Since the 1940s, the senior Oldsmobile 98 (often styled “Ninety-Eight”) had been nipping at Cadillac’s heels. Oldsmobile buyers got the same body shell and much if not all of the luxury at a significantly lower price, and while the Ninety-Eight lacked Cadillac prestige, it also avoided Cadillac ostentation. By 1981, the posh Ninety-Eight Regency was clearly a better buy than a Cadillac De Ville, but even in a recessionary economy, the Olds still couldn’t compete with the allure of the Cadillac name.
Back in the 1940s, on either side of World War 2, Cadillac often fought to keep Buick and Oldsmobile from intruding on its territory. Cadillac was successful in blocking Buick’s attempt to offer prestigious coachbuilt bodies for its top-of-the-line Limited, but ultimately failed to keep Oldsmobile from introducing its own OHV V-8 engine. GM corporate management was sympathetic to Cadillac’s position, but they didn’t like the idea of leaving money on the table just to preserve some abstract notion of divisional hierarchy. In the ensuing decades, the corporation also found it harder and harder to resist the allure of cost-saving, profit-boosting commonality, even if that eroded the distinction between the different brands.
For years, GM’s main tool for keeping the divisions separate was styling. The corporation spent billions of dollars on design and tooling to give each division its own sheet metal and enough visually unique features to make them look different despite sharing the same inner body structure and an increasing amount of hardware.
When the first phase of GM’s downsizing program arrived for 1977, the borders were starting to get a little thin. The cheaper, slightly smaller B-body full-size cars looked reasonably different from each other, but the bigger C-body models — the most senior GM cars — were not as successful in that respect. The styling studios applied all the customary tricks (different sheet metal, different hoods, different grilles), but the bones were showing through, more than usual.
This became even more pronounced with the 1980 facelift. Although there were some minor aerodynamic touch-ups, the net effect was to make the C-body cars look more upright and more rigid, and there were some awkward stylistic miscues. For example, I’m not sure what motivated the Oldsmobile studio to round off the front wheel arches of the Ninety-Eight like the cheaper Delta 88 (which got round wheel arches front and rear) while leaving the rear ones rectangular and then further accentuating the disparity in shape with the semi-skirted rear wheels.
Neither the skirts nor the different front wheel arches did much to disguise the resemblance and structural relationship between the Ninety-Eight and the Cadillac De Ville. They still had different hoods, front fenders, grilles, and front bumpers (all the pieces each division supplied itself rather than buying from Fisher Body), but the De Ville and the Ninety-Eight looked like what they were: different faces on the same body, dressed up with some minor variations in trim and detailing.
The 1980 facelift had brought a more upright formal roof for the big two-door coupes, with hardtop-style rear quarter windows rather than opera windows. Although the overall popularity of vinyl roofs and opera lamps was fading rapidly by this time, a shift in buyer tastes accelerated by the economic downturn, they were still hard to avoid in this class — they were fitted to 64.4 percent of full-size 1981 Oldsmobiles, and the percentage was probably higher on the Ninety-Eight.
Cadillac’s optional Cabriolet vinyl roof wasn’t identical to the Oldsmobile Landau vinyl top treatment, and while the opera lamps and sail panel badges were in the same places, the pieces weren’t the same. However, you might have to look twice to notice the difference — and if you did, it wasn’t hard to see the ways the two cars’ different rear clips and rear fenders fit over the common inner structure.
Was that a bad thing? If you were buying an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight, or its Buick equivalent, the Buick Electra Limited, maybe not. It was easy to see that you were getting most of a Cadillac De Ville for thousands of dollars less. This 1981 Ninety-Eight Regency Coupe had a base price of $10,778, compared to $13,791 for a 1981 Coupe de Ville.
As for Cadillac, well — luxury car buyers have seldom had much compunction about paying a premium for a premium badge. Even if all it really amounts to is a receipt for spending more, it shows that you have the means to spend more, and for some people, that’s the most important thing. As long as a significant percentage of the American public believed that Cadillac was still the pinnacle of domestic automotive excellence, few buyers were inclined to nitpick it on petty questions like value for money.
But in 1981, there was a new problem, which lay under the hood. Cadillac buyers this year were faced with three unappealing engine choices: the LC4 Buick 4.1-liter V-6, which was terribly underpowered for a car this size; the LF9 Oldsmobile 5.7-liter diesel V-8, whose poor reliability record was making a lot of headlines around this time; and the L62 6.0-liter V8-6-4, whose buggy “modulated displacement” (cylinder deactivation) system caused poor driveability and was producing its own raft of lawsuits. None of these engines fit the image of “the Standard of the World” even for undemanding customers disinclined to comparison-shop.
The Ninety-Eight offered the same 4.1-liter V-6 and 5.7-liter diesel V-8, but Oldsmobile buyers had a third and far more palatable option: the LV2 5.0-liter V-8, aka Olds 307. This lacked the Cadillac engine’s throttle-body injection and modulated displacement system, instead using a four-barrel carburetor with feedback control. With 140 hp, the 5.0-liter V-8 was hardly thrilling, but it was significantly stronger than the V-6, and it didn’t devastate resale values like the $542 diesel V-8. Like the LC4 V-6, the LV2 V-8 was linked to the new THM200-4R overdrive automatic with lockup torque converter, so its fuel economy suffered very little compared to the smaller V-6. Many Cadillac owners would have been far happier (not to mention less litigious) if they’d had this powertrain instead of the alternatives. (Cadillac apparently reached a similar conclusion — the Olds LV2 engine became standard on the RWD Fleetwood Brougham for 1986.)
The interior of the Ninety-Eight was quite nice if you liked this sort of thing. The Ninety-Eight Regency (there was still a cheaper Ninety-Eight Luxury Sedan in 1981, but it was on the way out) had always offered a relatively restrained interpretation of 1970s chrome/woodgrain/velour luxury cues, avoiding the tackier indulgences of ’70s Cadillacs while still appealing to similar tastes.
Cadillac had backed away from some of its more lurid ’70s excesses as well, particularly on the De Ville — the most egregious gingerbread was now reserved for the Fleetwood Brougham, especially with the D’Elegance package — but it still tended to be louder, and in some areas tackier, than it should have been given its substantial price premium. (These door panels, new for 1981, would have seemed more at home in a Pontiac Catalina.)
With its brushed metal and bright trim, the Ninety-Eight dashboard recalled Cadillac interiors of 1969–1970 — perhaps not the high water mark for Cadillac quality, but a step or two better than what you got from Cadillac in 1980–1981. The Regency was also similarly well-equipped (air conditioning, AM/FM stereo, power windows, and a power split bench seat were all standard), and about the only Cadillac gadget I don’t think you could get at least as an option was the MPG Sentinel trip computer.
Neither of these cars was cheap, and at these prices, watching both Oldsmobile and Cadillac trying to come up with different ways to disguise what was obviously the same steering wheel strikes me as a little sad. However, where I think Cadillac had fallen behind Olds in interior design was in the obvious falsity of its woodgrain trim. In both cars, all the wood trim on the doors and dashboard was simulated, but Oldsmobile interior stylists had made some effort to arrange the exposed sections in plausibly wood-like shapes, whereas Cadillac still seemed to have no compunctions about plopping big sections of obviously molded woodgrain plastic directly in the driver’s view. If you removed all the badging and logos from the interior, sat the average customer behind the wheel without letting them see the exterior, and asked them which of these cars seemed the more expensive, I don’t think it would be the Cadillac.
Pillow-style button-tufted velour seats had been a Regency staple since 1973. You either liked this sort of thing or you didn’t, but for what it’s worth, I think Oldsmobile approached the idiom with enough restraint to make it palatable for those who didn’t put a premium on overkill. You could also have these seats in leather, in either Doeskin or Maple Red.
Leather was also optional on the Cadillac, although you got a much wider range of colors (10 in all, to the Oldsmobile’s two). The standard Heather cloth upholstery in the De Ville wasn’t as indulgent as the Regency’s — if you wanted the full pillow effect, you needed to step up to the Fleetwood Brougham d’Elegance, which was a good bit more expensive.
In the ’60s, Oldsmobile had sold quite a lot of two-door hardtops even in the Ninety-Eight line, but by the time the Ninety-Eight Regency appeared in 1973, Oldsmobile buyers had apparently tired of making passengers clamber in and out of the back seat. By 1980, the base Ninety-Eight Luxury Coupe had been dropped due to slow sales, and sales of the Regency Coupe had slipped to 12,000 to 13,000 units a year. There was plenty of room back there even in the coupe, but the four-door sedan was more convenient, and sold much better.
For Cadillac, however, “Coupe de Ville” was still a name to conjure with. De Ville sales were split very close to 50/50 between sedans and coupes, and Cadillac actually added a coupe to the Fleetwood Brougham line for 1981.
I can’t lie, I’m not a fan of the exterior styling of the facelifted Ninety-Eight. Unlike 1981’s attractive facelift of the A-body Cutlass Supreme, the details just don’t come together well, and this beige color doesn’t help its case; the De Ville looked better on the outside. However, the Ninety-Eight Regency had a more tasteful, equally luxurious, equally roomy interior; substantially similar standard equipment; and a much more livable V-8 engine for fully 20 percent less money. As an ownership proposition, that was compelling, and the fact that the De Ville still outsold the Ninety-Eight by better than 20 percent — 109,245 to 89,670 — in this recessionary period speaks volumes about the power the Cadillac name still held over the American imagination.
As in eras past, I’m sure the Ninety-Eight still attracted some upper-middle-class buyers who were happy to forgo the Cadillac badge — not because they couldn’t afford it, but because they considered the brand too gauche. However, that was not a huge market. The Ninety-Eight sold respectably well, and continued to do so through the rest of this generation, but on average, Olds dealers sold two or three of these cars a month, a sales volume Cadillac sales executives of this era would have regarded as a grave crisis. The reality was that the market for this kind of full-size car had been on the decline for years, and affluent buyers who wanted luxury without Cadillac-type new-money baggage were drifting in various other directions. There was still a market for American-style big cars for a while longer — the downsized FWD Ninety-Eight, launched in 1985, was quite successful at first — but there was ultimately no arguing with gravity. Oldsmobile at least had less at stake in that than Cadillac did.
So, while this Ninety-Eight was a better buy than its ostensibly more upscale Cadillac cousin, it was in a segment that was beginning its terminal decline — a Pyrrhic moral victory, or a late decision on points after much of the audience has already begun to shuffle out of the stadium to head home.
Related Reading
1981–1982 Cadillacs With The Buick 4.1L V-6: The Safe But (Very) Slow Choice (by me)
Curbside Classic: 1980-84 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight – An Ode To Full-Size American Sedans, New And Old (by William Stopford)
Curbside Classic: 1982 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency – I Love Clouds (by Joseph Dennis)
Curbside Classic: 1984 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight – Your Father’s Last Oldsmobile? (by J P Cavanaugh)
I dont know how common it was overall but where I grew up, Cadillac and Oldsmobile dealers were often if not always paired. I’d imagine more than a few 98 prospects got upsold to a Deville for “only $X.XX more per month.”
Cadillac eventually figured out that the 1980-84 Olds 98 had the best powertrain because Cadillac finally started using it in the big Cadillac (which they renamed “Brougham” after the DeVille and Fleetwood were downsized again).
I owned a 98 Regency coupe quite similar to this example (though mine was a final-year 1984). My midwestern middle class world was lousy with Olds 98s of this generation, though the 4 doors far, far outsold the coupes. Also, the vinyl roof still ruled in this segment. Mine was a slick-top car (which I preferred) and I never saw very many of those at all.
I think I can answer your question on mismatched wheel opening shapes on these Olds 98s. It was because these had to share sheetmetal with the higher volume 88, and the 1980 88 restyle went to full, round wheel openings both front and rear, as opposed to the 77-79 edition’s wheel openings that were more rectangular. I liked the look of the fender skirts on these far more than I liked the look of the sloping nose and the cheap looking (to me) plastichrome grille.
I will also agree that the plastic wood trim in the interiors of the Oldsmobiles looked far more elegant and realistic than that used in the Cadillac.
I figured the front fenders were likely shared with the facelifted Delta 88, but making the more expensive model mismatched and out of place still seems like a questionable choice — surely there was some better compromise they could have managed within their tooling budget. The Ninety-Eight was cheaper than a De Ville, but it was still significantly more expensive than a Delta 88.
I think that Olds and Buick always found a way to use the same front end sheetmetal on both the B and C body big cars, at least in the 60s and 70s. Those round front wheel openings were also seen on Olds 98s from 1965-68.
It’s not that round was bad, it’s that having the priciest model look like leftover pieces of two different cars spliced together seemed contrary to the luxury image.
Cadillac eventually figured out… yes, that is one way to phrase it.
I would say “it took GM five years, FIVE LONG YEARS, to put a palatable engine, in a Cadillac”.
(A decent engine, yes. Decent is fine for Chevy, Ford, or even Toyota back then. People who want a “luxury” item deserve more than decent. A 5 liter V8 with 5 liters worth of emission-controlled, carbureted torque pushing a 4,000 lb brick is hardly “standard of the world”. But much better than an anemic 4.1 liter aluminum V8 or a V8-6-4 that doesn’t work).
How hard was it for some one to figure out the obvious and do this in 1982? Why did they wait?
Because they could. This was the attitude of senior management then. And Cadillac’s reputation and prestige declined even more rapidly on their watch.
Cadillac had spent a gazillion dollars on the new Livonia engine plant and the HT4100, and the RWD C-body was not originally intended to last nearly as long as it did. Which was an explanation, but not one that Cadillac buyers had any reason to find reassuring.
1976 were the largest but some escaped and carried on BIG. By this time it was all about luxury not horsepower. I was a big Oldsmobile fan. When Cadillac started shortened their vehicles they looked odd and intentional , not smooth like Olds. It was all down to the best plastic and longest shaggy rugs.
The separation was still there 77 to 79 but not 80 to 84 and this article nails it! The Electra’s and Park Avenues were even nicer than the Olds…which were nicer and better cars than the Caddys in early 89’s. Had them all as used cars.
1976 were the largest but some escaped and carried on BIG. By this time it was all about luxury not horsepower. I was a big Oldsmobile fan. When Cadillac started shortened their vehicles they looked odd and intentional , not smooth like Olds. It was all down to the best plastic and longest shaggy rugs.
In the late 70s and early 80s, in my very conservative community on the west side of Cincinnati, it was considered tacky to drive a Cadillac or Lincoln. Even today the closest luxury dealerships are a half hour drive away. It was wild, you could load up a Ninety-Eight with leather and Astroroof, but if you bought a basic DeVille you were too big for your britches. That doesn’t really hold true today, judging from the parade of Escalades and Navigators we see.
Having owned both types, the Olds gives up nothing to the Cadillac for comfort and drive-ability. In addition to being around 20% less to buy, my Olds would get around 15-20% greater fuel economy with the 307/overdrive drive line over the Caddy with the V8/6/4 disconnected. There doesn’t seem to be much difference in acceleration either, with our Olds getting a regular 4 bbl over the computer controlled unit seen in the US. 1981 CDV below.
1983 Olds
Id say the 1981 Buick Electra Park Ave was the one to buy. Much nicer looking car than the Olds 98. I also like the dashboard with round gauges a lot more than the strip style speedo on the Caddy and Olds
Had the same Olds 307 v8 which was kinda a slug compared to the bigger Olds v8 offered in the 70s. But it was reliable.
True, especially if it came with the “Big Clock”.
I’ve always wondered why and been baffled by Cadillac’s absurd use of molded plastic woodgrain in the ’70s and ’80s, but especially the former. Lincoln, Oldsmobile and Buick did a far superior job of at least providing a reasonable indication of what the plastic wood would look like, were it real. (Hmmmm. Wood would. How much wood would look more like wood if wood was real wood).
This is a tough one for me. I really like them both, but…………….
Outside, I prefer the Cadillac as it just looks lower to the ground where the 98 seems to be up on it’s toes.
Inside becomes more difficult. I love the door panels on the 98 way more than the Caddy. I prefer the dash/wheel of the Caddy slightly more than the Olds. Seats? Either, but I’d probably prefer the Caddy’s seats but just not in that red.
So if I could take the two and mix them together, it could make a perfect car. I would prefer the V864 Caddy engine for 1981 but with the thing disconnected.
Chicagoland was Olds territory, so these were common. My uncle had owned Cadillacs since he was an executive at Montgomery Wards after WWII, and his V8-6-4 Cadillac was his last before switching to Oldsmobile in 1981. He told me that he had no idea how bad a Cadillac could be until then.
Well, his Oldsmobiles were 98s, just as another one of my uncles, an HR exec at Inland Steel, were since before I was born. Both liked their 1981 Olds very much, causing my father to switch from a New Yorker to a Park Avenue as well.
Uncle Howard had a leather interior in his, which was vastly superior to the nasty velour tufted pillow interior of Uncle Lee’s or my dad’s Olds/Buick. I hated those seats and couldn’t wait to get out of them after arrivals.
These were cushy quiet cars that weren’t as good as a lot of us remember. Very popular and very successful, but I’d rather have a Mercury or Lincoln of this era.
I have driven both cars at length. Well, one was a 1979 Cadillac, so before the V-8-6-4 debacle. We also had a couple of 98s as taxis. The cars are practically identical to drive. The way they go down the roads is very similar. If anything, the 98 had a slightly firmer suspension than the DeVille. Were I in the market for a luxury barge in 1980, I’d choose the 98 hands down. In my opinion, the Cadillac was not worth the extra money, which was substantial.
Pop had a 1981 98 Regency coupe on a business lease. Big cars still found plenty of buyers in the era, but the C-body coupes were getting pretty rare. Pop had to special order his, because coupes were uncommon on dealer lots.
Not that it matters, but that 307 was 148hp. They dropped to 140hp with the swirl-port heads in 1985.
It was not. It had 140 hp and 240 lb-ft of torque in 1981; in 1980, it had been rated at 150 hp and 245 lb-ft.
While the Olds was a relative bargain to buy new, what about resale. For those that trade often, or lease, Cadillac could have been the better buy in the end.
The Cadillac was worth more in dollars, but in terms of percentage of retained value, I think the Ninety-Eight may have had the edge, and as they aged, the gap between them narrowed. I don’t know how that played out over the course of an early ’80s lease, but as used cars, the De Ville, which was initially over $3,000 more, would end up worth a couple hundred dollars more.
The exception was the LF9 diesel V-8. The diesel V-8 was poison to residuals generally, but it was worse for Cadillac. A diesel De Ville would end up worth significantly less than a Ninety-Eight, even a diesel Ninety-Eight.
My personal experience was with an ’84 98 coupe owned by a friend of my parents. As soon as he saw the shrunken ’85s, he went right down to the Oldsmobile dealer and traded in his ’83 Cutlass and his wife’s Corolla for a striking white one with a red half vinyl top. He said there was also a blue sedan that looked kind of purple depending on the light, and if the white one wasn’t there, that’s the one he would have bought.
Just after I got my license a few months later, he tossed the keys to me and the son of another friend he brought along who was about my age and said to take it for a spin. We went around the block, and when we got back, he said, “Back so soon?” Well, we grabbed my friend Paul and went to the beach and cruised the Ft. Lauderdale strip with it. When we finally got back, they’d been waiting for us for quite some time. He should have been more specific. 🙂
It was a nice ride if I recall. Most surprising, the turning circle was smaller than the one in my Zephyr.
The back seat of the 81 Cadillac looks very cozy which is how I would have seen it as a kid sitting back there. As an adult quick egress would be far more valuable. If I had to pick between the two, if I had to, I would got for the Olds as I like the front clip far more than the Cadillac’s battering ram face.
I don’t know how good Olds 98 was, but 1990sI did drive a 1979 Cadillac De Ville Coupe of that generation. I have to say it was better my the 1983 Caprice Classic sedan. It was a bigger car.I still remember how long its hood was when I sat behind the wheel in comparison with my Caprice. It drove better than mine too. Strangely thing was I found it was a bit easier to do parallel parking because I could see the tail of that car better, The Caddy with high front and low end style offers driver a better view. Also I found its seat was much better than Caprice seat. Both cars had transmission problems, mine was 4-speed unit and replaced at around 89k miles. Caddy was my uncle car, I don’t know what problems were, but as far as I know the transmission was never replaced
I had both and the Olds won hands down. 1980 Fleetwood Brougham and a 1981 Regency, both 4 doors. Bought both used, both had the dreaded 5.7 diesel. The Cadillac interior with leather seats seemed cheap and the fit and finish was terrible. The Olds had nearly a perfect interior and those cloth seats were so much more comfortable. I could drive all day and never get tired or sore. The Cadillac had about 40000 miles on it when I bought it. Almost immediately things started breaking. I had to constantly be fixing little things. The Olds had over 100000 miles when I got it but was in much better condition. It was relatively trouble free during the next 100000 miles I put on it. More about the engines another time but the Olds was almost trouble free there as well.
I’d be the last one to decry heritage and history, but when you’re buying a new car, you’re buying the product that’s rolling down the lines right now. Not five, ten, twenty, fifty or a hundred years ago. Obvious to us looking back: with the benefit of hindsight we know what the future held for each of these brands, maybe not so obvious to buyers at the time.
As you point out, Cadillac had no engine worthy of powering a prestige car. Oldsmobile did. Oldsmobile had the more tasteful interior (but less fabric choices). I’d give the styling nod to Oldsmobile as well; the Cadillac looked nearly unchanged since about 1970.
Cadillac was basking in dead glories, trading on their reputation with cars which didn’t live up to that reputation. Meanwhile Oldsmobile looked to have been delivering the goods; doing a better job of being a prestige car – and for thousands less.
This is all true… But the secret of these big body GM cars is to Roll back to 1978… The Olds offered the 403/TH 400 combo… Totally bulletproof… Same car.. Just a torque monster under the hood.. Easy to pull a ton more horsepower if you really wanted to.. But the torque made it a total driver.. Don’t get me wrong.. The 30is basically the same engine.. They are all small block Olds… But the 403 had displacement… And that means effortless torque… And the turbo 400 transmission means no issues for 200k + miles… And the engine will go half a million easy… I know because I owned one and it made 500 on the original long block… Along the way i did a valve job at about 200k… Couple Water pumps.. Carb rebuild.. Couple A/C Compressors.. A p/s pump.. Alternator.. Just your average stuff that fails on high mileage car in texas.. Past Oil changes – chassis lube, brakes and tires… It was almost maintenance free. My dad bought the car new… Passed it on to me at 200k… I put 300k more on it… I did all the maintenence on the car through the life. When it rolled 500k I have it to my son… He and his friends drove it to school and then made a race car out of it. I don’t recall, but probably only another 10k miles on the street… Of course, he wanted something sporty so It was passed on to another kid and I passed my kid a trans am I was retiring from racing… Im sure that Olds would have went another 200k or more had I kept it… Still had good compression.. Ran great… Trans was still shifting fine.. I had 307s in other cars.. They are great too.. But the 403 was the engine of choice…
Someone asked “how could Cadillac not realized this?” or something similar. It was because of HUBRIS which infected ALL of General Motors. I worked for a supplier to the auto industry in the ’70’s and ’80’s and GM was horrible to do business with. They were reluctant to consider any idea, no matter how good, if they haden’t thought of it first.They were smarter than everyone else in all things, and they knew it!!!! Think of how many cars GM introduced that were half-finished at the introduction — Corvair, Fiero, Vega, Olds diesel, Caddy V8-6-4, too many brands that were no different from each other, etc., etc. Yup, sometimes these cars got fixed over several years but by then the reputations were set and the cars were abandoned. Yes by God, GM knew best, always, every single time — just ask them!
My father had a 73 – 4DrRegency w/ the 455, I bought 82 Regency 307 4dr new, love the interiors of these cars & in 90’s purchase used 83&84 Regency 2 Dr Coupes w/307. my only regret is selling but I’m on the hunt for a decent one w/ reasonable price tag.
Aaron – Thanks so much for your efforts and research! These articles are fascinating!
One big difference between the two is the climate control system. Cadillac has a fully automatic electronic system while Oldsmobile has a semiautomatic system that is not electronic. I like the electronic system which I first got on an 83 Buick Skyhawk.