.