1968 And 1969 Cadillac Coupe De Ville: Were These The Tipping Point For Cadillac Quality And Style?

 

When it comes to Cadillac, the perennial question is, “When did the brand first lose its way?” Even hardcore Cadillac fans usually agree that at some point, the division sacrificed its previous position as “Standard of the World” to chase greater volume, cost-cutting, and corporate conformity. But when exactly did that happen? For me, the tipping point for the desirability of the full-size cars was 1968 and 1969, epitomized by the popular Coupe de Ville.

 

As you might have noticed, I’m rather fond of mid-’60s Cadillacs, and in particular the Coupe de Ville, which for many years was the standard-bearer of the Cadillac line. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the Coupe de Ville actually outsold the four-door Sedan de Ville, but the two-door hardtop had been highly desirable since 1949, and it commanded an extra $100 or so in trade-in value over a four-door or convertible.

 

I’m really not one for big cars — in all seriousness, even a current Honda Accord or Toyota Camry would be inconveniently large for me — but at least to a point, older Cadillacs have a style and panache that would make them awfully tempting if I had the means. Do I need a gigantic, thirsty mid-century hardtop? Certainly not, but there’s need and then there’s want, and seldom shall the twain meet.

 

However, sometime between the stunning, beautifully sculpted Marina Blue 1967 car pictured above and the Carmine Red 1978 model pictured below, the needle on the want-it meter begins to sink rapidly, and finally falls sullenly to its bottom peg, refusing to twitch again for the remainder of this model’s lifespan. (Cadillac canceled the Coupe de Ville at the end of the 1993 model year, long after it had become a tired anachronism.) I know some of the later models have their defenders, and the downsized 1977–1979 models were in some ways much better cars than their predecessors, but for me, their desirability is basically zero.

 

I hadn’t really given much though to pinpointing exactly when the big Cadillacs dropped off the radar for me. With the Eldorado, I can tell you very precisely: As soon as it lost its concealed headlights for 1969, I lost interest, and the less said of the bring-your-own-barge-pole 1971 model, the better. However, I was recently pondering that question after looking at a 1969 Motor Trend luxury car comparison, which compared the Coupe de Ville with the Lincoln Continental and Imperial Le Baron coupe and complained, “Even the vaunted Cadillac has lost some of its quality aspects from 1968 … Both the Cadillac and the Imperial seem to utilize too much plastic and flimsy material where it shouldn’t be seen or used.”

 

The decline in Cadillac quality remains a much-debated subject among Cadillac enthusiasts. There’s a general consensus that interior materials (and sometimes fit and finish) went markedly downhill in the ’70s, when Cadillac succeeded in doubling its early ’60s sales volume. The Coupe de Ville reached extraordinary heights of popularity for such an expensive car in the ’70s — model year production topped 100,000 cars for the first time in 1973 and stayed there through 1979 (peaking at 138,750 units in 1977) — but those cars were no longer very special, with too much evident cost-cutting and a lot of tacky costume jewelry. That was the end result, but different people have different takes on where that downturn began: 1969? 1967? 1965?

 

Really, I don’t think there’s one answer to that question. Cadillac started pursuing greater volume in 1964, when the division completed a major expansion of its existing assembly facilities. It had been clear for a while that there was more demand for the product than Cadillac could fulfill, but increased volume inevitably brings increased pressure to reduce costs at all costs. By 1968, Cadillac was also having to make some changes to comply with new federal motor vehicle safety standards, in particular FMVSS 107 (which limited the reflectivity of certain bright metal components in the driver’s field of view), FMVSS 201 (covering occupant protection in interior impacts, and FMVSS 203 (intended to reduce driver injury due to the steering wheel and steering column), which meant more recessed controls, more padded plastic surfaces, and less of the dazzling brightwork that previously been a hallmark of luxury in American cars. Consequently, late ’60s Cadillacs, like most late ’60s cars, were literally duller inside, by design.

 

Nonetheless, after looking more closely at the 1968 and 1969 Coupe de Ville, I came to think that perhaps Motor Trend was onto something. At least in photos, the differences from 1968 to 1969 weren’t necessarily pronounced, but there were some unwelcome downgrades, which coincided with certain unfortunate styling changes that suggested that the Cadillac studio was running out of gas after a run of inspired efforts.

 

A lot of what I see as losses for 1969 are admittedly nitpicky, but the appeal of a big Cadillac has often been ephemeral. It’s no secret that big Cadillacs shared a lot with other GM cars, a point that at times GM has been foolishly eager to advertise on the cars themselves. Cadillac had its own engines, of course, and occasionally a few options its GM cousins didn’t, but the factors that justified its much higher prices were mostly qualitative: the confident sweep of the styling, some nice interior touches, a pleasing detail or two, and of course the prestige of the Cadillac name and reputation. A few dubious design decisions or cut corners didn’t necessarily made a Cadillac a bad car, but it didn’t take much to make it a dishearteningly ordinary car, not worth the $1,000+ premium over other basically similar GM full-sizers.

 

With all that in mind, here’s my mostly subjective take on the 1968 and 1969 Coupe de Ville.

 

When it came to exterior styling, I think the 1968 Coupe de Ville was already skating on thin ice. Overall, I like the look, but I have quibbles: In profile, the formal roof on the two-door hardtop looked at a size too small for the body, especially without a vinyl top, and the rear fender kick-up seemed too pronounced for a car like this, a throwback to the excesses of 1959. I’m also not keen on concealed windshield wipers, which Cadillac adopted for 1968 to make the hood longer.

 

On the plus side hand, the forward-canted stacked-quad headlights really gave the 1967 and 1968 models a lot of character. These were not sporty cars by any stretch of the imagination, but the stacked headlights lent just the right touch of rakishness.

 

They also contribute to one of the things I most like about mid-’60s full-size Cadillacs, which is that their style is surprisingly democratic: They’re versatile automotive fashion accessories, and in the right color, they can pair well with a wide range of looks and outfits, from black tie to New Wave or rockabilly. The headlight treatment was part of that, and its loss for 1969 really hurt.

 

Cadillac tried to spin the 1969 grille as a return to “the traditional Cadillac look” — suddenly, it’s 1941:

 

However, the new front-end treatment also gave the full-size Cadillac an unsettling resemblance to the 1969 Lincoln Continental from head on:

 

The Continental was not at its best in 1969, the last year of the ’60s generation, but I think it wore this look better than the Cadillac, which just came across as gracelessly blocky. Another problem was that the three horizontal fins in each egg-crate section of the Cadillac grille were seldom perfectly straight or consistently aligned. Even if they were at the time of delivery, they were easily bent, spoiling the tidiness of the graphical effect:

 

You’ll notice that the full-size Cadillac also lost its vent windows for 1969. As with the concealed wipers, the stylists may have been pleased about this, since it made for a cleaner side profile, but GM’s early efforts at flow-through ventilation were not confidence-inspiring, so it wasn’t a step forward in a practical sense. In 1969, 97.2 percent of full-size Cadillac buyers ordered automatic climate control, but given how finicky that system can be in its old age, a modern collector might prefer a model with vent windows.

 

If nothing else, I guess the deletion of the ventiplanes did spare you the question of whether to order power vent windows, a $71.60 option on the 1968 Calais and De Ville.

 

A small but annoying point about both these cars was Cadillac’s lazy strategies for complying with the new federal requirement for side marker lights. The 1968 approach was obviously an afterthought, looking too much like a crude Pep Boys aftermarket addition, but it at least managed to avoid interrupting either the fender or the taillight surround:

 

The 1969 taillight lens treatment was better in concept, but the body-colored filler panel was annoyingly conspicuous, especially if the panel fit wasn’t perfect (as it often wasn’t). This was a $6,000+ car, not a lame-duck Ford Falcon, which made Cadillac’s failure to sweat these details hard to accept.

 

The changes for 1969 weren’t all bad, however. The 1969 two-door hardtop’s “faster” sail panels mitigated the feeling that the roof was too small for the body, and the V-shaped backlight gave the Coupe de Ville a touch of Eldorado flavor:

 

What about the interior, where Motor Trend complained that things had taken a turn for the plasticky? To put the changes in perspective, it’s necessary to first review the trim situation as it stood in 1968. On a 1968 closed-body De Ville with cloth upholstery, you got brushed metal trim on the dashboard …

 

… and fabric inserts on the doors and rear quarter panels to match the seats:

 

If you ordered leather upholstery on a De Ville ($137.90 for the standard leather option, $289.45 to $326.30 for “maximum” leather), the brushed metal trim and cloth door inserts were replaced with rosewood veneer:

 

I’m not that fond of wood interior trim for cars, and I think the brushed metal trim looked better. However, some fans see the availability of real wood trim as an indicator of quality, and the metal trim could rust around the edges, which is happening on the maroon car pictured earlier:

 

For 1969, the dashboard no longer had real wood even with leather upholstery. Instead, all full-size models except the Calais got a new fake woodgrain instrument panel bezel, looking like a cheap home stereo:

 

Most of the actual woodgrain of this bezel was covered by an instrument cluster surround of matte black camera-grain plastic, which exposed only discreet slices of fake wood. On the Calais, which had a flat black bezel, these areas were black, which didn’t look any better, since it gave two different shades of black plastic with noticeably different grains. The camera-grain surrounds did reduce glare, and they had a business-like air that might not have been so bad if Cadillac hadn’t insisted on also adding tacking little woodgrain discs to the control knobs:

 

The 1969 cars also moved the HVAC controls from the right of the steering column, where they’d resided for several years, back to the left side, thus ensuring that there was no chance of the front passenger adjusting the temperature.

 

While I’m complaining about the instrument panel, the 1969 car discarded the previous coolant temperature gauge in favor of yet another warning light. I’ll concede that many Cadillac buyers of the time wouldn’t have known what to do with oil pressure or battery gauges, but deleting the temperature gauge was churlish, and seems like the heavy hand of the penny-pinching cost accountant.

 

To me, one of the biggest aesthetic affronts of the revised cabin was on the passenger side, where the vents were now in a trench-like cove with an ugly molded plastic lip, wrapping around the side of the new and deeper impact-absorbing instrument panel shroud. This cove could have three different fillings (“upper panel inserts,” as Cadillac called them), each of them in very questionable taste. On the Calais, the insert was matte black, regardless of interior color:

 

On a De Ville with cloth upholstery, you instead got a strip of fussy-looking filigree textured metal:

 

Ordering leather upholstery, a convertible, or one of the Fleetwood models replaced the metal insert with a strip of vinyl woodgrain applique, that great symbol of downmarket luxury attainment:

 

By comparison, the swath of color-keyed padded plastic between the vents on the passenger side of the 1968 dash strikes me as a masterpiece of restrained good taste:

 

Although the dashboard had succumbed to the allure of cheap woodgrain by 1969, 1969 Cadillacs could still have some actual wood veneer on the doors and rear quarter panels. Wood door trim was included with leather upholstery on the De Ville, and was standard on Fleetwood models; the Calais and cloth-upholstered De Ville again had fabric inserts matching the seat facings.

 

In 1968, Cadillac steering wheels were still color-keyed. One can get carried away with this kind of color coordination, but I think it looked right on these cars, and the three-spoke design was attractive enough. It was, however, marred by one truly obnoxious feature: the recessed emblem, which first showed up in 1967. If I owned one of these cars, I would constantly be wiping dust and shmutz out of that circular recess, and I would resent it every single day.

 

Unfortunately, the recessed emblem was the one thing Cadillac kept for 1969, when all models adopted a new and very ugly rim-blow steering wheel. The rim-blow feature was one I’ve always considered of very dubious value, and its greater complexity led Cadillac to mandate that the steering wheel would now be offered only in black, with a decidedly downmarket low-glare plastic grain on the spokes. To distract from the lack of color coordination, all models except the Calais got an extremely tacky circular band of woodgrain veneer around the rim, ensuring that the wheel would look equally terrible with any interior color combination.

 

(The black Calais wheel was not an improvement because it still had the bright borders around where the woodgrain would have gone.)

 

Regarding upholstery, these were the early years of the great Brougham Epoch, and even in 1967–1968, Cadillac had offered a selection of upholstery options ranging from sober to singularly ornate. On the 1968 De Ville, the sober choice was the Domino pattern cloth, seen here in black:

 

If that wasn’t fancy enough for you, there was also Decor pattern cloth in dark blue, aqua, covert, or maroon:

 

I have mixed feelings about the Decor trim: I like the paisley pattern and some of these colors (I’ve had shirts that were not dissimilar), but maybe not as automotive upholstery. It might be okay in a Sixty Special, which, as I’ve previously noted, was more a car for riding in than driving, but it seems too much like grandma’s sitting room for a Coupe de Ville. On the other hand, the Domino cloth looks bland, and it underscores the fact that the actual seat design in these cars were just not as attractive as it had been just a few years earlier. Compare the bland black cloth bench seat of this 1968 Coupe de Ville, with its miserly center bolster of plasticky leather and its vinyl skirts …

 

… with the luxuriant leather-bolstered 1965 Coupe de Ville:

 

In 1968, leather upholstery was less confrontational than cloth in terms of color and pattern, and it had better resale value, but the seats themselves still seemed flat and undistinguished in design. (Bucket seats were optional on the De Ville, but they were expensive and rather rare, and they seemed a little out of character in the full-size cars.)

 

For 1969, the Decor pattern cloth was replaced with similarly ornate Dardanelle upholstery. Combined with the filigreed metal dash trim, it gave the cabin an overpowering “Great Aunt Matilda” vibe, which seems kitschy today and might have had some theft-deterrent value back then; I can’t readily envision anyone under 50 wanting to be seen in it when these cars were new.

 

The market had apparently spoken, however, as the alternative Delphine pattern cloth offered in 1969 wasn’t much more restrained — note the pattern on the seat facings:

 

If you wanted more restraint, your only alternative in 1969 was leather upholstery, although it paid to take care with your color choices. (The medium gold leather pictured below looks somewhat better in more natural light, but the studio lighting makes it rather emetic.)

 

The safety improvements for 1968 and 1969 were worthwhile, and there were some useful mechanical upgrades in these years: Front disc brakes finally became option on full-size Cadillac models for 1968, although they were a $105.25 option that only 21.6 percent of buyers ordered, and the discs belatedly became standard line-wide for 1969. The 1968 Cadillac also introduced the 472 cu. in. V-8, which is a better-regarded engine than the 429 it replaced, with massive, effortless torque. However, even just comparing pictures of the 1968 and 1969, I can almost feel these cars’ desirability being siphoned away, beyond the power of the big engine to resist.

 

Judging by the sales figures, contemporary buyers didn’t feel that way. Cadillac sold more than 200,000 full-size cars for 1968, almost 200,000 for 1969, and just short of 215,000 for 1970. So, either contemporary Cadillac buyers liked this stuff or they were so captivated by the symbolism of owning a Cadillac that they didn’t care. Subsequent years would be worse — the hapless, vacant face of the 1971 Coupe de Ville (below) was a thing of horror, suggesting that the Cadillac styling studio had truly run out of ideas — but they sold like crazy, until they didn’t.

 

There’s ultimately only so much one can criticize Cadillac for chasing the money, even though it ultimately led them astray. That’s just how retail business works — commercial designers aren’t in the posterity business, and if it ever comes to a choice, profit always takes precedence over taste. However, looking at these cars, it becomes painfully apparent why Cadillac lost the Baby Boom generation. I’m not a Boomer, but if I had been in my 20s back then, I would have recoiled from a lot of these rococo flourishes, even without the visible cheapening that went with them.

 

Of course, you could always argue that there was little meaningful difference between a paper-thin layer of real wood veneer and a vinyl applique, or between a few strips of plasticky leather and expanded vinyl, and nearly every big car of the time offered tufted button upholstery with overwrought fabric choices. That might be true, but by that standard, there also wasn’t much meaningful difference between a De Ville and a Buick Electra 225 or Oldsmobile 98, especially when the latter were cheaper and sometimes in better taste.

 

All this is my opinion — when it comes to the desirability of these cars, you might draw the line at a different point, or not at all. For me, though, the 1969 model year seems to mark the point where Cadillac’s former appeal diminished beyond recall, and where “Maybe, yeah!” became a definite “No thanks.”

Related Reading

Curbside Classic: 1968 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special Brougham – Sweet Dreams Are Made Of (by Jason Shafer)
Vintage Review: 1969 Cadillac Coupe DeVille – Golden Goose (by GN)
Vintage Motor Trend Review: 1969 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, Lincoln Continental, Imperial – American Luxury Comparison (by Rich Baron)
My New Curbside Classic: 1969 Cadillac Sedan DeVille – 38¢ Per Pound (by Kent Bell)
1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special And Brougham: Cadillac Builds The Ultimate Passenger’s Car
1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special And Brougham: Cadillac Builds The Ultimate Passenger’s Car (by me)
1965 Cadillac Comparison: Cadillac Calais Sedan Vs. Coupe De Ville – Was The Budget Caddy A Bargain Or A Bust? (by me)