(first posted 10/28/2012) The all-new 1967 Cadillac Eldorado (CC here) was GM’s proud new personal luxury coupe and the most expensive car of its kind. The artist formerly known as The Standard of the World dazzled Americans with its knife-edge styling, front-wheel drive, 340-hp, seven-liter V8 and every available comfort and power amenity known to the fine engineers at GM.
The homely little R-10 (CC here) was an evolution of a line of very compact rear-engine Renault cars dating back some 20 years . It cost about one-fourth as much as the Eldorado, and its list of comfort amenities began and ended with excellent seats.
This admittedly specious comparison is mostly irrelevant, save for one vital aspect: Brakes and tires.
Most especially so the brakes, which obviously are among any car’s most critical and fundamental safety devices. The 1967 Eldorado came with standard drum brakes that were totally overwhelmed by the massive weight of its FWD powertrain. A Car & Driver test yielded a shocking 386-foot stop from 80 mph:
“Our Eldo test car carried drum brakes all around and managed to smoke and slew to a halt—sideways in the road—in a pitiful 386 feet…which forced one observer to ask where they [GM] found the moral justification for marketing a car that they knew was too heavy for its brakes. The question prompted a certain amount of hand-wringing and eye-rolling, whereupon they produced a heretofore unseen Eldo equipped with optional disc brakes. This car was much better—stopping in 312 feet with vastly improved directional stability—and was intended, according to Cadillac spokesmen, for the ‘performance-minded customer.’ This evidently means that the poor dolt who is not interested in ‘performance’ is also apparently not interested in being able to stop effectively…and the absence of disc brakes on all Eldorados is simply bad news, especially when the extra $100 added to the base price is relatively unimportant on an $8,000 car.”
Even 312 feet for the disc-brake version was poor performance for a new, top-tier car capable of 120 mph. But to release the Eldorado with drum brakes–a shocking failure that GM rectified in a few years–was another slice in GM’s self-inflicted, decades-long death by a thousand cuts. It’s not as though disc brakes were unknown to them; after all, the Corvette had had them since 1965 (also a few years too late).
Especially so since the Eldorado was of course heavily based on the 1966 Toronado, which shared the same drum brakes and had already been criticized for the overwhelmed front brakes.
It’s important to note that a vehicle with a large front weight bias like the FWD Eldorado and Toronado are particularly demanding on their front brakes, because of the additional weight transfer under braking, which leaves very little weight on the rear tires, rendering the rear brakes almost useless under a full panic stop.
Meanwhile, the R-10 came with four-wheel disc brakes standard. It could stop cleanly from 70 mph in 190 ft, and do so repeatedly. In a way, it’s almost overkill that the R10 had four wheel discs, since a rear engine car like it doesn’t have the weight transfer problem, and actually uses its four brakes almost equally in a rapid stop. That’s why rear engine cars like the Corvair and VW had much better braking than would be expected given their modest-sized brake drums.
In addition, the R-10 was shod with Michelin X steel-belted radials, as most French cars had been for well over a decade. There’s no need to enumerate the vastly superior handling, safety and durability of radials, but Detroit didn’t begin to take them seriously for almost another decade.
Why no discs and radial tires, GM? Too expensive? Maybe a call to Renault would have been in order.
(Postscript: please note that the point of comparison is brakes and tires, not other aspects of these two very different vehicles)
I remember when I had my new 1965 Barracuda. Radial tires were practically unheard of at the time except for people who read R&T or C&D. I found a set of Michelins that would fit the Barracuda; they were weird-looking, dark brown instead of black like tires are supposed to be, and the tread pattern made a whining sound that increased with vehicle speed. But they did contribute to the handling of the car – I thought it was a good tradeoff.
Oddly enough, it was my Dad who decided to replace the 2nd set of 4-ply Goodyears on the ’65 Dodge Custom 880 with Michelin X’s. This would be around 1968 or so. I remember him saying the ride and handling were vastly improved . . quieter as speed. He replaced those radials with Pirellis in 1971.
Both manufacturers started offering American car sizes . . . if I recall, B.F. Goodrich and Firestone started offering radials around 1969 or 1970 . . .
Also remember, GTOs offered nothing but drums for quite awhile.
B.F. Goodrich introduced its radial tires in 1967. They were initially to be standard equipment on the ’68 Mercury Colony Park wagon and optional on the Pontiac GTO and some Oldsmobiles. However, Goodrich had production issues and could not produce these tires in sufficient quantities so Mercury initially listed them as optional and discontinued the option in favor of Goodyear’s new Polyglas, which became the “in” tire of the late 1960s and early 1970s as a bias-belted fiberglass donut variety until Goodrich and other Akron tiremakers started getting into radials in a big way – starting with Goodyear’s president Charles Pilliod.
I remember as a child (please recall that I wasn’t born until 1977) seeing posters in road side rest stops (my family traveled extensively by car) explaining the differences in bias ply vs radial tires and how radial tires had a little “buldge” at the bottom when properly inflated.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh… American makers, all they cared about with tires was that they were black, round, and cheap. As long as the tire was cheap, the first two didn’t matter. 😛
It wasn’t just autommakers, my grandfather would find the cheapest tires imagineable as replacements, and never ever would he replace 4 tires at once, and it wasn’t a money issue, some older folks were tightwads about things like this. I mean those ads explaining radial tires weren’t aimed at car makers were they?
And if the “standard of the world” had stepped up and said; “Radial tires and disc breaks are now standard, your safety as our customer is too precious to us.”
Think how quickly the rest of the industry would have fallen into line. Many of those cheap ass customers who continued to buy radial tires might have actually seen the light. I’m sure many of them had the attitude of: “Well it is good enough for the OEM, so it’s good enough for me.”
Disc brakes were made standard for the Eldorado in 1968, and standard across the whole Cadillac line up by 1969, Cadillac also had 4 wheel disc brakes standard on the Eldorado by 1976. Oh the humanity!
I would still rather have an Eldorado with a tree growing through the hood than a concours quality Renault anything, can we get back to classic car stories and less hit jobs on 45 year old cars and their manufacturers?
Don’t buy it, Carmine. GM went bust and stiffed its creditors for billions because of marketing decisions like this. The whole attitude was, “Well, it’s good enough for average drivers who will never know the difference.”
Well, one by one, they did.
GM went from 60% market share to 15% today. Obviously did something wrong along the way.
Exactly, Canucknucklehead. I couldn’t have said it better.
Sorry I don’t buy that for one minute. I’m not getting into the stiffing the creditors arguement but the market share drop is pure BS. Case point. GM still builds just as many cars as does Ford,Toyota or VW. While the numbers are down did it ever occur to anybody that the demand for new cars is also down? And did it occur to anybody that there are way more models available today than there was 20-30 years ago. Riddle me this? How many Vegas and other H-Bodies did GM sell compared to whatever JapanInc model? How many J-Cars did GM sell compared to whatever JapanInc model? Name a GM model. If anything GMs crime was rebadging compared to your proof of evidence.How many trucks does GM sell now,compared to it’s top selling car models?Buying trends change. History proves it. If one was to believe most of the crap everyone believes that is the gospel than GM would have gone under many moons ago. In other words if GM is such a failure than why do they continue to run neck to neck with the top 3? What market share does Ford,Toyota or VW have here in the US? No matter what you say ain’t nobody ever again will aproach those numbers in market share.
It’s a legitimate point that goes to current attitudes towards corporations versus government and how the roles should fall.
GM, the world’s largest corporation at that time – with 50% market share to show for it – could have easily led the way with properly-sized radial tires and disc brakes but in 1967 it was the bean counters who ruled over the designers…not the other way around as it pretty much was before 1958.
These were the very same bean counters who ordered changes to the 1960 Corvair that rendered a good design dangerous (at least the issues were largely corrected by ’63-’64)…who ensured the Vega would be a total POS despite John DeLorean’s attempts to make it right…read Aaron Severson’s outstanding Vega history…
http://ateupwithmotor.com/compact-and-economy-cars/195-chevrolet-vega-cosworth.html
…and on and on.
As stated elsewhere on CC, I’m actually a GM fanboy who would vastly prefer a ’67 Eldo to any Renault. But I’m not blind and don’t consider this comparo a hit job at all.
Nice thing is, today we can change the spindles and get the good stuff. Back then, had GM made radials and discs standard on Cadillacs…say in 1962-63, the rest of the industry would have fallen in line much more quickly.
What really disappointed me about GM was their cars were, up to about 1967 or so, really honest, well engineered cars that were a good deal for the money. Canada was just chock a block with Chevy II’s and Pontiac Beaumont. The Belair was also popular and all shared Stovebolt power or the venerable 283 V-8. What a classic combo that was.
Then around 1968 they threw in the towel and let the accountants run the company. DeLorean describes it well in his book, in that the company was just so huge and labyrinth it had its own karmically bad inertia that was really hard to change. I know since I worked at a GM dealership and whoa Nellie was that an evil place to work.
To this day I don’t trust anything GM says since they have sold so much junk. I love the constant refrain, “Well, we know our last cars were crap, but this new one is just Jim-Dandy.” Note that the reliability ratings of the much lauded Cruz suck, as do the Malibu.
Some things never change and it’s amazing GM still finds suckers.
the R10 was way more fun to drive. The Caddy was a boat.
Hey, the owners manual of my ’72 Dodge Dart specifically said “do not use radial tires.” Probably because they figured the ride would be harsher without more modern “radial tuned” shocks.
It could also be because they knew that the potential higher cornering forces would exceed the capacity of other components. The wheels in particular but also the undersized ball joints. I tried running radial tires on my factory Scout II wheels and it was impossible to keep a wheel cover on the fronts. Got some rusty chrome modular wheels, put the same tires and same wheel covers on them and the front wheel covers didn’t go flying off when going around a corner any more.
Are you implying the front wheels themselves flexed? If not, what caused the wheelcovers to jump ship? That sounds like a dumb question but I’m curious.
Yes the front wheels were flexing. It is not uncommon with steel wheels. The whale 9C1 Caprices were notorious for it and throwing their wheel covers. The problem was said wheel covers were integral to the cooling of the front brakes. So when the police dept found it too expensive to keep replacing the wheel covers at ~$100 a pop say hello to brake fade and even shorter brake life.
those old mopars did not track in a straight line with radials. They wandered all over.
Nope, they wouldn’t have. Every car today is better than any car 15 years ago – it’s just a new reason for them to get abused.
My dad was a complete tightwad too, but at the first tire replacement on our 1969 Dodge Monaco he sprang for a set of Goodrich radials. I was shocked, I tells ya!
That didn’t work out so well when Ford put under spec’d and poorly made Firestone and then set the PSI too low to mitigate their poor suspension design on the 1st and 2nd gen Explorers.
My understanding is that Firestone wanted the pressure set at 30 PSI while Ford wanted 22 PSI. They both compromised at 26, and we know how that ended.
I owned a ’94 Mazda Navajo (Explorer) that I bought new in Kingman, AZ. When reading through the owner’s manual, I was shocked to see the recommended tire pressure at 26 PSI. 26 PSI! Was that a misprint? Apparently not, for the door jamb sticker also had 26 PSI. Well I tried keeping the tires at an honest 26 PSI for a while and the vehicle just didn’t feel right. I felt like I was driving on 4 marshmallows with the parking brake left partially on. So after a couple of months, I ignored the recommendation and ran my tires at 30 PSI. Now it felt and handled “right”.
Fast forward to the year 2000. After the Ford Explosion debacle, Mazda sent me a modification to my owner’s manual to change the recommended tire pressure to 30 PSI – which I had been doing anyway. And I had gotten rid of the original Firestones anyway in ’98, not due to worn out tread but because of sidewall cracking from dry rot in the hot sun.
Yup I too found the 26psi recommended for my 95 Explorer to be too soft and mushy. I upped it 32psi, and have left it there for at least 10 years, it handles better and rides a bit better actually.
I also lowered mine an inch, which Ford should have done to begin with.
Having owned a Firestone shop, we saw lots of the separated FR480 series tires, which in fact was a fine tire. It just never belonged on an SUV like the Explorer, especially one with about a ton of unsprung, swing-axle weight. The fact was, almost all the tires we saw that were supposedly bad were worn out beyond safe tolerances anyway
I believe there was enough blame to go around to Ford, the vehicle owners and Firestone, that the point is moot now. Though I blame mostly the inept drivers at the time.
I’ve made sure that I’ve kept good tires on it, and as such, have spun it at highway speeds on dry pavement. Tire shop didn’t listen to my recommendation to put 32psi in the two new tires I bought before I went on a trip, and put 26psi in them. low rear tires makes the Explorer tail-happy, and I didn’t catch it before I left. We get down the road, someone cuts gf who was driving off, She yank the wheel hard left, and a perfect setup for a fishtail happens. tried to control it, but she didn’t have the knowledge to correct it quickly enough, it comes around twice at 65mph.
Worst thing was she soiled her pants fearing the reputation of the ‘instant rollover’ Explorer, knocked the dirt off the sidewalls and I drove to a gas station to check tire pressures.
I was in the used tire business at the time this happened and I have to agree that the tires were fine unless they were completely worn out and under inflated.
Had a set on my personal truck at the time and thought highly of them. I had a swb 78 Chevy, an old city of somewhere truck with a 305 and an automatic, no other options.
Ran a used set of those Firestones for a year without any problems.
yes! my friend bought a 2 door explorer new ignored the low tire pressure recommendation and never had a problem. when he was thinking about replacing the tires, he got a recall letter and brought it in for new tires which i believe were free. shortly after that, he bought a new daily driver, and he’s been using the explorer as his “parts runner” ever since.
My gut says Ford skated in the media on the whole 1st gen Explorer debacle…then again, as confessed above…I’m a GM guy. 🙂
No. The blame goes on Firestone. They wanted to kill people long before the Exploder POS came along with those 721’s. These are just tires for shitstains.
i did have a pair shred on me while i was passing someone once. that was not fun.
Firestoned should have been bankrupted by the FTC and the Justice Department for pushing the “Firestoned 500” radial tires. Infamous for belt breakage.
When the dust settled after the “congressional investigation”, Firestoned sold the same defective tires under the “721” name, with (predictably) the exact same results. I bought a used car with 721s on it, the first 721 broke the belt within a short time thereafter. I think the second 721 went about a month later. I didn’t keep the remaining two–they were replaced before they could fail.
Firestoned management should have gone to prison. They could have been cellmates with Ford management doing time for Pintos, and the later Ford management doing time for the Explorers.
This would be a better country if white-collar criminals went to prison in addition to getting fined.
I read that Firestone designed the tires to Ford’s specs. I read that it was Ford that recommended the lower inflation because the Explorer had a suspension not really designed for a raised passenger vehicle – that the Explorer was built as a pickup mod. Consequently he Explorer suffered from inherent ride and handling probs and the lower tire pressure was meant to deal with that. Unfortunately the lower inflation pressures caused heat buildup and tire failure in some circumstances.
Ford was making most of its profit in those days from the wildly profitable but poorly designed Explorer. And like w/ the Pinto, the corners they cut cost lives.
And had whitewalls, which sold at a higher price and thus more profitable.
GM’s behavior was par for the course. Even American “performance” cars were caricatures. The dominant trend of the time was to plop a big-block V8 into a mid-sized or compact platform and brag about its 0-60 times. Of less concern was the quality of braking and handling, which could be downright scary.
Auto execs could plausibly argue that American consumers wanted style and speed rather than balanced performance. For example, Pontiac’s GTO sold a whole lot better than its LeMans Sprint, with its overhead cam six. True, but Detroit also didn’t try very hard to sell a more European approach to performance.
What’s particularly odd is that tiny AMC would vainly try to follow in the Big Three’s footsteps rather than bridge American and European design sensibilities.
It was 1995….
I remember making the mistake of taking my fully laden ’70 Sport Fury with the 383 4bbl up to the mountains from Denver with four friends. We made it to the Eisenhower tunnel at 90mph, passing everyone, with the four core rad keeping the 383 nice and cool. Through the tunnel, it was fun going 90+ on the down hill I-70, something I’ve done numerous times in my parents old Taurus with nary a thought.
However, the curves got a bit tighter as the elevation decreased and the closer to Denver we got, while my brake pedal got harder and harder. Growing up in Kansas, brake fade was an abstract concept, something you only get when stopping on measuring tape like on Motor Week.
On one tyre squealing and deceptively sharp curve, I lost a wheel cover due to the heat build up. The brakes were no more, and I was in triple digits- this time not intentionally. Even with Chrysler’s superior handling, this 350hp bathtub on wheels was at its limits, and I didn’t much fancy a Mr Bill style flight over the edge. So I did what any sensible person would do, and made a B-line for the ‘Runaway Truck Ramp’ Or rather velcro gravel pit. They do work by the way- so much so, that the unbelted back seat passengers were flung into the front, and I was splatted against the windscreen.
Getting out, the wheels were so hot you could feel the heat when opening the door. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the car back out without a recovery truck, and while calling one, a friendly highway patrolman came over and helpfully informed me that the ramp was for trucks only. I was not in a position emotionally to respond with a witty reply or logical argument, and his insights into my poor character, assumed criminality, sexual preferences, inability to choose a reliable car, and the lack of common sense of my parents for not using birth control went largely unchallenged. However, at least I didn’t get a ticket- which would have been a certainty had I been my usual bolshy self. It really was a scene from SLC punk- five mohhawked punky kids in the countryside with a brown vinyl roofed Fury buried in the sand and gravel being berated and then strip searched in public by a redneck cop. (who was rather disappointed that we were straight edge and didn’t have anything he could send us down for.
Now, I was 18 at the time, and yes it was stupid. Since then, I wouldn’t exceed the speed limit going downhill- particularly in a 2.5 ton car with drum brakes. Plus, male pattern baldness has blessed me with the inability to grow hair styles that attract the attention and derision of the boys in blue.
Scary story.
Now that’s a tail worth repeating! Glad you were OK.
Downshifting didn’t help? I expected a large V8 to have gobs of engine braking.
You got no meaningful engine breaking with an automatic before lock-up torque converters came along.
Great story Brian. Those old cars are sure cool but they had some serious deficiencies. Especially in the braking department…
I dunno, my th-350 will lock the rear tires momentarily when downshifting at high speeds under braking. it’ll also hang you on the seat belts just coasting down in compression braking
> You got no meaningful engine breaking with an automatic before lock-up torque converters came along.
Not true at all, or else 727s are special in that regard. Also, in my experience, a lockup converter will disengage the lockup shortly after you take your foot off the gas, so it behaves the same as a non-lockup would.
Downshifting into second would have helped tremendously, and avoided the problem. That’s what you were supposed to do on long grades. But you needed to do it before going too fast.
If you’re already going faster than the max downshift speed, the tranny won’t downshift. Even if Brian had tried it at 90 or so, it wouldn’t have worked (depending on rear axle ratio).
I downshifted into second back in the day with my Dad’s ’71 Olds Custom Cruiser (455 4-bbl, THM 400) . . . but I also wasn’t going 90 . . . . I was doing 80! (I-80 westbound from Donner Summit).
Also, the HUGE CC had discs up front . . .
I was gonna say, my 77 will upshift at WOT into 3rd at around 80-85. I think max downshift is 75 into 2nd though.
Mom’s 92 LeSabre was absolutely worthless on grades with compression braking. I set the brakes glowing coming down Pikes Peak in it once, and I had it in 1st, and it would creep up to 40-45. My Explorer creeps up to 25 and stays there, and never once gives me brake trouble going up and down the peak the last 8 times I’ve done it.
That max-downshift speed probably saved a few driveline components over the years. I’ve carelessly shifted into “1” when I intended to go into “2”. It was cool that the transmission eventually downshifted when it needed to on its own instead of blowing the engine, snapping u-joints, stripping gears, or causing the rear wheels to lock up & cause the dumb driver (me) to lose control.
The THM400s were kind of weird — I decided to nail it in my ex ’73
Bonneville (400-2bbl) on an entrance ramp right after it had shifted into second gear. I nailed it and then immediately dropped it into L1 since it didn’t downshift on its own. The car dropped into 1 but automatically shifted into 2 even after the shifter had been in “1” a few moments.
I thought I read somewhere that a lot of Turbo 400s will eventually shift into “2” at high enough RPMs even though the shifter is held in “1”. I cannot validate that fact though.
Yes overspeed forced up shift while still in the “1” position is built into the TH400 and some other automatic trans.
A 727 will always downshift into 2nd gear. There is only an overspeed lockout when shifting into 1st gear.
would killing the engine help?
or that will messed up the tranny altogether, unlike merc auto tranny which has 2 pumps, one can actually tow start the car when running at 30 mph.
I was just talking about the gravel runaway ramps on I80/Donner Pass a few weeks ago with a CHP Diesel Bear. They are only used every 12-18 months now. Brake fires are much more common, representing ~50% of the calls for the Alta CalFire station.
Thankfully they just don’t make vehicles with brakes as weak and unreliable as they used to. Today having the Brembo red in your wheel wells gets you bonus points for any car with sporting aspirations.
the scary thing is most of the older tractor-trailers on the road have drum brakes all ’round.
Not a problem at all, as long as ‘Jake’ brakes are used. Those big Diesels have awesome compression braking power. Consider ‘Diesel’ Compression ratios!
I experienced brake fade once. In August 1970, in my avatar – my 1964 Impala SS convertible, going down one of San Francisco’s many hills, all of the sudden I couldn’t stop and when I did I wound up halfway through the intersection of Van Ness Avenue.
Minor that it was, I have never forgotten that incident and next time I was in the city, I was aware of my car’s limitations.
FWIW, our family mechanic decried the automakers for putting too-small 14″ wheels and inadequate tires on its cars back in the 1960’s.
PN would’ve liked to meet your family mechanic.
(9 years later)
Ha, going down Divisadero to the Marina in SF I almost totally faded the brakes on my (decades old, but newish brakes) 1956 Plymouth convertible with about 5 people in it. I had both feet on the power brake pedal, pushing as hard as I could, resulting in a barely noticeable slowing of the car. Fortunately, at Lombard I hit a green light. Otherwise…..
Chrysler products had completely different brakes (“Total Contact”) from the others, but that didn’t seem to help any. My uncle told about driving his ’53 New Yorker full of his family across New York state on Rt 20 (pre-Thruway, although a very nice drive today) and rolling downhill into a town with no brakes. He probably didn’t tell anyone either.
Kids today….you have no idea….in Buffalo we walked to school in snow past our heads (true) and it was uphill both ways! (possibly not true)
“Auto execs could plausibly argue that American consumers wanted style and speed rather than balanced performance.”
That logic is what helped kill the SVO Mustang. The consumer would rather pay a little less to get a GT with 2/3 of the overall package that the SVO offered.
Had Ford offered the SVO’s chassis with the GT’s infinitely superior 302 V8, maybe people would have paid for it. It’s hard to say that people wouldn’t pay for the superior brakes and suspension when they had to take the horrible turbocharged engine to get it.
To rebut both of you, there were few differences with the SVO vs. the GT Mustang chassis. The rear disc brakes was the major item, then the 16″ wheels, after that not much else was different. They both used Quadra-shock rear suspensions, and the front brakes were just as inadequate on the SVO as they were on the GT.
The V8 offered instant (and I mean INSTANT!) acceleration as opposed to the turbo 2.3, but once on boost, the old Lima motor performed rather well. It could not keep up to the pace the V8 set. There’s a lot to be said about easy torque.
There was an air of rarity about the SVO, but I truly believe if Ford had made more of them and priced them better, they would have sold better. IIRC, they were only available fully loaded, and for nearly the same money, you could get into a Turbo T-bird with similar performance and more cachet than a Mustang of any stripe. The $12K GT would smoke the SVO in most of the tasks that appealed to the buyer of a $12K GT.
The SVO had a narrower audience to be sure, but was being challenged by cheaper, faster competitors from within and without Ford. Witness the Turbo T-Birds, the GT Mustangs, the XR4Ti Merkurs. And that was the internal competition from the same company! Going up against the GM twins, the Chrysler twins (Daytona and Laser), assorted turbo Mitsubishis, Toyotas and Nissans…
It wasn’t going to end well for the SVO. I say that as one of the ‘true believers’ from back in the day…
The horrible turbocharged engine with more horsepower than the 302.
Surprisingly AMC offered a car with standard power front disc brakes in 1965 – the Rambler Marlin. The car came set up this way regardless of engine, six or V8. (The discs were made optional in 1966 in an attempt to stimulate Marlin sales by lowering the price. It didn’t work.)
The first American car I know of that came with standard 4-wheel disc brakes was the 1949 Crosley. Unfortunately these would lock up when driven on salted winter roads, so Crosley wound up reverting back to drums.
Although the four-wheel discs were commendable, it probably took the R 10 all day to get up to 70 mph (113 kph). I test drove a 1971 R 10 when my older sister was in the market for her first new car. It was a major snooze fest. She ended up buying a 1971 Toyota Corolla. Imagine, the Corolla came with a radio, carpeting, and underhood lighting, all as standard equipment. I think it also had front disc brakes.
The lovely Natalie also had an R 10. Probably one of the reasons why I dumped her sorry ass.
That’s not the point, is it? We’re not comparing acceleration, but deceleration.
Which car would you rather be in if a tanker truck suddenly pulled out 200 feet ahead of you?
I stand corrected, debased, and utterly ashamed. As I constantly lectured the race car drivers that I crewed for, brakes are the analog of the accelerator. In my physics classes I learned that braking and acceleration were one and the same-the rate of change of speed. In the case of the R 10, it was super fast when you hit the brake pedal, not so much when you hit the accelerator.
In answer to your question, I would rather be in the semi tanker.
Even if the tanker was full of gasoline?
Better than empty.
“The lovely Natalie also had an R 10. Probably one of the reasons why I dumped her sorry ass.”
Whoa, whoa. After reading your stories I have quite a crush on the lovely Natalie, show some respect, man. 🙂
Touche –
Hmm, if a tanker truck pulled out 200 feet in front of me, I’ll take the Eldorado! I mean…what if I was in the Simca and YOU were following me in a ’67 Eldorado?
Simca Sandwich! 🙂
The Eldo, if your going to go….go in style.
It depends . . Paul. If I had room to maneuver around – the Eldorado with a snap of the pedal and the 425 Caddy V-8 (’67) would’ve left the tanker back in last week. All subjective. If you DID have to stop, yes, the Renault.
Seriously, though: which car do people remember 45 years ago? The dumpy R-10 or a knife-edged, Bill Mitchell Eldorado?
Yes – drums on these cars (Riviera/Toronado/Eldorado) for ’67 was a lame-brained, cost-cutting stupid idea even for the time. Since these were premium cars at the time, discs should’ve been standard . . . either that or they should’ve had bus-sized drums! Hindsight . . .
The Rivieras aluminium drums are in fact very good, and at the time, in different magazines, they are rated on par or above disc brakes.
The 67 Cadillac V8 is a 429, the 425 came in 1977, and belongs to the 472-500-425-368 family.
Which car would you want to be in if the tanker was behind you?
Also when did VW put disks on the beetle? The choice for small import buyers where I lived was the Renault or the Beetle. Those who chose the Renault regretted it deeply, brakes or no brakes.
It’s a rhetorical question. It’s about braking distances, not passive safety.
Yes, VW was guilty, but to a somewhat lesser degree. It did start putting discs on the front of the Beetle 1500 in Europe in 1967, but withheld them from the US market, undoubtedly for penny-pinching reasons.
In the same 70-0 test as the R-10, the VW took 252 feet. But then we’re not talking about a very expensive luxury car capable of 120 mph, are we?
GM put front disc brakes on all Opel Rekords starting in 1965. It was just a family sedan with 4 and 6 cylinder engines, but it got disc brakes because that’s what was needed in the German market.
Triumph had introduced front disc brakes on inexpensive production cars in 1956. If a $2,000 TR3 could have disc brakes, why couldn’t cars that cost considerably more? People that lived in mountainous regions sure knew that what Detroit was selling was inadequate. GM held off on adopting disc brakes in the US because they thought they could get away with it and because every year they did they made $10 more on each of the millions of cars they sold. I find it funny when people defend this behavior. They’re like beaten wives that stand by their man.
One of Detroit’s objections to discs was that the brakes used by the likes of the TR3 were not beefy enough for large (3,500+ lb) American sedans. Of course, one could also say that was a disingenuous argument, since if GM or Ford had seriously wanted discs, there was no particular technical reason their suppliers couldn’t have obliged, as in fact they eventually did.
Disingenuous pretty much covers it. It makes sense that brakes on a 2,000 lb car weren’t sized for a car that weighed 75% more. That being said, it would have been interesting to put TR3 front brakes on a Chevy 210 and see if it did in fact not stop better and more times. I drove a ’71 Plymouth Scamp for a year or two and developed a driving style that didn’t depend on brakes as a result. Thanks to that experience, I was able to drive my 5-speed Audi from Radford to Blacksburg Virginia with complete master cylinder failure. Yaw was involved.
I would had done a more direct comparo with the Renault 16 who was introduced in 1965 (and made until 1980) and had won the European Car of the Year in ’65. The R-10 for 1967 beginned to be dated with some internal competition with the R4, then the R6 and R12 before its retirement in 1971.
Here a vintage French Renault 16 ad I saw on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yNYStP5kiU
It’s not really a comparison of these two highly dissimilar cars; just pointing out a difference in two specific aspects.
Why don’t my replies show up on the comments I mean them to, Paul?
Because I deleted them. Many of your comments are not consistent with our comment guidelines. You call people names, etc.. If you want to discuss it further, write me an e-mail at curbsideclassic@gmail.com
In the meantime, any of your comments that are even borderline will be deleted, because you have a long history of doing this.
I know “Uncle” Tom McCahill was a big fan of early ’60s Imps, and found the fusey cars to be kinda watered down, which they were. But I’m sure I could smoke one of the older models on a road course, if only because of front discs and fresh Toyos.
First rule of HotRodding if it goes it must stop. By 67 most European cars had disc brakes as standard equipment even the lower powered ones had front discs. The likes of Cadillac were well below par never mind standard of the world.
Please note that PN said: “The artist formerly known as the Standard of the World”.
In 1975 my boss bought me a new company car – the first new car I ever had. Didn’t ask for my opinion sadly, so I ended up with a Morris Marina with drum brakes. I’d been driving discs for 7 or 8 years, wasn’t ready for the way the drums pulled to the left some mornings and to the right on other mornings. Always thought the British car industry deserved to go down the pan for making cars like that.
How many drivers out there remember driving cars with drums all around – that were WET!! (pull – squeal – fade and shudder). My avatar ’74 Courier had drums on all fours . . . it was like that.
My 59 Hillman pulls up straight and square drums all round properly setup they do work but it only weighs 1100kg
Remember? You mean from my drive in my truck yesterday?
Hey, I still have an all-drum car (not a daily driver), but that weighs only 1089kg, so…
I’m always a cruiser, so I’d normally take the more luxurious car, but in this case the too long overhangs, Linclone styling, lack of tailfins, and FWD(WTF!) have already lost me by the time I get to the (drum) brakes. But then I’m also a flatlander.
OTOH, I simply loathe the commie-mobile R-10. Disc brakes alone do not a good car make. An in case of the R-10, double minus points for stealing a basically sound design concept (Corvair) and butchering it with absurd proportions. When Porsche stole Tjaarda and Ledwinka’s design, he at least made it look good.
I think you’ll find rear engined Renaults predate the Corvair by many years
Ahem, I’m talking about the styling/design of the car, not the underpinnings. Rear engined Renault or not, R-10 is a Corvair clone, and that is coming from a French-car fan (Peugeot and Citroen though).
The R 10 was a facelifted 8 – which came out in 1962. The platform was from the Dauphine – same wheelbase. Corvairs influenced many car designs (like the BMW 1800/2002) but not the Renaults.
The R 10 was a facelifted 8 – which came out in 1962. The platform was from the Dauphine – same wheelbase. Corvairs influenced many car designs (like the BMW 1800/2002) but not the Renaults.
It seems the US manufacturers listened to US buyers too much. Even when I was a kid I heard that disc brakes were complicated and expensive. It was harder to change and adjust by a shade tree mechanic it seemed. GM listened………but it also played into their economy.
But being a Ford family (I was 12 in 1967) I knew power disc brakes were standard on the new Thunderbird. Ford got a lot of praise for their brakes back then.
I disagree. They listened to the bean counters.
Truth is, they rarely genuinely listened to their buyers. The “clinics” they used to run were a sham; just something they used to confirm their own prejudices. No effort was made to get in-depth feedback, because the process was too expensive. Detroit (especially its sales execs) were sure they knew best what buyers wanted, until the buyers stopped buying. And even that took 20 years for them to get the message.
I don’t know, the single piston caliper and the disc brake more costly than the drum brakes with it’s coils, casting and more moveable parts?
They probably are more expensive, but certainly not harder to work on. No adjusting, and much easier pad/lining replacement.
When my older brother was returning from Vietnam in the fall of ’66, before his trip to Fort Sam Houston to finish up his ROTC hitch, he had my dad order a ’67 Galaxie 500 for him, and I recall he insisted that it have the optional disc brakes. I’m pretty sure Dad’s first car with disc brakes was the unlamented ’75 Monarch.
Disc brakes are far simpler than drums. There is no adjustment-it’s automatic. When my son cooked the brakes on his 1989 Olds, I found that the left front caliper had seized. Cost of repair: brake pads (front axle) $25.00; Raybestos disc $21.00; rebuilt caliper (with core) $12.00. Where the hell do repair shops get $400 to $700 for this crap?
Disc brakes are more expensive to make than drum brakes. That caliper you got for $12 is a reman unit while for $9 I can get a 100% new wheel cylinder for my IH. In the era of the vehicle we are talking about the price difference was even greater due to the economies of scale.
Paul, I believe that Tim is partially right. When we started to see disk brakes in numbers in the garage, the mechanics hated them, simply because they were used to working on drums. The early ones in GM stuff, especially Corvettes and later E bodies were six piston affairs which were prone to leaking. Exchange calipers were still a way off in the future and the mechanics hated rebuilding the calipers.
The later single piston calipers, although not as good at stopping, were much cheaper and in fact easier to work in than drums. However, it was the advent of exchange calipers that really made the difference. In my shop of ten mechanics, I could really only trust three or four to do caliper rebuilds because if one f-ed it up, we could be on the hook for a fortune.
Kevin, installing pads is 1.2 hours and rotors 1.0. Parts are marked up 100%, so your $20 rotor becomes $40, times two. The $25 pads become $50. At $100 an hour that is $220 in labour and $130 in parts, for a sub-total of $330. Add 7% for shop supplies and 12% for taxes and, presto, there is your $400, or more accurately $392.70.
Crazy labour times, bothfront rotors and new pads on my Citroen less than 1 hour without proper workshop facilities
Canuck: I understand that part about the early ones. But here’s the thing: Detroit is really good at wringing out the costs in things. If they’d started putting discs on Cadillacs back in about 1962 or so, they would have invented single-caliper discs that much sooner.
The same thing happened with just about every new technology that Detroit dragged its feet on: once they were forced to by various externalities, within a few years they figured out how to build them as cheap (or cheaper) than before. They were procrastinators; it was easier to put on opera windows and padded vinyl tops than to buckle down to building a cheap but effective disc brakes.
And I agree with Bryce: I’ve done the pads (and rotors) on our Forester several times, and it’s incredibly quick and easy: 45 minutes or less. How can you say 1.0 hour to install a rotor? With the pads off, it takes 5 effing minutes. No wonder I avoid shops like the plague. 🙂
Guys, shops charge right out of the Operation Labor Guide, which lists a standard rate for any job or operation. Pads were 1.2 on everything Chrysler and rotors another 1.0. When you actually time a car from the time it gets put in the bay, repaired, and road tested, this job will take two hours at least. It’s not cheap and that’s why you are way better off doing your brakes yourself or knowing someone who’ll wrench out of his house for cheap.
It’s worth noting that the brake shortcomings Detroit suffered had to do with more than just brakes. Other factors: the switch from 15- and 16-inch wheels to 14- and even 13-inch in pursuit of a lower ride height; the broad adoption of wheelcovers designed with little or no thought of brake cooling; and the switch from four- and six-ply tires to two-ply in the interests of lower cost and a softer ride. (In the early and mid-sixties, a lot of American cars were very close to the rated load limits of their tires even at curb weight, which does nothing good for stopping power.) That coincided with dramatic increases in engine power and the new availability of roads good enough to use it.
Before about 1949, one could argue that American brakes were reasonably adequate. The cars weren’t as heavy, wheels were bigger, traffic was generally lighter, and even if you had a car that could comfortably sustain speeds of 70+ mph, there weren’t necessarily a lot of opportunities to do it. Brakes were still marginal for mountain conditions or sustained high speed use, but that wasn’t typical, so Detroit figured that was what the optional heavy-duty linings were for. The problem was that that mentality persisted well past the point where its assumptions were no longer particularly valid.
Quite agree. American cars up to the early fifties were built with adequate attention to all of their mechanical/engineering aspects, and were well regarded around the world. All that changed in the mid fifties, when the industry decided to chase flash over substance. It was the essence of what made Detroit eventually so vulnerable.
Chrysler offered disc brakes on the Imperial from 1949 to 1954.
it’s different when you have sealed front wheel bearings, and a slip-on rotor. When you have an integral hub/rotor, having to clean it out and re-pack the bearings (which you should do) adds a good bit of time.
It was the Corvette and, to a much lesser extent, the Imperial mentioned below that shaped early public pinion regarding disc brakes. They heard horror stories.
And Americans can be a conservative lot! We just don’t like change too fast. Remember when the 86 Mustang was switching to fuel injection the next year? It was unAmerican!. You’d think they were taking out the apples from an apple pie LOL.
But we got over it quickly. Dad bought a new LTD in 1968 with PDB. Nowadays a car with drum rear brakes is frowned upon. Even if it doesn’t matter on the rear end.
Just got a front brake job done on my 02 Deville at a Chevy dealer. The brake job, rotors, state inspection, emission, and oil and filter change came to $ 360.00. I don’t think I was overcharged, but still very expensive.
One thing about independent garages. I don’t know if it’s just me, but the first couple repairs seem reasonable and timely. After they get to know you a while, it takes longer to get an appointment, higher charges, and sometimes I’ve gotten the impression the guy thinks he’s doing you a favor by fixing the car. This has happened repeatedly to me in the past.
That’s why I’ve gone to a dealer for my “modern” 02. They fix the car, albeit at high cost, and I’ve really never felt cheated. When I had my 93 Deville, I used an repair garage to repair a water pump, with a lifetime warranty. The guy must have put in some cheap rebuild, so it needed replaced twice in a couple of years. The part was only guaranteed, labor was not included. So each “free” repair job cost me several hundred dollars.
At least the dealer uses quality parts, not some of the junk sold at the chains. Years ago, I bought a master cylinder for a 79 Eldo. Took it back due to cracks and leaks by the line connections. The replacement I got looked OK, but going down a hill a few days later, the pedal went to the floor. Fortunately, I was going slow, shifted down, and no accident occured. I took the junk back to the chain, and bought a quality replacement at the dealer. No further problem.
With old cars, it’s a must to be capable of doing minor repair jobs. Otherwise, they’re too costly to own.
I thought I was the only one who noticed this phenomenon with independent garages. With a few I’ve patronized, you’re King Customer when you first go there. Then, with familiarity comes contempt, or at least indifference. Trying to minimize this, I move my business around, sometimes even using the dealer when the job only requires the skills of a tree sloth.
That statement is only true in the day . . . if it applied to the EXTERNAL expanding discs of the ’49-’54 Chrysler Crown Imperial. Vasty superior brakes for it’s time . . . but . . . very expensive to produce, sell and maintain. Paul’s assessment is right . . . . it was the bean counters. If you wanted the better stopping power and handling to match the (usual) high standard of acceleration, you had to pay extra for it.
The Good Year Blue Streaks and Firestone 500’s back in the ’60s were good tires that performed well . . . but were pricey . . . and optional on even the more expensive, fastest American cars offered at the time . .
Check-out Y-tube Video Nurburgring Crashes 1970. There you will see have easy to get out of control is was in Rear Engine Autos. A little over correction and over you go. 1970s fashions of crowd is cool also – thanks billchrest
Wow! A DS I can agree with 100%
I think GM felt people really didn’t care at that time for a car like this.
The 67 SS 396 Chevelle came with front Discs automatically. Why wouldn’t “The Standard Of The World” have them?
Heck, in a car that was advanced as the Eldo why wouldn’t four wheel Discs be standard?
(As a side note, Outside of the 63,000 SS 396 cars built only around 5,000 standard Chevelle/Malibus took the $79 Disc option.)
FYI, I used to have a black ’69 Caprice coupe that originally had the 396 engine and manual drum brakes!!
I can believe it. GM beancounters and Chevy marketing guys keeping things on the cheap to advertise an attractive sticker price. I believe a 3-speed column shift manual was still standard for the Caprice in ’69 as well.
Fast forward to 1970’s Monte Carlo and P/S, P/B, tinted glass was still optional as was Powerglide and THM!
I know it’s common usage, but I always get a funny bump from “manual brakes”. Manual means done with the hands, from Latin manus. It would be very tough to stop that Caprice with your hands. 😉
Definitely not common usage here, but then again, column shifters were called `hand gears’ as opposed to `floor gears’.
Chrysler had the Plymouth Road Runner; perhaps Chevrolet could have had the Caprice Fred Flintstone Edition?
Of course all the possible combinations and permutations these cars could be ordered in was ultimately one of GM’s major mistakes and led it its belly-uppedness. It simply costs too much to factory build to order, which is exactly what they were doing. The dealers ordered their stock as they saw fit so there were a bewildering number of parts and and operations added into the cost of the car, hence the crappy parts to save money. By this point, the Japanese were making like two models of each car with no options. Much cheaper and allows more quality to into the car.
I totally agree with you from a corporate perspective — I’m glad GM did it the way it did it though — that’s probably the most intriguing thing about these old cars & why I so enjoy pursuing them 🙂
+1. I’m patiently waiting for the day when manufacturing will become advanced enough to offer full option sheets again. I mean, why is it that if you want rear power windows, you must also buy the crappy but expensive stereo, roof rails, alloy wheels, and climate control(!)?
Even back in 2012 there weren’t many (any?) cars with a wind up window option, and about zero in 2021. Once they became common door cards were designed to not need the winder room. To offer non-power windows would mean different door cards too.
That had to be a scary ride. What happened to it?
(And the X-11? Yes, I want your X body)
My friend (possibly ex-friend!) wanted it & since I was using his land to store my cars…I gave it to him. It’s kind of a waste because it will just sit there until it’s stolen and/or hauled off for scrap. it was an oddball car because it had all sorts of exterior options like the hidden headlights, vinyl roof & lamp monitors…but was sparsely optioned inside.
It came black with dark blue vinyl bench seat interior, 396/THM400, power steering, & stereo tape player (the radio is missing), A/C, & that’s about it.
Meet me in Alabama & the X-11 is yours for $50 (what I paid for it!)
🙂 Next time I go back down there, I will take pics of all the cars & either link to them here or write something up on them — that is….if any of them are left!
Duh. I was reading this comment and thinking, wow, never knew they made a Citation with hideaways! Then I saw “396”…you are talking about the Impala, not the X-11. But there has to be a drag racer who’s put a Rat in a Citation!
My post had a bit of ADD going on there, didn’t it? Search “push me pull me Citation” on Google Videos for the most incredible Citation ever!
Imagine a ’59 Pontiac Safari 9-passenger wagon with manual steering and brakes!! My parents had one. 🙂
Getting close to nature?. it was all about 0-60m times and the 1/4 mile.This is what happened when no one was interested in stopping!
I dont believe disc brakes are standard on a 67 396 Chevelle.
You may be right, I’ve found conflicting info. I can’t believe that only 5,000 cars out of almost 400,000 total had Discs. There was a 4 piston 11″ Disc option at some point in 66 and 67. Maybe that was the 5k?
That’s what I think (about the 5k). The SS 396 came std. w/drums.
My 1969 Grand Prix SJ (What a BEAST!) had front discs and it would STOP. It HAD to with my toes tickling that 428 H.O.’s Quadra-Jet all the time. Good times, good times back in ’77. I was 20 and invincible. I have a good post (comment) on Paul’s article (and perfect picture) on the ’69 GP.
that is correct. no disc brakes as standard on a ’67 Chevelle SS 396. a friend bought one new–radio, heater, turbo-hydro, vinyl top and DRUM brakes….we used to laugh about that car….”spark plugs, points, condenser, and brakes!!!!!!” that car would sure RUN, though!!
GM was certainly behind the curve on disc brakes. Studebaker was offering them in the early 60s, though as optional equipment. Ford seemed to be the leader in disc brake technology in the U.S., and discs were getting to be fairly common in Fords by 1967.
I believe that Ford was also the leader in bringing radial tires to the U.S. I remember that my father’s 1970 Continental Mark III sported Michelin X radials, and I believe that they were standard equipment.
My own first experience was in about 1981 when I bought a used set (I was in college) for my 71 Scamp. Purchased, mounted and balanced for $60 for the entire set. By this time, the tread noise had been vanquished. The car’s ride quality was hugely improved. However, with the tires’ better adhesion, the suspension system was taxed a lot more than before. The brakes, however, remained the awful 9 inch drums that were probably not that much better than the ones on the Eldo.
Close. I think it was the inaugural 1969 Continental Mk III that was the first domestic auto to come standard with radial tires. But it is true that Ford was the leader on getting radials on their cars before GM or Chrysler.
As to brakes and handling, this is where the myth of the ‘good ‘ole days’ of the sixties falls flat. Those sixties’ performance cars might have been relatively cheap in comparison to today’s cars, but there was a reason for it.
My Dad’s ’65 Thunderbird came with standard front disc brakes and my ’72 Maverick with Luxury Decor Option (LDO) came with standard radial tires (the infamous Firestone 500s which gave me no trouble at all and ran to 44K at which point the tread was OK but the sidewalls were deteriorating from CA smog).
AMC was a fairly early adopter of radial tires. My parents’ ’71 Javelin and ’72 Ambassador both came with radials (and front discs).
Also Ford/Lincoln’s technology with early ABS…….it was called Sure-Track on Mark IIIs and Thunderbirds. I think it was also available on Imperials.
Yes, Ford had the Kelsey-Hayes Sure-Track system, which became standard on the Mark III and was optional for a while on the T-Bird.
The Imperial had a different system, made by Bendix. Unlike the Kelsey-Hayes system, it worked on all four wheels, which I think may have been a first. However, it was also a lot more expensive ($344, if memory serves) and take-up wasn’t great.
GM also had a rear ABS that became optional on second-generation Toronados and Eldorados.
Imperial and some Chryslers had the Bendix four-channel system. Like todays ABS it worked on all 4 wheels. The first electronic ABS-system in 1971 (?). Jenssen FF had a 4 wheel ABS in 1966, but it was mechanical.
In Norway the wheels had to be locked at the time, so these cars could not be registered, you had to remove the ABS-feature….. Belive it or not 🙂
Were there a lot of gravel roads in Norway then? It would make sense to lock the brakes, as on gravel ABS in those days actually made braking worse. Locked brakes cause a wedge of stones to build up in front of the tyre which dramatically reduces stopping distance. The earlier ABS systems didn’t allow this to happen, and the ability to steer out of trouble on gravel is marginal at best…
No, I think the reason just was (in Norway) ignorance about it. You know, the Norwegians in terms of cars often think they know better than any country that actually produce cars. That’s why we need amber turning lights in the rear, other seatbelts and E-marked headlamps. Cornering lights and sidemarkerlights was illegal, until the European cars came with it. In the really early days cars with front brakes was illegal, only rear breakes.
FWIW, I recall once reading that the ’76 Valiant, Dart & derivatives were the last American cars to come with drum brakes on all four wheels. Front discs were optional — mandatory with V8 engines. I don’t know if there were any imports or trucks available with front drums after that point.
It’s my impression that front drums went from being uncommon in American cars (found mainly in luxury or sports models) to common (found in virtually everything) over the course of just a couple of years around the beginning of the ’70s. I’m guessing that by ’76, very few Valiants/Darts were being built with all drums. My mother had a ’74 Pinto with front discs; I remember that the brake pedal had a “disc brakes” logo on it.
Hey now, I still buy used tires and I’m way out of college! There’s a part of me that just hates to spend so much money on a consumable item. I’ve found some great sets of lightly used tires on Craigslist or at junk yards for small money. What I avoid at all costs are the shops that sell used up crap for $20 a tire to people who can’t afford a new set. Dangerous.
My ’74 Dart has the same drums, I actually think they’re a big step up from the ones on my ’68 F100.
My 1964 1500cc Ford Cortina 2 door had disc brakes (not power assisted) and would stop on a sixpence!
The US was behind the 8 ball generally Ford UK was fitting disc brakes as standard on its Zephyr Zodiac cars in 1963 and 4Wdiscs in 1966 even my 50hp Hillman was available with disc brakes in 1960 GM was fitting discs on UK models in 65 my 65 3.3 Velox had power discs, US makers simply cheaped their cars for bigger profits.
When I was 18 I lusted after a Renault Gordini.
+1,
but I was slightly olde.
It may still be possible! http://www.eurocarblog.com/tag/gordini
I like the Cadillac but would rather have a Thunderbird of that year or better yet the Mark III which would come out in two years. The Cadillac is quite plain compared to the Mark III.
When I was 19, I drove a ’63 Corvair 110 Monza from Denver to LA. Coming down out the mountains on I-5(?- it was a long time ago), pretty much the only thing that saved my butt was the fact that it was a 4-speed, and I could engine brake- the brakes had faded less than halfway down. Having mostly driven Fiat 124s up to that point hadn’t prepared me for babying drum brakes- even ones that weren’t nearly as underpowered as the Caddy’s.
My 1964 Corvair 110 had the best brakes of any car I had had at the time. Just sayin. But I wasn’t doing mountain passes at the time.
When I helped my friend change the pads on his Fiat 124 Spyder, I noticed that the discs and calipers were identical to my 1600-pound Fiat 128. Loved thar car.
The brakes were great- for the first couple miles down. Having the car loaded with my crap and driving for 20+ hours straight prolly didn’t help things any, either. The drums just didn’t get a chance to cool off between uses. The 124 Spider, on the other hand, was only about 2200 pounds, and you really had to abuse the disks. to even get them to think about overheating.
At different times I had a 1964 Corvair Spyder and a 1964 Pontiac Tempest
(4 speed and HO326). From what I now understand they had the same (9″?) drum brakes. (as did the GTO version) Never had any breaking issues with the Corvair but once trying to stop the Tempest from about 90mph the brakes faded out by the time I had slowed to 60, scarey!
I Was an 8 year old guest going to see OLIVER,When I first heard FM Stereo in the back seat of an ELDorado in 67, I Was in Love With Cars And Music All Over Again. This same kid had long blonde hair, played the guitar and Mon Had a Toronado. Up a Steep drive- they needed FWD – the only modern House in town. Coolest kid in town. Rat Packer indeed.
Under Alfred Sloan’s leadership the emphasis was placed on marketing and styling and not engineering–I seem to recall reading that Sloan believed in no more engineering than necessary–as long as the performance of GM cars were comparable to the competition, that was all that was necessary. When GM did try to innovate the results were usually dismal; witness the Corvair, the turboglide automatic transmission to name but two examples. General Motors was a very conservative company and usually resisted change as long as possible.
It should probably be said that the brakes on RWD Cadillacs of this period were fairly decent by contemporary standards. They weren’t discs and I’d be doubtful about their ability to manage a stop from the 115 mph speeds of which a Calais or De Ville was capable, but they also weren’t awful.
The FWD Eldorado presented a bigger challenge because of its front weight bias. Static weight distribution was around 60/40, which meant that if you stood on the brake pedal, you’d end up with something like three-fourths of the Eldo’s 4,900-odd pounds on the nose, with two unfortunate results. First, unloading the rear wheels would lock the rear brakes before the fronts, which could turn into the sort of fishtailing half-bootlegger that Car and Driver experienced. Second, the front brakes would then overheat and begin to fade, leaving you with one set of brakes that was overworked and another that wasn’t meaningfully contributing to slowing down. The same was true of the first-generation Oldsmobile Toronado, for the same reasons. The Toronado was lighter than the Eldorado, but also had smaller brakes, with similar results.
What they needed and did eventually get was discs at least in front and a proportioning valve to limit rear lockup or some kind of anti-lock system. (GM offered rear ABS on the second-generation Toronado and Eldorado, although I don’t know how many people ordered it.) Ironically, the rival Thunderbird had gone that way for ’65 with very good results, giving it some of the best brakes in the U.S. When the Eldorado and Toronado got a similar setup, panic braking was much improved, although for sustained use, cars this heavy really needed discs all around.
In that regard, the R-10 had several big advantages beyond its four-wheel discs: it was dramatically lighter than the Eldorado and, being rear-engined, had weight distribution more conducive to braking. (Rear engines tend to be helpful for that.)
Ok, i get the point, but I don’t see why the Eldo is singled out as the point in time when The General should have gone to discs -and presumably Caddy would only have done so on the one top tier halo car, as a start.
As JP mentions, Stude had them available as an option a few years prior. GM, as you point out, had already been using them on the ‘Vette.
The Crosley Hot Shot had them in ’50, and Chrysler had them standard on the Crown Imperial in ’49. Chrysler seems to have abandoned discs in ’54.
I guess we couldn’t have expected Ford to lead the way as in ’49 Ford was trying out some “radical” spring ideas, coils in front, two longitudinal sets of leaves on the rear, abandoning, finally, Henry’s 1908 spring ideas. (Henry was also resistant to brakes on the front wheels) In fairness, by ’67 Lincoln had discs on the front.
So yes, the Eldo should never have been released w/o 4 wheel discs, and probably radials as well, but surely the General wasn’t any further behind the curve than the other American makes.
I get that the Eldo was very heavy, but surely it’s not the first American car that was too heavy for it’s brakes.
Seems to me that being slow to go with discs was an American deadly sin, not unique at all to GM.
Because of the Eldo’s fwd, the demands on its front brakes where overwhelming. As a result, its braking distance were much worse than typical drum-brake equipped American cars. It was a braking disaster. Yet it was brand new, and the most expensive car of its kind from Detroit. Does that help?
maybee it would have helped to only drive these things backwards, so the brake bias and weight transfer would have sorta equalled out!
Also, as mentioned above, the rival Ford Thunderbird had used front discs and a proportioning valve since 1965, as did the Lincoln Continental. By 1966 you could also get discs on all of the full-sized Chryslers, as well, although they were pretty scarce on Chrysler’s B-body intermediates. So, Cadillac was a little behind the curve here, even for Detroit.
A “proportioning valve” is something that virtually all disc/drum cars use. It is because the typical drum brake needs less pressure to operate and the majority of designs used after discs came onto the scene are self energizing. That means the braking force vs line pressure is not linear while disc brakes have a fairly linear relationship between line pressure and braking force.
You would think such a thing would have been standard from go, but not all early disc/drum systems had proportioning valves. The Thunderbird did, but (for example) the system used on 1966-67 Mopar products did not. See the August 1967 issue of Car Life for their rather harrowing experience with a disc-braked Fury III convertible WITHOUT such a rear-pressure-limiting device. Admittedly, the severity of the control loss they experienced may have indicated that something was out of adjustment with the rear brakes, but the system did not have a proportioning valve and the editors were not happy about it, having put the “panic” back in panic stopping.
I often wonder why these proportioning valves weren’t just incorporated into the master cylinder itself. Maybe they are these days….
Is there more to a proportioning valve than the brake warning light equalization switch & restricting orifices?
In relatively modern cars the proportioning valve is just a part of the combination valve, though the average person calls the whole thing the proportioning valve. On some cars that use the diagonal split system the proportioning valve is attached to the master cyl. Ford did that in the Tempaz for example.
The disc/drum combo valve consists of:
Differential warning valve, that’s the part that turns on the warning light and the first thing in the system.
From there the front disc portion of the fluid goes to the hold off or delay valve. That prevents pressure from going to the front brakes until it reaches a certain point. That pressure is supposed to be equal to the amount of pressure needed to overcome the return springs on the drum part of the system.
The fluid for the drum portion of the system then goes to the residual pressure valve that keeps a minimum amount of pressure in the rear lines at all times to keep the cups in the wheel cylinders pressed against the bore so they don’t leak.
Finally you have the proportioning valve it causes the line pressure to have a non-linear increase. After a set psi range that it responds directly to the input pressure it reduces it to a percentage of input pressure.
The reason it and the residual pressure valve need to be in that location on a conventional front/rear split system is to keep the differential pressure valve from being tripped.
On diagonal split systems they either use no proportioning valve by using non servo, or non self energizing drums. Or they have a Master Cyl with 4 ports and only those lines leading to the front brakes go through a different style of combo valve that only has the warning and hold off valves.
With Disc/Disc systems all you need is the warning valve as used on the old drum/drum systems.
Thank you for your well-written explanation. I never knew that some residual pressure needed to be maintained on the drum systems but I guess it does make sense though — I’m going on the assumption that the “cups” are sort of a “rubber flap”.
I so wish I would have taken the blue-collar mechanic route in my education — I have all this stuff to play with & but not knowing the fundamentals has really cost me over the years.
Toyota trucks have an interesting variation on the proportioning valve. My ’84 Hilux and ’05 Tundra both with disc/drum systems had a load-sensitive valve with a lever arm to increase braking to the rear when the suspension was compressed. No Ford or GM truck I owned had such a system. BTW, in ’71 GM made front disc brakes standard on pickups, but the vacuum booster was still optional. Pedal effort was very high on my ’71 C-10.
That rear brake valve is pretty common, lots of trucks starting around the 80’s have them. I’ve seen them on vehicles ranging from Suzuki Samurai to Isuzu NPRs.
I understand, but you can say the same of the Toro for ’66- front heavy. It’s not that I’m defending the ’67 Eldo, I just think bad brakes were an industry wide phenomenon – a growing problem for all US car makers.
Studebaker offered discs in 1962, Ford in 1965, AMC in 1965 and Chrysler in 1966. That Cadillac waited until 1967, and still made them optional on their top of the line model, a year after the fwd Toronado showed how a heavy fwd car played havoc on drum brakes that might have been acceptable in a rwd application, this tells me that the industry-wide phenomenon that you refer to was getting pretty localized around GM by that date.
A decade or two earlier, GM could well have been at the forefront of development. After all, Buick’s finned aluminum drums of the early 60s were probably the best drum brakes in the industry. But it seems that the blast of engineering creativity that came out of the General that showed up in the showrooms in 1960-63 was the last time that the company would take the lead on almost anything. After about 1960-62, the internal workings of the company became increasingly dysfunctional and really good management became the exception rather than the rule. The Eldo’s brakes are simply a natural result of GM’s normal management of the time.
I don’t see it localized at all. Stude was what 2% of the market? Ford/AMC in ’65, Chrysler in ’66, GM in ’67 – except that GM had been using them on the ‘Vette at all 4 wheels, in ’65. IOWs they all started using them, to some degree, in the mid ’60s. Several years late, and it would be decades more before most Detroit iron got discs on the back wheels.
Paul has found perhaps the most egregious example of outdated/inadequte brakes, but the story of poor brake technology doesn’t start with the Eldo, and it doesn’t stop with offering them on the front only.
Crosley offered disc brakes in the late ’40s but again it wasn’t exactly a mainstream manufacturer
And did I not call it a GM Deadly Sin? https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1966-oldsmobile-toronado-gms-deadly-sin-16-lets-try-a-different-position/
And I will repeat for the last time: The Toro’s and Eldo’s brakes were substantially WORSE than the other drum-brake equipped cars of the era. And the Eldo had no excuse, being very expensive, and since discs were optional. Did you not read my and ateupwithmotor’s explanation as to why that was, due to the weight transfer of a heavy fwd vehicle?
I don’t want to be rude, but you’re either refusing to read our explanations here, or being a GM apologist, or you’re being a bit obstinate.
I’ll admit to being a bit obstinate.
Yes you called it a GM deadly sin but it wasn’t really limited to GM, was it? Unless one considers stopping distances for RWD drum braked cars of the era were acceptable. No argument that the ’67 Eldo was one of the most egregious examples of bad brakes, but it wasn’t like other cars of that era stopped on a dime.
I guess the point I’m trying to make, and I’m sorry if I’m being obstinate, is that brakes were pretty bad on most American Iron from about the mid ’50s up to at least the time front discs became standard on everything. I might even go back a bit further. As cars were getting heavier, and engines more powerful, brakes were not improving. Not much.
The technology isn’t that complex. And discs weren’t invented in Europe. So, as I see it, the whole industry in the US was lagging.
Well, the Toronado was, if anything, worse than the Eldorado, and both were notably inferior in braking performance to a fair number of their drum-braked, RWD Oldsmobile and Cadillac contemporaries.
Disc brakes and radial tires? That’s for them prissy little furrin cars from them commie countries like France and Italy. ‘Merican cars are built to go, not stop. Besides who worries about braking distance when you have the entire length of Kansas to stop and eight feet of good ol’ ‘Merican steel between you and the rear bumper of the next car? 🙂
”My cars are designed to go, not to stop,” quoth Ettore Bugatti (French-Italian). Not a builder of ‘merican cars by a long shot. Just saying the French/Italians were not all brake-obsessed. In the 1930s. 🙂
At the same time (perhaps later?) Bugattis did have a fairly interesting system where the brake drum was integral to the alloy wheel on the racing cars, meaning that each tyre change they also got a new drum to work with.
Put me down in the camp that there were no excuses (hindsight, everybody-else-was-doing-it, etc). It was one thing to cheap-out on the Corvair, but on the Standard of the World? What a joke – and you just know the engineers wanted to use discs. Leaving aside the early quasi experiments in discs, they had been proven at places like Le Mans for over a decade and used on road-going Jaguars since before the 1960’s. The Renault (not to mention the $100 option) shows they weren’t even prohibitively expensive like ceramic brakes are now.
Having said that I do own cars with non-boosted 4 wheel drums, but they only weigh 1500lb.
this says a lot about the european (italian) feelings towards american cars back in the day: dangerous monster cars with monster engines that just weren’t able to corner or stop properly. I’m sad to say this ’cause I love old american cars since I was a little kid (and the ’67-’68 Eldo in particular it’s simply a design masterpiece to me) but a car like this with those tiny ass drum brakes would have been a joke here, even 45 years ago, expecially if this car, like the Eldo, was trying to give itself a sort of hi-tech image…in the other hand european cars (with few exceptions) didn’t have any seat belts, headrests, padded cabin, collapsible steering column etc…I tell you, cars like this R-10 and every other small cars of the time and earlier on had all the passive safety features of a beer can: if you really have to crash being inside a huge Caddy surely gives you some more chances than being inside of a rear-engined Renault with a gas tank in front of your teeth…if you go at the minute one of this video you can see what I mean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJUcXkB0pU
The Eldorado’s drums were really quite large: 12 inches in diameter, 2.75 inches wide in front, 2.0 inches wide in back. That was about as big as postwar drum brakes got, discounting racing; standard Cadillacs at 12×2.5-inch drums, Buicks had 12×2.25 units (although Buick had finned drums, aluminum in front, which helped cooling). It wasn’t that they were puny so much as that they were overmatched by the weight, weight distribution and speed potential of the car.
Large you think, the drums on my 55 Morris Isis were 11inch on a car with half the weight and a quarter the power of that Eldorado
All Holdens built in NZ a hilly country came with discs from 66 onwards GM US just built cheap crap
It’s a difference in the width. The american cars got drums 2,25-2,5 inch wide. I have never seen an European car (or another) with wider drums than 1 inch.
I’m a little late to the party. I once owned a 75 Valiant w/ four wheel unassisted drum brakes. I remember that it stopped the vehicle very well if you knew you had to give the pedal a good shove. In panic braking it would have pulled to one side or the other, but under normal braking stopped straight and true. I always warned friends that I lent it to about applying sufficient pedal effort.
My first car, a 289/auto equipped ’67 Mustang had horrifying manual drum brakes. Even after a complete brake job they still sucked badly in terms of pedal effort and stopping distance. If I let a friend drive it I had to warn them ” at first, you’ll think that the brakes don’t work, just push harder on the pedal”. I later got a ’65 Barracuda (slant 6, manual drums) that was far superior. The cars can’t have weighed much different. IIRC, brakes were about the same size. What was Ford doing wrong?
I never had any problems with 4 wheel drum brakes in any of my early cars. The 68 and 72 full size Mopars stopped as good as any car I’ve had. My 66 Deville also had the drums, no problem. My 78 Eldo, all discs, you can tell you have a lot of car behind you. (5,100 lbs.) Drive accordingly is the rule.
Of course, I’ve never tried a dead stop from 110 MPH. I don’t think the engineers had those speeds in mind when the car was designed.
Well, my 67 Riviera has aluminium drums in front. Its actually stops the car fairly easy and quick. It’s always brakes straight as a line. So it wasn’t so bad for it’s time. In 1967 you could even order disc brakes as an option.
I agree. Same does mine 67, and I have never had any problems with it. Fading? Even from 110 mph it would stop fairly easy.
Tire quality is also dependent on consumers. In 1980, my Parents’ bought a slightly used ’77 Buick Estate Wagon. One of the things it needed was new tires.
My Dad put GoodYear’s top of the line radial on the car. It was an aramid/kevlar belted radial possibly called the Double Eagle (not to be compared with the special run flat tire of the ’70’s called the Double Eagle).
Those tires drove great. Handled well, traced well it made the wagon which had the F-41 handling suspension almost handle well! Plus because the aramid belts were light compared to steel when you hit a pot hole you just got a light thup-thup rather than a big whack.
When the tires finally wore out my Dad went back to get another set and the GoodYear dealer told him that they were’nt available any more because nobody bought them. He had to put a set of Arrivas, if I recall, on the car and they were noticeably inferior.
Am I the only that sees some similarity between the Eldo and the R10? Both have disproportionate front and rear overhangs. The R10 always seemed like a caricature compared to the well-proportioned R8. BTW I learned to drive in a car with 4-wheel drums (unassisted) and my first car was essentially the same but with front discs. Huge difference in control and stability, not even counting stopping distance and fade.
I think it’s unfair of you to knock the Eldorado for not having disc brakes. The majority of the American cars in 1967 had drum brakes front and rear, and the few offered them as options tended to be rarely chosen by customers (yes, I am aware a few American cars like the Corvette and T-bird had them standard). To be fair ALL American cars of this vintage were criticized by the auto press for generally poor brakes compared to the European cars. Many of the cars of this vintage, even with disc brakes weren’t much better anyway, although they did generally have better fade resistance and directional stability. The typical American driver didn’t need brakes that could handle many hard stops without fade, which is why drums were generally sufficient, vs in Europe where good brakes were more of a requirement for their driving style and roads. Many good drum systems could stop in comparable distances to disc/drums of this era, as long as they weren’t overheated. Radial tires weren’t really commonly available until about 1973 in the American market, so it’s not really surprising that they weren’t an option.
Yes, GM could have put disc brakes on the Eldo and I am sure they could have put some fancy non-common Radial if they really wanted to. Would the majority of those who bought the Edlo in ’67 cared? Probably not. Should GM following the status quo for the era be considered a “deadly sin”, I think not. In fact if you read the road tests post 1967 when discs were added, the stopping distances hardly improved vs drums. Brakes in general from this era were not great.
I don’t think that it is unfair. The Eldo was the most expensive offering from the brand that proclaimed itself the world standard yet the braking performance was much worse that the average “economy” car from the lesser brands of GM. Now I’m not suggesting that I would expect a car that heavy to be the shortest stopping car, but being the most expensive it certainly shouldn’t be the worst. As mentioned the “lowley” Ford Thunderbird had discs standard and they were available on the Mustang. Even Buick was concerned about stopping power with their Aluminum drums and touting how some reviewers noted that Buicks had the best brakes in the business.
Well, in that same test, the disc brake equipped T-bird (which was hardly “lowly”) stopped from 80 MPH in 330 ft. That means the Caddy was approximately had approximately 17% longer stopping distance that the disc braked T-brid. Both cars had very close test weights (within 100 lbs) and the T-bird had less weight on the front end. Further, disc brakes still were an option for the Eldo in 1967, so it’s not like GM completely ignored the issue. In the same test, the drum brake car was 22% longer than the result from the disc brake equipped Eldo at 312 ft, and the author still attacks this. This is better than the disc brake T-bird at 330-feet, which had Car and Driver though had good brakes. Even with the optional disc brakes, 1967 Motor Trend test comparing personal luxury coupes had a 1967 Eldo with discs that stopped in the same distance as a 1967 Toronado with 4 wheel drums.
From other tests I have, it seems that a drum braked Eldo was typically in the range of 200 feet for a 60-0 stop. This was the SAME stopping distance required for a typical Lincoln pre-1965 that came with 4-drums, also a “world class luxury car”. Many late 1960’s Eldos with discs, were stopping in the 175 ft range from 60 MPH, which still isn’t that great.
So, yes I understand GM should have probably had the discs standard, but was it a “deadly sin”, hardly. The Eldo was well received for the most part by the motoring press, well-liked by the public and is sought after in the collector community today. Car and Driver has always been a drivers magazine, so of course they will be all over the poor brakes. But it’s really not that atypical for an American Luxury car of this era to have very little concern for performance other than straight line acceleration. Bottom line, is American cars of this era had poor brakes period, and the buying public didn’t seem to care (luxury or otherwise) for the most part. So why just jump all over GM when it was really more of a problem of the American car industry as a whole during that time?
Back when the R10 CC came out I had mentioned that my Father had owned an R10 (though his was a ’68 rather than a ’67). He never owned an Eldorado but rather another GM car at that same time (a ’65 Olds F85). Back then most American cars still had 4 wheel drum brakes and bias-ply tires, I don’t remember him commenting about the stopping power of the R10, but it was such a light car (maybe 1600 pounds) and had such a small engine (1100 cc?) I’m not sure he noticed a big difference.
His prior car was a ’59 VW type 1 “beetle” which was also light and had small engine but had drum brakes. I do remember that he really liked the radial tires, such that he even switched to them on his American cars…I’m not sure if he put them on the F85, but we later had two full-sized Ford Wagons not much after he got the R10, the latter of which came with Firestone 500 tires which were also radial tires…but were replaced very quickly due to delamination problem after only a few hundred miles, the sidewalls delaminated and I think he may have gone back to bias-ply on the Ford Wagon. By that time, they started making disc brakes at least optional on the front, so I’m pretty sure the Ford Wagon had the front discs, but maybe bias-ply tires.
At some point in the mid-70′s I think he went back to radials on the Ford Wagon but I think he was a bit leary of them after having the delamination problem.
He also tried putting electronic ignition on the Ford Wagon (from a kit) but it didn’t work out very well…one time on a trip the ignition coil got fried and we were stranded for awhile, which my Father attributed to the electronic ignition kit…so it was awhie later (guess when the first started making electronic ignitions standard on most cars) before he had another car with electronic ignition..he disconnected the kit ignition and we just kept the OEM coil/plugs/points/condensor while we owned the Ford Wagon
I think foreign cars were early adopters of electronic ignition as well as fuel injection (well a few American cars had fuel injection in the ’50s but the numbers were probably very small and it really didn’t seem to catch on with American cars until the ’80s). By then electronic ignition was also pretty much standard, I guess because of the combination of emissions requirements and fuel economy fleet standards.
Ford, GM and Chrysler mostly had electronic ignition as standard as early as 1974. In Europe we still used points late in the 80s and even carburators in the 90s. Injection engines was not the norm in Europe in the 80s, as it was in the US. But the European cars in the US was not the mainstream car with 80 hp engines, it was always the top model from Mercedes, Jaguar or BMW.
Just saw this append (my original comment was almost 10 years ago).
Yes, I guess I made a big assumption, based on my ’86 VW GTi….it had fuel injection, 4 wheel disk brakes, and electronic ignition…certainly this wasn’t the norm in 1986 in the US nor in Europe (we rented an Opel Vectra in 1993 for a trip, and I believe it still had a carburator, and I’m pretty sure it still had a distributor, though I don’t recall whether it had electronic ignition. The GTi was kind of a “loaded” model of the VW, though lesser models may have had rear drum brakes, I think they all had electronic ignition…the GTi in those days had pretty much a similar engine to the “regular” Golf, it was still 8v instead of 16 V (which came the next year) though I think it had a few more horsepower than the “regular” Golf and came with a close-ratio transmission (which could be a bit more troublesome than the :regular Golf transaxle, since it had circlips that could self-machine the case of the transaxle, though I never had that issue on mine).
Anyhow, getting back to my Dad’s R10, he bought it new in 1968 at Almartin motors in South Burlington, Vt. As I’d mentioned, he had a 1959 Beetle that was totalled in front of our house…he’d been in Germany in early 1950’s in the Army, and they drove quite a few Beetles when over there (also a REO truck, but no jeeps that he ever mentioned, though I’m guessing there were some around but maybe not where he was stationed. By 1967, he had made several trips to France on business, and I think he was pretty impressed with his trips, such that he’d decided to replace the Beetle with the R10, which on the surface made some sense, as the R10 was 4 door vs 2 for the Beetle, though he used the R10 mostly for commuting to work, and we had a station wagon as our primary car, he could also take the family in the R10, more comfortably than the Beetle (and as my now departed youngest sister was born in 1970, we had 6 people in our family during the time he owned the R10). It was also RWD, with rear engine, which was pretty good for traction, as with the Beetle, which was important up in Vermont, where the winters are pretty long….though I don’t think he had snow tires on it, just the regular Michelin radials.
Despite the prior Dauphine being more common, the R10 wasn’t the best choice of car by 1968, though it was rated pretty highly, support for Renault in the US was spotty at best and got worse, even thought later efforts like the LeCar and AMC Alliance in the US. There weren’t many dealerships, and I don’t recall that Almartin motors as being much of an establishment (it was in South Burlington near the airport, I have vague recollections that it seemed more like a storage area than a glossy dealership, in any event it was a pretty small place, but of course Burlington is also not very populous It did have pretty close proximity to Quebec province, where I think French cars were more common (don’t live near there now nor visited in decades, so I can’t comment on today…my last trip there seemed like lots of Hyundai Ponys around). He only had the car through 1974, ironically he sold it right after the first gas shortage, though it got very good fuel mileage, but it also had a standard transmission, which my Mother (now 90 and recently stopped driving) never was comfortable with. So he traded in the Renault on a Japanese car with automatic, since he wanted my Mother to sometimes drive it instead of our family car, a 1973 Ford Country Sedan with the 400 CID 2BBl, which he bought the year before (right before the gas shortage) and of course that car got pretty bad gas mileage (though I don’t recall how bad it was, clearly it was concerning to my Father.
The R10 had very low miles on it 1974, I think in the 20-30k range, which makes sense, as he didn’t live too far from work by then…we’d moved from Vermont to northern Virgina, and he had an even shorter commute to work, which pretty much 90 percent of what he used it for. I have 2 vivid memories of the R10, one was that for some reason (maybe due to low use) he kept a battery charger in the front “trunk”. The other was a rare trip into Washington DC with my Father to see a Washington Senator’s baseball game (my Father wasn’t much of a baseball fan, nor am I, his father and my Uncles were much more into it)…on the way home, the clutch went, and he nursed it home (only 35-40 miles) trying to time lights and avoid shifting to another gear. I’m even wondering if there are any pictures of our Renault, might have time to search (they’re at my Mother’s house, about 20 min from mine)…I kind of doubt it, my Father wasn’t much of a car person, and though I was, at the time the Renault didn’t seem that special to me and I never thought about taking pictures of it back then…little did I know.
I’m not the only person around that has a tie to a pretty rare car…one of my ex-coworkers has a 1961 NSU Prinz, which his Father bought used and willed to him. His father was mostly interested in the engine, which he was going to use for a project that never was even started. It was originally in North Dakota, now in central Texas, he remembers getting it stuck in the snow with his brother, and it was so small and light that when they lost traction, they’d just get out and pick up the car and move it to where the road wasn’t so slippery (in the winter). Our R10 was small, but not quite that small (around the size of the VW Beetle).
Now I understand why Dennis Weaver got so freaked out….guess his the brakes on his Valiant wernt up to much!
Being from England my knowledge of US cars is slight, though as I’ve read the threads on the site I’ve learnt a great deal; much of what I’ve read here about American cars really
surprises me.
I knew the big three were behind the technological curve but I didn’t realise just how
Crude American cars were. 2 speed powerdrive transmission, tiny crossply tyres, drum brakes, carburettors, all lasting far longer than here in Europe. The British public is known to be conservative but American car buyers appear to be in another league! So how could a country which dominated the world and had access to some of the greatest scientists and engineers be so backward? Correct me if Im wrong but in many other areas America was far behind Europe; jet engines, aerodynamics, electronics, rocketry, all very strange.
Another subject Id like to understand is the matter of emission control; so often its given as the reason for the failure of European marques in the US marketplace- My Volvo is a car widely sold in America and the emissions equipment (removed now) is very simple though unlikely to make much improvement to its ‘green’ credentials….
Id like to know if emissions equipment really was needed and whether it actually worked, it all seems like an easy way to damage imports- yes I do like a conspiracy theory.
Anyhow to a European the whole story of the American auto industry in the ’60s and ’70s seems a very dodgy, highly political affair- I suppose that’s why its in such a bad state today. Here in England we are lucky not to make any of our own cars anymore and thankfully we don’t have any of the unscrupulous politics that seem to go hand in hand with making cars…
The reason the Big 3 dragged their feet on new technology? You have to ask? Money; it was cheaper not to, and instead spend the money on annual restyling. Americans who didn’t like it increasingly bought foreign cars. Which goes along way to explain why the Big Three are now the Medium Three.
Emission controls were desperately needed. Southern California had atrocious smog; you could only see a couple of blocks down the street. Horrible. Smog controls totally changed that.
And it wasn’t only in LA; many big cities had serious problems. They were absolutely necessary, and have worked very well. Europe started having serious air quality issues too, you know. Things that way are drastically better. Twenty years ago, the European cities stunk with diesel fumes, and the air was dirty from emissions.
The Germans had some very good engineers, and they had lots of funding. But who built the first atomic bomb?
Paul,I am surprised to read “who built the first atomic bomb”.That is an invention that does not instil a sense of national pride in me.In the first three decades of car manufacturing in the USA,many companies were responsible for some intelligent and innovative solutions to make vehicles easier to drive,maintain and handle.Buick and Vauxhall were responsible for major engineering advances and then under the GM {genetically modified} banner they sank into a pool of mediocrity.Holden cars in Australia were simple,dull,poor handling cars until the arrival of the Opel based Commodore in the late 1970s.
Building an atomic bomb takes a whole lot more technology than a stupid car…which is the point of the comment.
“The reason the Big 3 dragged their feet on new technology? You have to ask? Money; it was cheaper not to, and instead spend the money on annual restyling.”
I disagree. American cars were designed for different driving conditions. Long stretches of straight roads and not that much traffic.
Were you actually around in the mid-sixties? Traffic was atrocious in and around many big cities, due to the lack of freeways. And the early freeways were often jammed.
And things were worse before the interstate system; highways were winding and heavily trafficked. Your comment is true for some parts of the country, but not others.
The simple reality is this: it took Ralph Nader and others to make the Big Three realize they could no longer cut corners. Within a very few years of his book “Unsafe at Any Speed”, disc brakes, bigger tires and wheels, radial tires, better suspensions and other improvements miraculously appeared out of nowhere. The years 1965-1973 or so saw a huge change in these areas on American cars. This era directly came after Nader’s book, which sparked a lot of public outcry, lawsuits, and govt. pressure.
That’s what it took for change to come about. The traffic in 1973 wasn’t that different than in 1965.
Name ONE British car that had fuel injection ( an option, admittedly in 1957)
Chevrolet did.
Name ONE British car that had a lockup torque converter in 1953?
(Packard)
Oh I forgot, your lot didn’t even have an automatic transmission in 1953.
And who pioneered the alternator? I’ve seen Pommie cars ( you’ll have to google that, North Americans) with generators as standard in the late 60s.
Power steering, tubeless tyres. I don’t see them widely available in 1950s Britain. They were in the USA.
Electronic ignition? Optional by the mid 60s. When your lot was still stuck with
Lucas & their rubbish.
And missiles/rocketry. Who put the first men on the moon? Since the the USA was so far behind ( in your alternate history) it must have been Bert & Cyril
from t’ mill in Lancashire who got to the moon first.
A couple of things, Chris. First, we have readers from all over the globe and we are happily free from bashing an entire country’s cars over a multi-decade span. But secondly, you sort of undercut your own point. Just because the U.S. COULD do some of these things doesn’t mean that they WERE ACTUALLY done in any volume. Other than Chevy’s low-production system, FI did not become commonplace until the 80s. Chrysler tried it in 1958 and again in 1980 and botched the hell out of it both times. Nobody besides Packard used a lockup torque converter until the 70s when CAFE loomed. Generators were still commonplace in US cars in the early 60s, so I don’t think their use in the late 60s somewhere else is all that damning. And who was offering electronic ignitions in the 60s? Chrysler was first with widespread adoption, but that was in 1973.
Its fair to say that US and British cars developed in relationship to the needs of their unique markets and their widely varying taxation systems. I am far from a British car homer, but I don’t think they did badly given the small size of the country, their postwar economic disadvantages and the taxation and labor policies that were very damaging to manufacturing concerns.
Actually it was Wallace and Gromit,they went to the moon because they liked cheese.
“I knew the big three were behind the technological curve but I didn’t realise just how”
sorry, but you don’t realize anything.
GM had mechanical fuel injection in the ’50s. Chrysler (via DeSoto) had electronic fuel injection in the late ’50s. Pontiac had a car with an all-aluminum engine, rear transaxle, and full 4-wheel independent suspension in 1961. Chevy was selling a car with an all-aluminum, air-cooled flat six in the rear in 1960, and you could get a turbo version in 1960. Olds launched the turbocharged Jetfire in 1962.
you know why they disappeared? They cost more, and customers didn’t see the value in paying more for them. Customers at the time were perfectly happy with live rear axles and carbureted iron V8s up front just as God intended. Why pay more for a Tempest with a funny transaxle and aluminum engine when a Chevy II does the same job?
Unfortunately, that’s not quite the whole picture. You’re right that the Big Three tried a number of new technologies, but in most cases they took shortcuts in the first place, and/or abandoned them all too soon, unwilling to spend the time to develop them properly.
Chrysler/Bendix FI technology was sold to Bosch, which soon dominated the world with their electronic systems, and kept developing them until they were reliable.
Chevy took shortcuts with the Corvair that hurt it. The Jetfire’s turbo system was utterly half-baked, and many of them had to be removed by dealers. The Tempest’s IRS was also primitive and not properly fleshed out.
Many of these new technologies were the result of division engineers using some of their budgets to try new things, but there wasn’t enough for a sustained effort. GM would have had to make a corporate commitment to certain ones, and followed through.
When a number of these half-baked early sixties new technologies didn’t pan out, GM pulled back from them, not surprisingly. But this process was almost guaranteed to fail.
If GM had committed, say to disc brakes being widely available by 1962 or whatever, and really thrown adequate resources at it, things would have been different. Their scatter-shot approach resulted in very few lasting new technologies.
Of course, that is exactly what GM did a few years later with the Vega, and we know how that turned out…it was a reflection of the dis-functionality of the organization.
I am guessing, but I suspect that there were no minimum standards for brakes on cars. I’m not sure there are now, although I suspect that there is. I think that it is fair to say that the big three were quite conservative when it come to a wholesale upgrade across the entire line.
I remember reading in the early 70’s that GM expected to meet emission standards with electronic fuel injection. By the time the mid 70’s Seville (with analog fuel injection) went into production, GM realized that micro processors would make digital fuel injection possible and would be vastly better. As a result GM phased in fuel injection over a very long time, from 1975 (analog) to about the mid 90’s when carburetors were mostly gone.
The European, and specially the British was never in front of car building in the 50s and 60s, even in the 70s the normal american car was safer, more comfortable, more powerful, quieter, and way more reliable than any European car, maybe except for a Mercedes or a Volvo.
In 1969 you could decide the temperature in a Chevrolet (the cheapes GM brand) at your climate control, you could set the cruise control at any speed you wanted and just go. In 1969 in a Volvo (an upper end car in Europe) you was lucky if you had power steering, and the performance from the 120 hp engine (who was rare and the biggest one) was pretty bad with 4 persons in the car.
I live in Norway, and the first time we drove an american car, a Chevrolet Caprice, we couldn’t belive how quiet it was, how powerful it was, and how comfortable it was. The power windows, seats, door locks and even antenna was still very exotic in the 80s. The cars we compared it against was a Volvo 240 and a Peugeot 505 GTi. Handling or brakes? The brakes was about even, the handling, Peugeot 505 was maybe a little bit better than the Volvo and Caprice, but not by much. The Volvo rode like a tractor on rough roads.
Fair comments Paul- however was it having emissions equipment that ended the smog? Or was it the change to smaller cars which made the difference? London had a far greater problem with smog in the ’50s; however this was ended by banning the burning of coal for heating- the cars continued to pollute as they had done before. As far as I know, no European city has suffered from air pollution attributable to cars- if they had done it might have been Berlin or Prague with all their 2 stroke Trabants in the ’60s.
I know LA had a smog problem but was that as much to do with its geographic position as the actual cars? It just seems that the car is a easy target for environmental legislation.
I can remember in the mid 70s the air in L.A. would be so bad your eyes would water driving down the street. L.A. is still in the same place, and there’s more cars than ever, but the air is a lot cleaner. I would say the pollution controls didn’t hurt.
Jimmy, you might consider the following:
Eastern Europe did have two-strokes and other polluting cars, but far fewer than Western Europe or the US. Having 10 000 Trabants and Wartburgs sparingly used by folks who could ill afford to run them all day long is never going to be as bad as having 100 000 “greener” cars used by a population with much more disposable income.
Cities such as Paris, Rome or Athens were definitely worse 20-30 years ago than they are now in therms of pollution. The case of London was a bit different as you said (due more to coal than anything else), but pea-soupers aside, I remember the London of the early 90s being dirtier/smellier than it is today by a long shot. Newer taxis and buses with much cleaner diesels and the car tax scheme have made a big difference, no doubt about it in my view.
Let me take you further afield: I live in Asia. Cities such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore have invested heavily in cleaner engines. Nowadays, all the taxis and buses (as well as quite a few cars, even old ones) in Bangkok run on natural gas. Add a couple metro lines, some hybrids and delete 80% of the two-stroke tuk-tuks and bikes, and you have a city with blue skies again. Anybody who went to these cities in the 80s/90s remembers (the horror.. the horror…) of walking for 5mn on a street and feeling faint from fumes. Take a trip to a city that has not changed its ways, e.g. Jakarta or Ulan Bataar, and you’ll see, smell and even taste the difference.
Unfair would be putting it mildly. Here, we’re comparing a behemoth Cadillac with a diminutive Renault. We’re comparing a front engine, front wheel drive car with a rear engine, rear-wheel drive car. I fail to see how that makes for a fair comparison.
Somewhere, in the far distance, I can here Carmine screaming, “They reposted WHAT!!”
I do miss him, however.
Even the generation before of the R10 came in 1967 with front disc brakes in Brazil. The Gordini.
Interesting. I automatically associate Gordini with the blue & square 1964 R8 Gordini.
I think the point of the comparison is to show how far behind Detroit was compared to Europe. American automobile makers had to be dragged into the modern era, which took until about the turn of the century/millennium before they really start to turn things around. Now I think GM is trying to lead, rather than just follow, with new cars.
Disc brakes and radial tyres were new for American consumers. Basic consumers would have mixed feeling about changing, although most people would not have known the difference until they needed to repair something, and even then most would not have cared.
I find it interesting that this 67 Cadillac is so lacking in the brake department because the one car that I can honestly say had the most unbelievable brakes that I have ever driven was only 3 years newer and also built by G M. It was a 1970 Chevy Impala. This car was theft proof because no thief could have driven it. The power brakes on this car could have stopped a train. The pedal only had about a half inch of play in it and halfway down you were in a skid. It had power discs in front and rear drums.Mechanic’s were baffled by it and none could offer much as to why it was so sensitive. We got used to it and just drove it for the 8 years that we had it.
I can’t believe this discussion has been going on since 2012, and yet no one has mentioned the most important, innovative and forward-thinking technological tour-de-force that, IMHO, truly defines the 1967 Eldorado as a landmark car.
Who needs fancy disk brakes and and radial tires when you can have…
… triple white walls!
What a diminished world would we live in today if triple whites had never been invented.
As far as I’m concerned, this discussion is now closed. No need to thank me.
(my uncle Paul’s 1967 Eldo is pictured below)
Agreed. It was just waiting for that last word, and you delivered it. Thank you 🙂
Well you should have said so in the first place! (Said nine years later after this initial post.)
Replaced the O/E whitewalls on my 1970 Volvo 142 with Pirelli Cinturatos, huge difference! Had 4 wheel discs with power assist standard and a 4-on-the-floor. Drove it with pride for a decade.
Bias ply tires were of a different construction than radials.
The part of the tire beneath the tread, the reinforcing belts, ran at opposing diagonal angles from one side of tire to the other. This made the tire stiffer all around.
That, plus the less developed suspension tech. of 60 plus years ago, is why factory cold tire pressures were low, compared to what is specified today.
Radial tires the reinforcing belts hoop straight across the tire, from sidewall bead to to sidewall bead. This construction makes them more compliant – that is – able to hug the road and conform to uneven surfaces, even in turns.
The sidewalls in radials are far more flexible. That is why higher pressures are needed to carry the equivalent bias ply gross weight rating of a vehicle.
Over time, cold tire pressure specs went from mid-20s PSI, up to mid-30s PSI now, with better suspensions, fuel economy targets, and EVs, which are heavier than their gas engine equivalents.
So if you have an older, bias-ply era car, do not go by the pressures on that older door placard. Consult tire & load tables, to find the equivalent modern pressure requirements.
For instance: A 1963 Corvair, bias ply pressures of 15psi in front and 26 rear, might need to add at least 8psi to those figures when fitted for radial tires on the same rims. A similar offset must be preserved to aid the handling of that model.
Bias blackwall tires were standard on Cadillacs in 1972. Radials became optional in 1973, standard in ’75 (with a wide stripe).
It must have been a constant battle at GM between the engineer’s, designer’s and the bean counters.
Not sure I ever saw it in here in the comments, but the Eldorado in all it’s generations never had as nice of seats as the R10. I sat and rode in both. I’m really surprised the “Detroit 3” never tried to copy them. Maybe they thought Renault’s seats were too expensive to make. Goldilocks would have loved those seats. Not too soft, not too firm, and the seat support was just right. The French nailed it.