1965 Cadillac Comparison: Cadillac Calais Sedan Vs. Coupe De Ville – Was The Budget Caddy A Bargain Or A Bust?

In 1965, Cadillac replaced its long-running Series 62 line with the new entry-level Calais, which could theoretically put you in a new Cadillac for around $5,000 — only a little more than a moderately equipped Buick Electra 225 or Oldsmobile 98. However, the Calais was never a great success, and both buyers and dealers strongly preferred the more expensive De Ville. Let’s take a closer look at the 1965 Calais and De Ville and see how they compared.

 

I should start by saying that you shouldn’t leap to any conclusions based on the different body styles of the cars featured here. Although the Sable Black Calais is a pillared four-door sedan while the Aspen White Coupe de Ville is a two-door hardtop, both body styles were offered in both trim series. Both series also offered a four-door hardtop body style, which contemporary buyers preferred by a narrow margin. (I chose the two specific cars in the color photos mostly because each had a good selection of decent-quality interior and exterior shots.)

 

Both models were the same size — 224 inches long and 79.9 inches wide on a 129.5-inch wheelbase — and there was nothing to choose between them mechanically. Cadillac was all-new for 1965, with a subtly updated exterior over a new perimeter frame chassis with a new suspension. The engine was shifted forward about 6 inches from 1964, and the propeller shaft had constant velocity joints at both ends to allow it to be set lower, reducing the size of the driveline hump.

 

Side windows now used curved frameless glass, which allowed the doors to be reshaped to add about 3.5 inches of shoulder room in front and about 3 inches in back, and the dashboard was also redesigned for more knee room. In truth, you probably wouldn’t notice most of the changes unless you compared the ’64 and ’65 side by side. However, the return of a pillared sedan body style was novel; since 1957, most Cadillacs had been pillarless hardtops, plus a modest number of convertibles.

 

All Cadillacs shared the same powertrain in 1965: the 429 cu. in. (7,008 cc) V-8, with 340 gross horsepower, linked to Turbo Hydra-Matic, whose torque converter now had a variable-pitch stator on all but Fleetwood 75 cars. You got a 3.21 axle with air conditioning, 2.94 without, and the only powertrain option was a limited-slip differential, which cost $53.70 (or $52.59 — more on this point later). Even with curb weights in excess of 4,800 lb, performance was ample: Motor Trend, testing a De Ville convertible some 200 lb heavier than the black and white cars pictured here, managed 0 to 60 mph in a pretty-decent 9.5 seconds, the quarter mile in 17.2 seconds at 82 mph, and an observed top speed of 113 mph.

 

In a later era, you would expect the De Ville to have more standard equipment than the Calais, but this was still the heyday of the à la carte options model. Power steering, power brakes, heater, a clock, and front seat belts were standard on all Cadillacs, although the De Ville had standard power windows, which were optional on the Calais. Any other features available on the De Ville were also available on the Calais, most for the same prices.

 

Both of these cars were likely sold with one of the standardized accessory groups, which included Comfort Control air conditioning with automatic climate control, power windows for the Calais, a power seat, whitewall tires, door edge guards, and a radio. The Cadillac data book helpfully advised salespeople:

Most dealers find less resistance if the additional convenience items are sold as a package instead of itemizing each part. Those who do not use this method should consider changing. Sell more options by selling whole groups.

I suspect the black Calais had the Group 2 package, which included an AM/FM radio and listed for $1,033.85, while the Coupe de Ville had the Group 1 package, which had an AM radio and listed for $857.35.

 

The white De Ville also has Guide-Matic headlamp control, which were separate standalone options. So too were cruise control, power vent windows, power door locks, a tilt-and-telescope steering wheel, and automatic level control, the latter two new options for 1965. (You could also order all these latter items as a separate group, but since this added almost $600 more on top of the cost of the basic group, I suspect some buyers balked, especially there was usually no allowance for most of this extra equipment at trade-in time.)

 

Notwithstanding the power windows, which most Calais buyers ordered anyway (97.2 percent of all 1965 Cadillacs had them), most of the difference between the Calais and the De Ville came down to interior trim. There were several trim options available on each series, but the Calais had vinyl bolsters with a choice of basket-weave “Delhi” cloth or two-tone pinstripe “Delmar” cloth, while the De Ville offered a choice of “Delmar” cloth, honeycomb-weave “Drummond” cloth, or random-weave “Delta” cloth,” all with leather bolsters and a front center armrest. (Bucket seats and a center console were optional on the De Ville, but they were expensive and required leather upholstery.)

 

Leather was optional on Coupe de Ville and Sedan de Ville for an extra $140.90 (it was standard on convertibles). However, Cadillac was obliged to note that the leather upholstery option still included a fair amount of vinyl. For an additional $95.60 ($236.50 total), you could get “premium-priced full leather upholstery” like that of the Fleetwood Eldorado convertible. Full leather upholstery was theoretically available on the Calais in 1965, but it was a special order and cost a hefty $322.50, so I doubt many buyers bothered. (Starting in 1966, Cadillac no longer offered leather on the Calais even as a special order.)

 

About these prices: Cadillac released one set of manufacturer’s suggested retail prices when the 1965 models were introduced in September 1964. However, late in the model year, the prices for all models were lowered by around $100, and option prices were slightly reduced as well. In Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946–1975, John A. Gunnell suggests this price change was related to the UAW strike that shut down Cadillac’s expanded Clark Avenue assembly plant for more than two months in late 1964, which is wrong: The change actually reflected a reduction in the federal excise tax on passengers cars under the Excise Tax Reduction Act of 1965, which took effect on June 21, 1965. Since the excise tax was normally reflected in the list prices of new cars and optional equipment, this change affected the suggested retail prices of most cars sold in the U.S. — Cadillac announced its revised prices on June 22, the day after the law was enacted.

 

Before that price decrease, a Calais coupe listed for $5,059, $360 less than a Coupe de Ville, while a four-door Calais sedan or hardtop sedan listed for $5,247, $419 less than a Sedan de Ville. Even if you added power windows, which most Calais buyers did, a Calais coupe was $241.55 less than an equivalent Coupe de Ville, while Calais sedan buyers saved $300.55 compared to buying a De Ville.

 

Since the main tangible differences between the two series were a front armrest and different seat fabrics, you might think the Calais was an attractive deal. After all, $241.55 in 1965 was the equivalent of $2,475.88 in March 2025 dollars, not an inconsequential amount of money, and the cheaper model gave you the same space, the same performance, the same features, and the same prestigious badge as the expensive one. However, most Cadillac buyers shied away.

 

Why? While the Calais interior gave away almost nothing to the De Ville in actual features, its basket-weave cloth upholstery seems awfully downmarket for a $5,000 car. I couldn’t find any non-brochure in-car photos of the pinstripe Delmar cloth, but the basket-weave Dehli cloth (which seems to have been more common) strikes me as more Chevy Bel Air than Beverly Hills. This also impacted resale value: If you traded in every year, as many Cadillac owners still did in these days, the Calais was worth $275 to $300 less than a comparable De Ville.

 

(Incidentally, when it came to resale value, your best bet in this period was a Coupe de Ville with air conditioning and leather upholstery. Buyers of new Cadillacs still favored the four-door hardtop, but the Coupe de Ville carried a premium as a used car, and leather upholstery might fetch more in trade-in value than you paid upfront.)

 

Ultimately, I think the bigger problem was that the Calais wasn’t enough cheaper to make it an attractive buy. Even with the 11th-hour price reduction, you were still going to spend at least $5,000 on a new Calais, which was a lot of money at the time, and ordering air conditioning, power windows, and other desirable options could still bring the final price to more than $6,000. In other words, the Calais was less expensive than the De Ville, but not meaningfully more affordable, so it didn’t open many new doors to Cadillac ownership, and its price positioning left it highly vulnerable to the likes of the Buick Electra 225 and Oldsmobile 98 Luxury Sedan, which offered more for less.

 

As a result, while Cadillac sold 123,080 De Villes for 1965 — 68 percent of the 181,435 Cadillacs the division built for 1965 — Calais production totaled only 34,211 units, and only 7,721 of those were four-door pillared sedans like the black car. (Neither buyers nor the trade seemed very keen on the pillared sedan, which consistently had the poorest sales and the weakest residuals; the Calais version was dropped after 1967, leaving only the two- and four-door hardtops.)

 

1965 was the best year for the Calais, whose sales shrank almost every year thereafter. By 1970, the series was selling fewer than 10,000 units a year, and I suspect it only survived through 1976 as a kind of commercial security blanket for nervous Cadillac sales managers.

 

The De Ville didn’t really cost that much more anyway, and until GM’s terminal de-contenting obsession really took hold in the ’70s, it was worth the extra money.

Related Reading

Museum Classic: 1965 Cadillac Sedan DeVille – Nothing Missing but the Garage Space (by Aaron65)
Vintage CL Road Test: 1966 Cadillac Calais – The “Economy Cadillac” (by Paul N)
Curbside Classic: 1965-66 Cadillac Sedan DeVille – The King’s Last Stand (by Laurence Jones)
The Inflation Adjusted Prices Of New Cadillac Coupe DeVilles (1949-1993) And In Price Per Pound – The True Cost Of A Cadillac Over The Decades (by Paul N)
Vintage C/D Review: Six Luxury Cars – 1965 Rolls-Royce, Mercedes 600, Cadillac, Lincoln, Jaguar and Imperial (by Paul N)
1963 Oldsmobile 98 Luxury Sedan – When Olds First Leapfrogged Buick On The Sloan Ladder (by Paul N)