posted at the Cohort by Corey Behrens
You’re not likely to be surprised when I tell you that I’ve always found it a bit hard to warm up to these final RWD Cadillac sedans. But given their place in history as the end of a very long line of traditional BOF Cadillac sedans, I can certainly muster some respect. It certainly manages to convey the classic Cadillac image, even if the execution isn’t exactly up to peak Cadillac standards.
Time is the great healer. Or we just grow up, hopefully, and get over our youthful prejudices. I’m beginning to find some genuine appreciation for these, if not exactly gushing enthusiasm. In its day, one inevitably compared it to all the more contemporary and sleeker cars that were the apple of my eye, which inevitably meant import brands in my case. Audi A6, Mercedes w124, BMW 5/7 Series, and of course the Lexus LS. And a few others too.
But now the comparison is with the overwrought SUVs and oversized trucks on the road. That makes this Fleetwood look quite a bit better, in terms of a contrast, in any case. Who wants to quibble over the details at this stage of the game?
For the record. just what were my issues with this 225″ long car? Image and proportions. Let’s take the latter first: It looks too top heavy, especially at the rear. And the wheelbase looks too short for its mass. The rear wheel looks overpowered by the massive C-pillar.
None of those were issues with its predecessor. But this restyled B/C body just never quite worked for me, starting with the Chevrolet Caprice. The Buick Roadmaster is the worst of the three, as its 116″ wheelbase was shared with the Chevy. GM was chasing the aero look that was so wildly successful at Ford with the Taurus, but translating it to the existing RWD B/C platforms just didn’t quite click.
Most likely it’s the problem of not starting with a clean sheet; the designers were locked in to key hard points, most of all where the seats and dash had to be. Or maybe they were too torn between going all aero and staying traditional. Their love handles didn’t help. Ford’s Panther cars never got that sudden increase in width, and seemed to age a bit better, despite the changes being more subtle.
Corey didn’t shoot its interior, which may be just as well. Traditional, yes; genuine quality, no.
As to its image, it was of course a sop to Cadillac traditionalists, who never could quite warm up to the FWD cars. That demographic was of course getting older and ever more “traditional” with every passing year. So yes, at the time, these were just about the ultimate old fart’s car, no offense intended.
In the way things go so often, these last of the BOF big cars, whether from GM or Ford, have found a lot of love from a very different demographic: young guys. The percentage of these still on the road being piloted by a guy 35 or younger seems decidedly high to me, although the really pristine example like this one are also quite likely to be in the hands of a more mature owner.
There’s been quite a bit of love shared on the pages of CC by owners of these (links below), and my hat’s off to them. They’re dwindling in numbers, and I’d hate to think of a time when there’s none left on the road.
Related reading:
COAL: 1993 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham – Mine’s Bigger
COAL: 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham vs. 1998 Ford Crown Victoria
I always loved the looks of exterior of these cars, very menacing and mobsteresque. The interior was terrible, though. The ridiculously deep dash and cheap materials were off-putting.
Meh.
Lincoln Town Car for me, please. A MUCH nicer, rattle free interior when compared to this Caddy.
I had both of these, a red 95 and the a boxy 91 D’Elegance. The 95 was actually fun to drive with the LT1 V8 under the hood. A car bigger than a Suburban had no right to be that fast(I also swapped the rear gears for a 3.73 with a posi)
But as far as the style and build quality, no comparison, the 91 was infinitely superior. All those nice details, extra bits of chrome, all gone in the 95, the interior was basically a chevy with really nice leather seats in the 95. Also the 91 drove/handled better, felt like a much smaller car and didnt lean over in the turns/wallow like the 95
I agree as a 47 year old dude, I grew up with cadillacs. The last of the greats was the 91 5.7 liter d’elagance.
These made it to 96 as well as the impala olds vista cruiser & Buick estate Pontiac did not make it into the new 91 up body ! the chassis is the same from 77 to 96 so you can put the SS impala parts on the others Ok someone needs to correct that BOF to BOP which means Buick Oldsmobile Pontiac as these 3 were sorta close as chevy was at the low end & caddy at the top ! but only Buick survived as the middle price car all the last of chassis under body full size cars !! as it took a while to get front drive cars to handle really good !
I was never a fan of the 91-96 B bodies, especially the Caprice…although they did make some improvements to it midstream with updating the design of the rear wheel openings.
In 1990, I was looking to trade in my 1979 Caprice Classic, and the first of the restyled 1991’s were appearing on the dealer lots……I took one look and did not like the look of the aero body along with the rear wheelwell design….It seemed to me that GM went a bit too far with the aero look on this redesign.
I ended up switching out from my box Caprice to a 1991 squarebody K Blazer which was the final model year for the ’73-’91 body design.
Fuselage styling didn’t work for Chrysler back in the day, and it doesn’t work here. Makes the car look too bloated.
I also saw the Fuselage Chrysler in this Cadillac when it came out. I actually rather like the Fuselage Chryslers, and appreciated some of the old school elements in the Cadillac, but the execution of this Cadillac is just off.
It can be an attractive look when done right…..
I never really saw the difference in greenhouse until today. It’s interesting; if you compare it to the contemporary shrunken Fleetwoods, the passenger compartment is proportionally almost similar. I’ve never disliked this model…certainly there are some touches that I dig, especially the rear 3/4 view, but what’s worst for me is the interior. It’s pretty much the same as the Buick Roadmaster in many ways, and killed the exclusivity that the old one had. I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if this chassis had made it into the edgy next generation of Cadillacs, say a year 2000 version of this, and if they had been able to keep some of the clubby atmosphere of the 80s Brougham interior.
(Wink wink hint hint photoshoppers)
I don’t think it’s fabulous, but I do commend the Cadillac designers for making it as old-school Cadillac-y as possible, given the “bones” of the Caprice to start with.
Too bad more of them didn’t have metal roofs. Too bad they didn’t leave off the fender skirts and lower cladding. The front seatbacks are huge and make it feel cramped.
Sometimes the adjustment is a minor visual change with regard to the side view.
Image attached.
Yes! That’s what I was describing in my reply below before I had realized what you did! Raising the side window beltline to windshield/back glass level makes a huge difference. Still has most problems Paul pointed out but that solves the top heaviness.
hmmm, what’s actually been changed?
I currently have a ’96, and until recently had a ’91 (5.0). Like pretty much everyone, I agree that the older model is MUCH better proportioned. Having said that, the whale body is far more spacious inside…. even SUVs have a hard time offering that much width around your shoulders and hips. It has the best rear seat of any car I’ve been in, though the footwell is lumpy and narrow.
Visibility is worse, alas, but still better than most modern cars.
The new one is even smoother while handling better, though still too squishy for most drivers.
Not much to add here aside from the cliche… if only GM had put the new powertrain and chassis on top of the old body!
I have a writeup of a 94 Fleetwood Brougham that I purchased a couple months ago – I’m 33 going on 34, and while the car doesn’t quite have the special touches of the previous generation….the room and comfort kind of make up for it.
As does the LT1 under the hood 🙂
But those repair bills…OY!
I have this car and the last Towncar. Better than buying 96impala or 03murada that were cheaper than 40k when new. Now people tax for them an give away the luxury cars as good deals. Don’t mind if I do😂 I love how backwards most car guys are. The Lincoln Town car and Cadillac Fleetwood is still America’s Bentley. My Fleetwood came fully loaded all the way down to the tow package. Better than an Impala. What’s funny is I always loved the 64 and 96 Impala but their Chevys bottle of the barrel but Cadillac is King so Im looking to purchase a 64cadillac coupe instead of the Impala. Just like my 03Towncar instead of a Mercury Marauder. I refuse to pay more for the lesser vehicle just to say I have one, I’ll take luxury and people giving the luxury cars away and taxing for the cheaper sporty version of the same car 🤣🤣 the Fleetwood is sharp hands down. Car crazy here.
I couldn’t agree more with the author. I was selling Cadillac’s at the time when the ’92 model ended and the “all new” ’93 came out. I didn’t dislike them, but certainly liked the old design much more. My favorite models were the 1977 to 1979 which had the most crisp lines. In 1980, they rounded things out just a little and although I still love them, I prefer the 77-79 more. Of course, we all know the 1980 to 1992 were nearly identical. Still a very classy design all these years later.
I really wanted to like these, but just never really got there. I spent 4 years in an 89 Brougham, and if everyone says that the new one’s interior was cheaper, then Yikes, because the old one was far from traditional Cadillac standards from the Division’s prime.
I always thought that if I found one, the hotter engine would make a decent tradeoff for the grim interior, but I never found one when I was looking for a car. It is probably just as well. My 89 had a kind of elegance that I could get into, but not these.
It’s the gargantuan chrome strip along the bottom of the body that I find particularly repelling. I completely agree there is a also proportional problem(the top heaviness), but I think it was deliberate and somewhat of an optical illusion, it was very much in Cadillac’s theme at the time to drop the greenhouse below the natural beltline and with the in effect large side windows and that massive chrome strip combined the bodysides look skinny and unsubstantial to the roof.
Devilles based on the FWD platform are almost indistinguishable from the fleetwoods to the untrained eye, and while I don’t care for the styling of those either, the lack of chrome at the bottom doesn’t make the proportions look as off… Bloated yes.
I don’t hate these anymore either, I think I did in the past because I had kind of bad memories of these as a kid, as it was the bodystyle of both the hearse and limousines we rode in when my grandma passed away after a battle with cancer and I always associated them with death. Actually I’d go so far to say the styling reminds me of modern coffins with plushy interiors, metallic paints and swaths of chrome hardware. But, they did look like Cadillacs, which I can’t say about Cadillac cars of the last 20+ years, and a detail I never really took in before is while the front end of the Fleetwood is thematically similar to that of the Deville there is a noticable but subtle forward angle to the lights and grille that makes a substantial difference in presence and confidence
While not bad, and a passable attempt at marrying traditional cues with contemporary style, it left me wondering.
In Harley Earl’s time, Cadillac used to be at the forefront of style, the first with the latest, usually. Or if it wasn’t Cadillac, it was La Salle. Others tried (Graham Blue Streak, Chrysler Airflow, Lincoln Zephyr…) and sometimes succeeded, but usually Cadillac was the style leader.
Somewhere along the way things ossified, and Cadillac styling became set in tradition-think rather than reaching for the future. I’d postulate that about the time this happened is when their prestige started to leak away.
I’m one of those former young guys that had one. I’m 42 now and sold my red 94 almost 6 years ago. Sadly, even then parts were getting thin on the ground to keep it going at 225k miles.
While I agree that the earlier box B/D bodies were generally better looking cars, I think that the Cadillac wore the new aero styling the best. They were all stylistically too wide, but the Fleetwood is most unabashed about its size. The length of the car helps the width not seem so disproportionate.
And I’ll disagree with everyone saying that the interiors of these were ruthlessly cheap feeling. Almost every surface was covered in leather or matching padded vinyl, with a few odd omissions, like the door panel armrests. But the plastics (and the fake wood) were just as good as anything put in the box body cars. It’s just that the design was much simpler, so the quality of the plastic wasn’t as hidden by the fussy frilliness of the design. The digital dashes did nothing to help make them feel expensive, but that’s true of the last years of the box Broughams as well.
We should also remember that these were the cheapest Cadillacs you could buy at the time, if I remember correctly.
TERRIBLE INTERIORS! Just like so many people have said. I owned a 1993 and I liked the performance! The exterior design was great, loved it. BUT, that interior was as BLAND and to me, ruined the entire experience of the car. SOLD IT. You know, you don’t drive the outside of the car, it’s the INTERIOR that makes the car enjoyable. Great Article!
I love it. Clearly two disparate opinions on the interior. Black or white! All in all it means YMMV and it would be best for any individual to experience the interior first hand.
Personally I liked the 91-92 the best.
The gas cap is behind the rear license plate.
The “locking gas filler” function is provided by a rather crude, short, straight, single-pivot lever located right behind the plate, accessible when the deck lid is open. It needs to be swung back to lock it each time. No spring-loaded auto-lock.
The license plate gas filler lock was connected to the electric door locks. Locked doors=locked license plate and vice versa.
.
Last of what a Cadillac should be. I still love the RWD V8 luxobarges. I have a 1976 Coupe DeVille, 1991 Brougham deElegance, & 1996 Fleetwood. Must admit the 96 is the least posh interior wise, a sign of the times back in 96. However, it still makes a presence when arriving standing out from all the cookie cutter cars today. My 2022 CT4 is a really nice car but doesn’t have the rich classy look like my 91 Brougham
I’m far enough removed from ownership of this in ’93 garb (silver with burgundy leather), and also a ’97 Town Car Signature (black with grey leather) to say these had some remarkable engineering advances over the box predecessor….stopped better, drove better, was quieter, and is still the most fuel efficient big boat I’ve ever owned, regularly pulling mid 20s on the highway and a crazy causing range of 500-550 miles, on regular. And Fleetwoods look best from 60 degree angles, focusing on the corners of the car. The side profile is awful. Raising the belt line and not offering vinyl roofing would have helped. But black and navy ones without vinyl roofs are probably the best looking of all from this run.
In comparison with the TC, the TC Signature Series by ’97 had a modern but kind of plasticky interior too. It was perhaps a bit better quality than this but not notably so. The TC also was better looking and far better proportioned outside, and retained the great visibility in aero guise that the predecessor classic box Bs and Panthers had, whereas the whale Fleetwood really lost some visibility with the huge dash and high back window. But the TC was not as isolated, fast, comfortable, or fuel efficient as the whale Fleetwood, though I thought the handling about the same. You really miss the extra torque in the 4.6L modular 8 vs the 5.7.
Neither had the classic baroque design touches that make you feel like (at least to an extent) you are driving a car from the 60s or 70s like the box 80s models sometimes do. By that I mean stuff like the peaked hood on the Cadillacs and the fender tip hood on the Lincolns that looked like prior, more classic cars, and certain interior trim that was identical to those prior cars. The 90s models lost a ton of that continuity with the past and traded it for a sort of competent forgettableness. You don’t feel like Elvis driving a ’93 Fleetwood but you might at odd moments in a ’92 Brougham.
I wish that, knowing it’d be the end of the line, GM had made more of an effort inside and out on this. Driving it, in today’s world, and not thinking too hard about how it looks, it still feels like a quick, modern, relatulively fuel efficient take on the classic land yacht and it retains that tremendous old school Cadillac presence of its predecessors whereas the 90s TC fades into the background. And in that sense, it’s actually a good car and way better than what came before and in my opinion the increasingly decontented Panthers that lingered on after.
I like it more than I did even 3 or 4 years ago. But it just didn’t get the finishing touches that would have made it the appropriate swan song for old school Cadillacs. It was a memorial service with an uninspired eulogy.
Thanks for your very objective and insightful comment. It’s comments like this that allow me (and others) to better appreciate their qualities, especially in comparison to other cars.
100% agree with this assessment.
I raised the beltline to reduce the height of the side glass, and bring it more inline with the rest of the beltline. The look is not as ungainly looking – just a little better proportions in my mind. Not a bad looking design then.
It is more cohesive, but now raise the roof a bit to avoid the gun slot Camaro look. The chop top look doesn’t work for me.
I’ve enjoyed looking at all of these attempts to re-render the car. I always thought it was the length of rear overhang that was off even more than raising the beltline, though I agree it seems to help. The front end of the car still works pretty well and looks pretty “Cadillac”.
It’s the visual weight of (a) the enormous rear window, (b) the enormous sail panel and (c) the spreading out of the cabin to essentially move more of the rear deck INSIDE the car that messes up the proportions. If you are sitting in the back seat of this car there is a giant interior package shelf between your head and the rear window that is utterly useless. It’s not like you can keep anything up there. As far as I can tell having owned both, that space, on the previous ’77-’92 body, is OUTSIDE the car and part of the trunk lid, but on the ’93+, it was moved inside and the rear cabin stretched out to enclose it.
If I had any ability with a graphics program I’d try to show this, but if you straighten out the back window so it’s more vertical and transfer that unusable “package shelf” space back outside, now you have a longer trunk and the rear wheel is not so visually “overloaded” by that “heavy” window and sail panel.
Where can I still buy this great condition of piece of history ? I always love both generations of Fleetwood Broughams !
I’ve owned seven broughams (86-92), and still have a 91 (5.7) and 92 (5.0). In my opinion no other vehicle offers the style, class, ride and comfort of these caddy’s. The 5.7 or 5.0(chevy) engines provide smooth aggressive acceleration when needed. They are extremely reliable and easy to maintain. I never like the 93-96 body style. Not as classy.
Well, I guess as the Cadillac afficionado that occasionally comments, I’ll throw my thoughts in.
I enjoy these Fleetwoods, but I understand and agree with the criticisms. It lacks the gracefulness of the older generation, and the interior is an absolute joke. That said, the increased power of the LT1 and the modern amenities make it much better for day to day driving. I just wish they weren’t getting expensive. The prices have started to go up substantially over the years for clean, lower mileage examples that aren’t modified (And finding one of these stock in SoCal isn’t easy)
As for why young men like these cars. I can’t speak for everyone, but for myself it’s simple. I never grew up with these. Everyone I knew in my childhood had either a van or some form of SUV, even my Grandparents had stuff like Sierras, Navigators, and even the Aztek. These cars weren’t a part of my childhood, and the luxury makers of BMW, Lexus, or Audi didn’t really make me think “upscale car”. So, for me, these rolling anachronisms with their puffy seats, their soft rides, and the acres of chrome and fake wood seemed cool. The traditional American luxury car was just cool, and I really like their virtues while not being bothered by their criticisms.
And if you want a traditional Cadillac experience with none of the issues of a classic Cadillac (Absurd length, dismal fuel economy, just age-related problems in general), then a 93-96 Fleetwood is as close as you can get. It doesn’t reach the heights of the brand’s heyday, but it still offers what it sets out to deliver.
Besides, compare this to the Northstar powered Devilles from 97 onwards, it doesn’t look nearly as offensively hideous in comparison.