Earlier today, while hunting larger CC game, I came upon this 1990 Sedan de Ville. I thought it was a nice juxtaposition with the classic ’63 in the background. While you may or may not appreciate the FWD 1989-93 de Villes (I’m a fan), there’s no denying it’s a Cadillac.
I actually thought it a ’91-’93 model, judging from its alloy wheels, which first appeared in 1991. But the grille and airbag steering wheel peg it as a 1990. I see some real clapped-out versions of these ’90s Caddys, so was happy to see one in sound shape.
And as for its neighbor, stay tuned…
Nice find. That looks like the same color as my grandfather’s ’92 Sedan deVille (his last Caddy) though the cladding on his was dark brown.
Is that an Austin Cambridge tail light sticking out on the last photo?.
Most went north into BC Canda in the Sixties ,around the Vancouver area.
Close, it’s an MG Magnette.
I sold Cadillacs like the newer one in the early 1990’s. I preferred the Fleetwoods, because of the side skirt covering the rear wheels. Thought they looked better that way.
This is definitely a body style that begs for fender skirts. Along the same lines, the welded-on rear fender lip on deVilles always looked a bit cheap to me.
I own a 1991 Sedan DeVille with fender skirts, phaeton roof and gold emblems. It is a very rare car here in Chihuahua, where about half a dozen of them remain from the years 1991-1993. More recent years models are abundant though, but these were the new batch since 1963, when the governmet banned all US production cars to increase the Mexican-made vehicles, especially from Chevrolet, Ford and Dodge, which became then, the “luxury” marques in this country.
Well, this Sedan DeVille with all its appointments and burgundy color and white walls is a comfortable barge which makes heads turn. It is the only one which remains here in the city with fender skirts. All the others don’t have them; my car looks as a phantom from another era with its “convertible” roof and the likes, and sometimes it is mistaken for a Lincoln, which insults my intelligence and years of care (21, to be exact) of this aristocratic family treasure.
Stunning beltline and greenhouse on the sedan!
Redolent of the Pope mobile…
I might be one of the few to say I’d take either one.
A high school friend and distant relative had one in his family (his great grandmother and mine were sisters). It was a 1993 model, black with a black interior, no vinyl roof, quiet, the V8 would light the tires at will, miles of leg room front and rear, and it cornered well under teenage hoonery 😛 . It also LOOKED like a Cadillac unlike the tiny 1985 models.
Oh and the 63 model is very clean.
The ’63 has the wrong width whitewalls. I see this so often. Narrow whitewalls were in by the time this car was built.
Wide whitewalls were in the early 1950s. Wide whitewalls do not a classic car make.
I think 1961 was the last year wide whites were commonly seen. Of course, years later, collectors put them on everything.
Preach it, brother. This is a thing with me. I can deal with narrow whites on older cars, but wide whites on newer cars make me scream.
At least the guy didn’t put wire wheels on it.
My former boss had one of these back during that time period. The company this his family owned and I worked for was a Tier 1 supplier to GM and other auto manufacturers. It was common practice that the upper management of the company bought something from one of the clients; even though this guy could afford a much higher priced ride, he always had the top of the line 4 door Caddy. Usually in a dark blue, but the car he had then was the same color as the one in the photos.
I think it was about this time that GM realized they’d screwed the pooch with the too-short Caddys of the mid 80’s and that this car ended up with the longer trunk and more ‘jewelry’ to make the car seem like it’s predecessors. It was about this time, too, that I started getting interested in Cadillacs again. The late 70’s and early to mid-80’s FWD experiments really turned me off.
I had been a closet Cadillac fan since I was very young. You were quite ‘uppity’ in my steel town neighborhood to aspire to a Cadillac unless you were ‘money’. How you got the money was your own concern, but generally mill rats didn’t own a Caddy unless they had some sort of unfair advantage. I’ll leave the definition of unfair advantage to your own devices. For the folks who worked hard and saved their nickels, a nice Oldsmobile or Buick (or Chrysler or Mercury, Lincolns were still a tier below Caddys, but above the other mid level brands) was the best you would be seen in.
But this car signaled to me that GM was going to get serious about Cadillac again and I took note. At the time the Voyage show car was making waves and also signalling a change in Cadillac. It has taken a lot longer than I ever imagined, but with the recent models you can see that Cadillac is working to be taken seriously on the world stage. It has beaten back the domestic competition and is taking the hard route by taking on BMW in certain segments.
A friend on Facebook asked what we’d most like to see underneath the Christmas tree this year. I answered a crystal red clearcoat Cadillac CTS-V sedan. I wasn’t kidding!
I keep waiting to hear the automotive equivalent of “you’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”, however…
Interesting post (thanks). Too bad Cadillac will never be king like they used to be.
I’ve said it before, but I really kinda like ’89-’93 deVilles. Amazing what a little bit of extra length does for the styling. The ’85-’88 looked way too much like the Ninety Eight (I actually like the Olds, too), which is ridiculous, because they share no sheetmetal. The ’94 looks bloated.
The C/H cars were pretty decent, once the early bugs were worked out. They were a paragon of space efficiency, and fairly advanced for the time. GM lost the bet on skyrocketing gas prices, but they would have likely still lost the war against changing luxury buyer tastes, regardless.
I increasingly think it’s not so much a matter of buyer tastes changing as buyers changing. I don’t think Cadillac lost the Baby Boomers; for the most part, I think the Boomers never really embraced the Cadillac ethos in any major way. (Some did, but not enough, as far as GM was concerned.) Once the center of gravity of the market shifted from the previous generation to the Boomers, Cadillac started to founder.
In 2005, I bought a 1991 Sedan de Ville for $999 with 200,000 miles on it while going through a divorce and needing a cheap cash car. Cruella served me well once I got some neglected maintenance items taken care of. Drove her for another 60,000 miles — including a cross country trip — then drove her cross country again to give it to my niece in North Dakota, where the old girl keeps on rolling at 270,000+ miles. I really want to see her make it to 300,000. I still see a lot of these old DeVilles around, some still in nice shape. GM had the bugs worked out by this point and the cars were quite durable. And this was a car that never let you forget you were driving a Cadillac. By my count, there were six Cadillac scripts and 17 wreath and crest emblems on the car.
My Dad’s last car was a white Sedan DeVille just like the 1990 pictured here. After he died, my mom didn’t want it so I took it. Wonderful car for my sales calls, except pretty crappy mileage. Ended up driving my wife’s Mercury Tracer most of the time.
But I sure liked that Cad. When my band played I could fit the whole PA system and my two keyboards along with all the ancillary gear in the trunk and back seat. Who needs a truck?
The newer one looks just like one an elderly neighbor used to own. He lived next door when we first moved to our current house. He and his wife were both in their 90s. Neither of them cooked, so three times a day that Cadillac backed out of the garage and zoomed off down the street. He was a former WWI fighter pilot and was a fascinating fellow to talk to. He was actually not very happy with the car, said that he had quite a bit of trouble with it. A previous Caddy or two had treated him much better.
This seems to be the most common Cadillac to run across the crusher scales lately. It’s really too bad because a lot of them still run & I’ve always been a fan of these. I like even the ’85 models & happen to own an ’85 CDV with
bad engineblown head gasket.I’m a little silly & installed part of one of these cars in my beater ’86 C20 work-truck to monitor the various pressures inside the semi-shot 700R4 transmission.
I always liked the Touring Sedan (pre Deville Concours) version of this body style. Slightly less chrome, more starch in the suspension, slightly sportier interior. Tried to get my Grandmother to purchse this vintage Deville, but she couldn’t get past the fact that it was a Cadillac and didn’t feel she wanted to make that kind of statement. Bought a very nice LeSabre instead (with a hideous fake “carriage” roof).
Tried to get my parents into a CTS4 last year, but the same thing happened…didn’t want to make the Cadillac statement to the neibors and family…ended up with a 11 Regal T instead. Oh well.
Clean, front-wheel-drive DeVilles and Fleetwoods of the 1980s and early 1990s are starting to show up in the car corrals of the Carlisle Collector Car shows. I didn’t care for them when they were new, but I’m gaining a new appreciation for the revamped versions. The extra inches of length and redesigned taillights make all of the difference in the world.
Funny thing is that many people claim that the rear-wheel-drive Broughams were the only “real” Cadillacs from this era, but they used Chevrolet or Oldsmobile engines. At least these used a unique, Cadillac-only V-8. And they have a much more modern look and “feel” to them.
Since when is a GM car, ANY GM car, in ‘sound shape’? They’re not even in sound shape when they come out of the factory. Then or now.
LOL. As much as it goes against my religion to defend GM in any way, shape or form, these cars were pretty well done for what they were. (And where the factory had screwed up, the dealers stepped in to remedy the issues – I have experience with that firsthand.)
I’d agree…by 1990, GM had addressed the issues with its big, front-wheel-drive cars. My parents had a 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham sedan that was initially very troublesome – primarily because of sloppy workmanship and defective parts. They traded it for a 1992 Delta 88 Royale, which was a MUCH better car in every way. I don’t recall any major issues with the 1992 Oldsmobile.
Ditto. My grandparents had an ’85 Ninety Eight Regency that was a bucket of bolts and never, ever ran right. They replaced it with a ’91 Eighty Eight Royale that was pretty solid and bulletproof.
As far as I’m concerned, the H/C were some of the best cars GM ever made, and about the last one remotely worth owning. Unfortunately, interior/body/trim component quality went way downhill on the ’90s cars and the 2000+ models were junk (Compare how a ’90, ’95 and ’00 LeSabre have held up and you’ll see what I mean). What a waste.
Hello Troll…keep on walking…..
+1
Had a ton of early 90s Cadillacs back in the day as rentals. They were not at all bad for the time.
Here’s mine. It’s a 91 with 77,000 miles.
Nice car! I like how the CTS is in the background–a more modern version of my shot at the top 🙂
More interested in the MG Magnette.
Patience, patience…
Not to split hairs but that is either an ’89 or a 90 with ’91-’93 wheels or a ’91-’93 with an ’89 or ’90 grille … Do you agree CARMINE?
The 91-93 had a different hood and grille, so it is most likely a 89 or 90 with the later model year wheels on it.
The real truth would come out if we knew if it had the 4.5 or the 4.9
the 4.9 in the 91-93’s got the “power dome” hood along with the larger egg crate grille…yummy
Thank you for the compliment Tom!