That Cimarron convertible sure was an interesting find…but maybe you’re looking for something a little bigger. Something in which you and five other passengers can really stretch out your legs and sink your butts into soft, cushy velour or leather. Well, last week I passed this pristine Fleetwood Brougham, whose sparkling “Antique Saddle” body was topped with a gold elk-grain vinyl roof.
Because I wasn’t able to get a glimpse of the grille, I’m not sure of its exact model year (Cadillac experts, help me out) I can, however, attest that it is indeed a “Fleetwood Brougham”, which pegs the MY as 1986, at the latest. I spotted the car as I was leaving Whole Foods, and followed it for several miles until the driver, unfortunately, made a right turn just after I snapped this picture. If I’d been able to see the grille, perhaps I’d have had a better idea of the MY.
So if you live by the philosophy that “Bigger is Better”, then this is the 1980s Cadillac for you.
Beautiful find! For guys my age nothing says Cadillac like a Reagan-era Fleetwood Brougham. If it has a center high mount stop lamp it’s an ’86 since that was the last year for the Fleetwood Brougham badging (and first for the bulletproof Olds 307). If there’s no CHMSL it’s probably an ’85 with the hard to find (rolls eyes) 4100 engine.
I love the way these look in brown and was hoping to find one in that color before I bought my ’86 in Chamois.
Yeah . . . hard to find ’85 with the “HT 4100” . . . . because very few of them are running!
That is a very nice color on that car. I don’t recall seeing many like this at all. Most of them around here seemed to be navy, yellow, white or burgundy. Cadillac usually offered so many color choices, that there were always two or three that had a very low take-rate. This dark brown was very popular in the early 70s, but was almost never seen in the 80s.
Not true for the Midwest–my parents’ Fleetwood Brougham I learned to drive on was this exact same color, and a friend’s parents had one exactly like it. Still see brown ones to this day (and even mustardy-brown/gold [ew]) here. This dark brown was one of the more popular choices here, as well as on other makes.
Yeah Navy..I saw one of these..i quite like it..It belonged to the US ambassador in Ireland. It was a 1989..I think And that was blue..Nice car. I saw it a few times..I think the embassy must have had it for a few years…Into the mid 1990’s anyway.
With B, C, and D body RWD GM I’m always most interested in two things, what engine does it have and what transmission does it have? The answer to those two questions is usually the difference between “unstoppable tank” and “POS.”
Actually forgot I had one of these, about 5 years ago. Think it was an ’84. Paid $600 for it, and absolutely everything worked, ran beautiful, no rust. Mine was silver. Sold it for $1200 about 6 months later, dang it.
So I can add to my list of Caddy’s I’ve owned, ’60, ’64, ’66, ’84. I think I have a problem.
No, you have good taste in Cadillacs.
Whitewalls! STAT!
The rears almost look like snow tires (which would explain the awful choice). What about that roof? Awful! Surely Cadillac didn’t offer that color w/ the dark brown body???
I like the combination. It was great when Cadillac offered so many paint colors, roof colors and interior choices. You could have subtle, classic and elegant with say, navy blue with matching top and interior, or something sharp and snazzy like this brown and gold one or purple and white. Color choices seem to be coming back, but still too many grays around.
Could be factory, could be a cream colored car that had the body repainted brown,
One of the things I hate most is wire wheels and blackwalls, unless its real wires and blackwalls like on an E-type or something.
I thought that also, but what is the likelihood that someone painted their old Cadillac brown? 🙂
I hate blackwalls on luxury cars also, including rims like the ’91-’93ish DeVilles had. Look awful with blackwalls.
The interior is the same color as the vinyl top, which was a factory combo, I could see chocolate brown on light coffee working as a color scheme.
You would had hated to know that real wires were an option on the Cadillac C/D-Body.But I don’t think the BW tires were. I just happen to have a pic of a factory wire wheel I found last month on a 85 Fleetwood that was at one of the U-Pull-Its I frequent. I guess the real crime is the OWL tires used here.Now that’s just wrong. LOL
This was such a good, clean, classic design when it came out for 1980. It was a tragedy for Cadillac that a slide in quality and some pretty terrible drivetrains along with eventual trim tweaks that marred the vehicle with some incongruous slathered on broughmy crap progressively killed the division. The eventual door mounted seat belts were wrong, wrong, wrong, in every possible way.
I didn’t have much personal experience with the Caddy, but I recall that it seemed like the ’80 and up B’s all had seemingly thinner sheet metal that could pick up door dings from flying leaves, a situation not helped by glued on body side moldings that were prone to falling off.
I think my one time sitting on one of these was around 1983 when my dad was shopping for a car at a post rental retail sale lot by the airport. An impressive medium blue Sedan DeVille. He eventually picked out a black 1982 Grand Prix, base model with decent options, including power windows and Pontiac rally wheels. The six was a little wheezy, but my Dad really liked that car. Coming out of some big plain family sedans (’68 Impala and ’76 LTD) was probably why.
History would have been very different if the reputation of these cars had been; “excellent engineering, bullet proof, decent acceleration, great tow vehicle and family vacation sanctuary, heck they even fixed the ’77-’79 rear door windows that only went halfway down!”
The rear windows on the 80-92s still only go down half way. Nothing thin about the sheetmetal on my ’86.
I agree the slathered on Broughamy crap in ’90 screwed up the classic lines of the car. The door mounted seatbelts came in ’90 too. Ironically that was the year it got the optional 5.7 which really made the car scoot. Have heard many people say their ultimate classic Caddy would be an 80-89 box with the 5.7.
I thought the 5.7 made its first appearance in the last year of the sealed beam cars, 1989? Could be 90 though, I would have to check to be sure.
Definitely 90. An 89 with the 5.7 would be one of the most sought after Cadillacs around. The 307 went on until 90 as the STD engine, replaced by the 305 Chevy in MY91.
Rear windows going only halfway down was a common design flaw that many GM cars suffered. My grandfather’s ’92 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight and ’97 Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight both suffered from this issue.
I bet your grandparents didn’t think it was a design flaw with you sitting back there as a small child…. 🙂
Everybody made cars with that type of halfway windows on the doors. Not just GM. Subaru is one make that comes to my mind. If you look at the design of the doors on every one of those cars you would see that there isn’t enough room for a door glass in them. Common design flaw? Sound engineering IMO.
I thought these cars were so handsome and comfortable. My grandmother ordered a 1982 Fleetwood d’Elegance which was a very handsome and comfortable car yet it did not have enough power to climb over a discarded cigarette butt. How GM ever had the great idea to put an engine in such a car is beyond me. As the bodystyle progressed it was still not powered as it should have been and the lines grew less attractive. It signaled the end of my family’s four generation relationship with GM.
Roger Smith and all his minions on the 14th floor launched a conspiracy to loose customers, see they did it on purpose just to piss you off, I can hear them now laughing away in their executive offices, puffing on cigars and eating live babies……HARHARHARHARHAR!
High fives all around every time they lost a customer….YEAH!
The truth is less dramatic…..
The realites are based on CAFE, fuel economy, future fuel prices and emmisions concerns, foreign competion, changing buyer tastes, and other issues, some of which never came to be, most of which have been explained here by other posters here on this site.
In my experience, Mr Smith and his minions didn’t care about their customers. They still believed, “If we build it, we will buy it.” They couldn’t for a second understand why someone would not buy their cars. That’s why we got 125 hp engines in these cars. It was only after many years of customers screaming about said under powered aberrations that a real, honest to goodness V-8 with sufficient power was offered.
Blaming CAFE doesn’t much work, either, because Lincoln managed to make a traditional RWD barge for years and BMW’s line-up, for example, is hardly filled with gutless econoboxes. Same for MB.
I do agree that buyer’s tastes changed. The people who bought these cars rarely bought another. In the late1980’s, we still had quite a few Caddy customers servicing their cars at our shop but they average age had to be over 70. By 1995 or so, most were gone, as were their Cadillacs.
Ford would have done the same if they had the money, big cars were dead in 1982, done, all of them were either already dropped, like Chryslers R-body and Pontiacs B-body, or on their way out the door. BMW and Mercedes paid gas guzzler fines,on the TINY number of cars they sold that violated the law, truth is the majority of the stuff they sold here in the same time period wasn’t exactly in the “muscle car” realm.
They weren’t “gutless econoboxes”? A 3000lb 65hp 240D wishes it was a gutless econobox, and 320i or 528e arent exactly a rockeships seither, hell BMW didn’t even sell a car with freaking V8, period. A 80’s 7series is the smaller than a Regal, probaly weighs less too
Besides in the 80’s they were barely on the radar of the regulatory microscope, unlike mamoth GM which was being assaulted from all sides.
GM could have said FU and paid the fines, then the government could have said FU back and raised CAFE to 35mpg or 40, who knows?(it was supposed to go up in steps, it wasn’t until President Regan that it was frozen in theearly 80’s)
True that the 4100 could have stayed in the oven longer, but GM was commited to NOT paying any gas guzzlers fines when CAFE came around(see, it does have something to do with it) the downsized FWD C-body cars were supposed to be out in late 83 as 1984 MY cars, they go delayed, and in the meantime, gas prices never spiked, big car sales rebounded and the big Cadillac got a stay of execution, it really only had the 4100 from 1982-1985.
Roger Smith was a busy guy, its tough to conspire to piss off all your customers as CEO AND taking the time out to throw nuts and bolts inside body panels during assembly to cause endless rattles in new cars all while showing up drunk and stoned to work.
Have you ever introduced yourself on here (i.e. a bio)? I’d be interested in knowing how some of your insights and knowledge came.
Re: Roger Smith, Wikipedia seems to sum up his years as GM CEO quite well:
Deciding that GM needed to completely change its structure and culture in order to remain competitive into the future, Smith instituted several initiatives that included forming strategic joint ventures with Japanese and Korean automakers, launching the Saturn division, investing heavily in technological automation and robotics, and attempting to rid the company of its risk-averse bureaucracy. However, Smith’s far-reaching goals proved too ambitious and overwhelming to be implemented effectively in the face of the company’s resilient corporate culture and bureaucracy. Despite Smith’s vision, he was unable to successfully integrate GM’s major acquisitions, several of which also failed to tackle the root causes of GM’s fundamental problems.
Smith’s tenure is commonly viewed as a failure, as GM’s share of the US market fell from 46% to 35%, and it took on considerable debt causing it to lapse close to bankruptcy in the early 1990s. As a result, CNBC has called Smith one of the “Worst American CEOs of All Time”, stating, “Smith…..had the right idea but may have lacked the intuition to understand how his rip-up-the-carpet redo would affect the delicate web of informal communication that GM relied upon.
“…big cars were dead in 1982”
Yes, but then suddenly in spring 1983, owners of 70’s big cars wanted new ones, pent up demand. They finally “got used to the size” of Panthers and B/C bodies. Sales went way up, and profits came back.
Pontiac quickly brought the Parisienne down from Canada, to eager buyers.
Gas prices stabilized at $1.25 or so, and people were used to it, and said ‘we don’t need to get a small car to replace our rusty ’76 Caprice/LTD/etc’.
Keep in mind that 1980-83 Lincolns Town Cars and the Mark series made do with 130 HP V8’s and Mercedes was stuffing powerhouse 67 and 80 HP diesels in there bread and butter models so it’s not like Cadillac was the only one. Also the 125 HP HT 4100 was upped to 135 from 83-85 and then 140 with the option of 170 if the vin code “9” 307 was ordered so it wasn’t all that terrible.
Disagree with me if you like but do not result to a low rent personal attack because I do not agree with you. I do not think less of you for having a different opinion. I try to keep an open mind about you and believe you come to your conclusions based on the best information you have and not emotions.
As for me I cannot make excuses or explain a failed plan the truth is still right there; my family and herds of others left Cadillac because of the junk they turned out in the 1980’s; which is no one’s fault but their own. Cadillac is but a shell of what it once was. Now all we see is Cadillac trying to be a bargain BMW. More than anyone I wish this was not so.
When you make statements like “how did GM ever have the great idea of putting that engine in…” etc etc, it just shows ignorance, take the time to shake off some of the pretend hurt feelings and actually read the post and you will get an explanation, I’m not making excuses, I’m trying to explain why it happened.
Some people seem to think that around 1980 GM decided, “hey, you know what would be cool, if we pissed off a whole shitload of buyers and lost tons of money and market share!”, but that’s not that case, whats the saying?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions?
I can be objective and find both praise and fault with the marque I like and own. This is not a Friday night football game. You sound like more of a GM cheerleader than a automobile enthusiast. Do not attack a person for having a difference of opinion without expecting a reply. Personal attacks on a person’s observation about a certain model make you appear shallow, limited and uninformed. It is your choice how you want to be and be perceived; which will determine how seriously your point is taken and will reflect on the quality of this blog and how it welcomes others to this small corner of the automobile enthusiast world.
When you start to believe you know all there is to know about an issue and belittle other points of view you stop growing. Having said that, this is now a closed subject for me. I wish you good luck.
We had a 1978 Sedan DeVille. 425 4-bbl. I drove that one off and on for 3 years after dad handed it off to mom. Drove suprisingly well compared to the 77 Buick that it replaced.The steering, though completely numb, was fairly direct. Cruised at 70-75 all day.
I loved those cars.
So beautiful. I’m sure some people are getting very tired of seeing so many 80s Cadillac C/D bodies on this site, but I am not one of those people.
I would go so far as to say, 90% of the time with a straight face, that it is everyone’s patriotic duty to save these from getting donked. The last real Cadillacs; or at least, the last good looking Cadillac design, best looking since about ’68-’69 or so. I always felt ’71-’79 represented a nadir of Cadillac style (well, the first of several). Lincolns looked better than Cadillacs in the 70s. But 1980-89, the big Cadillac is the pageant winner. Auto reviewers at the time looked at these as “garish holdovers” (Warren Brown). Well, it’s true they could have had fewer faux-chrome badges inside and more refinement under the hood. But even as they were sneered at, they survived. Long past the expected end date. They slathered extra cladding on the later versions but it’s amazing that basically the exact car was being made in 1992 (and the bubble version until ’96) and was still selling even though it was as out of touch as typing a brief on a Royal Quiet Deluxe is. Long after the Buick, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, and Pontiac “big cars” had been front-wheeled, downsized, bubbled, or discontinued altogether, people continued to buy these, because, maybe in a way those other cars could no longer meaningfully be, this still meant “Cadillac” in a way that everyone understood and, in some cases, valued.
Still miss my ’87 every time I take the wheel of my ’77 Electra. Sure, ye olde Buick is somewhat faster and unburdened with electronically controlled carburation, but that shredding biege cloth interior will never be as nice as that beautiful smelling leather in my old Brougham, and it doesn’t have the great climate control system, the twilight sentinal, the infrared indicators on the front fenders and over the back window…
I’d like to snap up a 1980 in Fleetwood or DeVille form. While the 5.7 from the 90s may be the fastest, I think the 368/6.0 with the cats removed would be a nice, smooth ride; and the simplicity of non-computer controls with the excellent THM400.
I wish for an alternate universe, where Cadillac kept making the Fleetwood Brougham with the 368, sort of like Toyota does with the Century in Japan, the would have kept refining and improving it like the Rolls Royce 6.4 V8.
I’m picturing factory short wheelbase (the version seen above) and long wheelbase (like the old factory made limos) sitting at curbs around Manhattan with drivers at the wait.
Approaching 40 years of refinement and continuous improvement the platform and engine/transmission are brilliant. The 368 now has cylinder deativation (real deactivation not the rough hewn V4-6-8) fuel injection and power is transmitted through an 8 speed transmission. Suspensions are fully independently sprung and has the latest generation magnaride. Highway fuel economy approaches 30 mpg and city fuel economy is helped by the start/stop system with redundancies to continue a/c and heat while the start/stop system is engaged.
The Fleetwood Brougham is now the envy of the world’s automakers and fought over in the used market. Survivors approach Rolls Royce Silver Cloud collector status.
Excellent, kinds of like the old Rolls Royce Phantom IV that was in production forever.
And of course, you would have to keep the LWB 75 series in production too, the 75 limo style was still so popular with the Secret Service that they custom made “Fleetwood 75” style limos out of the 93-96 Fleetwood and the FWD DeVille/DTS sedans.
Like these
93-96 Fleetwood “75” style limos
“Long after the Buick, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, and Pontiac “big cars” had been front-wheeled, downsized, bubbled…”
If inferring that there was no RWD Chevy big car in the 80s/90s, not true. Forgetting about the B body Caprice that stuck around at same time as big Caddy.
In fact, Chevy didn’t get a downsized Impala until model year 2000.
I inferred no such thing. I stated they had been, in the alternative, front-wheeled, downsized, or bubbled. The Chevy was bubbled in 1990. They kept making the Brougham in it’s classic shape 2 more model years after that happened. By the time the last ’92 rolled off the line, every other model of big American car that had existed in 1984 was discontinued, converted to downsized FWD, aero-ed like the Panthers or the Caprice, or otherwise much more in keeping with the times. But they still sold something like 15K 1992 Broughams, even though it was basically the most outdated looking vehicle available. My point is that says something about its desirability transcending the trends, even when it wasn’t yet a CC.
Or like Jaguar did with the XJ6-8 from 1968-?2009 (except the Cadillac would have far cheaper maintenance costs).
Put a refined Cadillac built V8 with FI and a 6-speed auto on it. Add the safety features to bring it up to code. Replace the plasti-wood with the real thing. But keep the rest of it simple inside. No touch screen module. No videos in the seats. Call it the “Cadillac Classic” or the “Cadillac Detroiter”. Okay maybe not the Detroiter, we don’t want to conjure up images of bankruptcy or have Micheal Moore make another movie, this time showing the shuttered Clark Street plant. The best selling year on the post-reputation destroying 4100 Brougham was ’87, when they billed it “the Classic Spirit of Cadillac”. Commercials with tuxedos and Sinatra and Jon Hamm.
Key would be to keep it low production and discreet. No gold package. No livery version (although I’m sure a few livery and limo conversions would be made if a livery company could afford a few–but we don’t want to market it as a fleet vehicle). Offer it in tasteful but not boring colors.
I know, I can hear it now, they’d sell 5-10K a year but it wouldn’t make sense for their bottom line…but isn’t that what everyone said about the original?
Ah well, we can dream.
Was it still the same Jag underneath all the way through 2009? I though the XJ was all new when they re-designed them in 1988.
No idea. It looked so much the same, was more my point.
I imagine how much better GM could have covered its bets if every division was allowed to keep one big sedan in the line up in 1985? Instead of only leaving Chevrolet and Cadillac with them.
Buick could have kept the RWD Park Avenue as The Limited.
Olds could have kept the RWD 98 as Regency
They could have just consolidated all BOF RWD car production into one plant, its not like GM didn’t have a shitload of plants in the 80’s, even if it was just for a few years to ween people off the really big cars slowly, cold turkey is tough!
What kills me is they halfway did that by keeping the classic wagons around…ALL of the wagons until MY 90, and then Chevy, Buick and Olds to ’96. So basically you had wagon versions of the Bonneville/Parisienne, Eighty-EIght, and LeSabre/Electra mish-mash coming off the line for many more years.
And then in 1991 they randomly brought back the Buick Roadmaster which was, if I’m not mistaken, basically a bubble-ized redesign of the last big ’85 LeSabre (and not of the ’84 Electra) since it was a B-Body sedan.
Since wagons were already being supplanted by minivans and sport utes as early as the mid-’80s, I’m not sure why the decision was made to keep making woody wagons but not keep more than Chevrolet and Cadillac big sedans around.
Oldsmobile only made the whale Custom Cruiser for 2 years, it launched the same year as the Silhouette mini-van, the mini-van won.
Everyone knew what a Cadillac was. No other car is as easily distinguishable as that Cadillac. ‘NUFF SAID.
These were among GM’s better efforts — except the 4100. It should have been left in the oven. I had an ’84 Olds 98 with the 307 used in the Caddie, and it was smooth and cruised nicely. However, at 70+ there sure wasn’t anything left in the ol’ sock if you needed more power — it wasn’t there. If you could overlook that, these were great highway cars.
Back in the day before we sped through town at 50 mph through the city streets to get to our crap jobs……….
Completely agree. I’d rather have the 307 than the 368 because the O/D automatic makes it a more relaxed and economical highway cruiser (up to 24mpg). Lower revs are better for engine wear too. Refinement is comparable to the 368 and better than with the Chevy 5.7.
My 307 does fine at 70mph, the transmission will kick down quickly and smoothly if you need it to. Going up a hill with a full load is where you wish for a few more cubic inches.
In its long 13 year production run (16 if you include the 77-79 pre-facelift) no engine was used in more model years than the 307.
O/D’s nice. For my money, having had to deal with ownership, the vaccum lines and computer system connected to the eQjet weren’t, hence my inclination towards the 1980.
Putting that aside, I never minded topping out at 70-75 mph, how fast are you really going to try to go in a car like this…it was more climbing up hills, having the car downshift into second, and having the top speed on the hill be about 45 mph that was a little scary. I know my Buick 350 can maintain speed up a hill without shifting out of third, so I imagine the 368 can too. The 307/2004R was not able to do it. Keep in mind I was only trying to maintain 60 or 65 under most of those circumstances, which is the posted speed limit and barely allows you to keep up with traffic.
I would go with the 368, last big block American production car at the time and the last GM car to use the tried and true Turbo Hydramatic 400. Remember even though it doesn’t have OD, the rear ends in luxury cars, especially from this era, are ridiculously low, the base rear axle in an 80 Cadillac is probably like a 2.56 or something even lower, the “performance” axle is probably a 3.08.
From 1977 to 1979 the standard C-body rear ends was 2:28. 2:73 optional and standard in California. 3:08 optional California and “high altitude”.
With the 2:28 end the revs will be around 1500 rpm in 60 mph I think, with standard tires.
My ’86 has a 2.73 rear end. Combined with the .67 overdrive 4th it is spinning the engine around much less than even the lowest final drive big block. The 307 is just above idle at 65mph where it doesn’t feel the least bit strained thanks to the very generous low end torque.
The lower (higher numerical) final makes for smaller steps between 1st and 3rd which makes the car feel more peppy too.
I would give up that gain in fuel economy to keep the big proper Cadillac engine and the TH400, that’s my opinion, your mileage may vary as they say.
I have to agree with Carmine on this one. Unless you are driving the car 100 miles a day, the ability of the car to accelerate from 50 to 70 in any decent way is just huge. I owned three different 307-powered B/C/D body cars and found that a complete and total lack of usable torque that comes from too big a car, too small an engine, too high a gearing and a locked torque converter is just pure misery. The 80s Ford setup of a 5.0/AOD is just as bad. A 368 and a THM 400 would be just the ticket here.
Did GM ever put a lockup torque converter into any of their 3 speed automatics? Chrysler did this with the Torqueflite in its later years before rwd cars got an OD gear in the autos, but not sure about GM.
I don’t believe so which is another reason I prefer the 200R to the THM400 in this particular application. I think the 200R had lockup from ’82 on the 4100, my ’86 has it. No 368, no matter how low the final drive, can come close to the 307 in highway fuel economy. It’s even better than the 4100.
Yes. The Th350C and Th200C had lockup converter. The th400 never had a lockup converter.
@ “In its long 13 year production run (16 if you include the 77-79 pre-facelift) no engine was used in more model years than the 307”
The Olds 307 didn’t exist in 77-80, the 260 was their small 8. I don’t think there was a 307 until 1983?
Yes I just meant that 1. the C/D body had a very long run, whether you measure it 77-92 or 80-92 and 2. of all the engines used in that series, a whopping 10 I believe, none were used in as many years as the 307.
The 4100 was just not ready for ‘prime time’ until 1988. Dealers were demanding better MPG and losing customers to imports in dark days of 1979-81.
The V8-6-4 was failing in 1981, and to save face, the 14th floor said “Get that new small motor on the street now! We need to show we’re making cars with better MPG!” Which also begat the Cimmarron.
HT4100 was one of many ‘innovations’, like the Olds Diesel, that were kicked out the door for ‘better mpg’ fast, without full testing.
The attitude was “So what? We are #1. What are they going to do buy Chryslers? Hahahaha”
And I can imagine the conversation that came next, after the two back-to-back failed experiments in areas GM had no (successful) previous experience with…
“Get me the goddamnest, most reliable mill you can find. I don’t give a F how old it is, if it’s cast iron or made out of stone. Shit it can even have a carb. Just make sure it feels and sounds like a Cadillac around town. Keep the OD and for crissakes lower the final drive!”
Voila the 1964 Rocket-V8 based 307 is born, this version with high swirl heads and a roller cam. Finally the right call. Stayed in production five years, the longest of any powertrain in the classic C/D body Cadillac. They didn’t update it once and the ’90 Brougham was last car sold by GM with a carb.
Plenty of 307 survivors out there.
Though if you count the Commercial Chassis and Limo, the 425/368 family of Cadillac engines was in the “big” Cadillac from 1977 to 1984, we’re spliting hairs though, as it is, if you consider that they are pretty much the same “engine” with different displacements the 425/368 was in Cadillacs from 1977 to 1981.
You can’t include livery that’s cheating, though I wonder what engine Reagan’s limo got… You are right the passenger car big block ran from 77-81, five years just like the 307, but there’s an important “but” here.
The Caddy BB needed displacement and fuel system changes to meet regs and go the distance. It wasn’t the same engine all that time.
The 307 + 200R went five years unchanged, with a carb, 10 years after the last carbed BB was built. Even a 307 hater would have to admit that’s pretty incredible.
Not splitting hairs, very fair discussion, and in my book the 307 was the more competitive engine for daily use.
Supposedly the Regan Limo and the matching follow up support cars had fuel injected balanced and blueprinted 500’s custom made by Cadillac making some serious HP, as would be need to move a something that weight.
CAFE and EPA compliant? I don’t think so….
Remember in government, you make the rules EVERYONE ELSE has to follow!
HA!
I always imagined that it would have been smarter for Cadillac to keep using and improving the fuel injected Oldsmobile 350 that it used in the 76-79 Seville and 79 Eldorado, instead of embarking on the 4100 fiasco, at least for the RWD and 79-85 FWD E/K body cars.
I was signed up for fleetwood brougham site but mistakenly checked unfollow
Hope this signs me back up for the fleetwood brougham site
Good article on the second-last of the rear-wheel-drive Cadillacs (at the time). I was young at the time of this generation, and never crazy about them. But, here is a coupe model of the Fleetwood. I believe it is the last year for the coupe – 1985. I am not sure if it is a “Brougham” or not.