Yes, the old story is that Team Cadillac went down the hall one night and raided the offices of Team Chevrolet for the bones of the Nova, which they then laid out on a table, poked, prodded and frowned at before adding some of this and a little of that and maybe some more of this before calling it good to go and christening it the Seville. Oh, and then they slathered on the chutzpah and almost quadrupled the base price. Surprisingly, it actually kinda, sorta worked. In fact it kind of worked well enough that they tried it again a few years later and a size smaller but got really burned that time…but that’s a story for another day.
We’re all familiar with the backstory so today let’s just ignore the ugly undergarments and enjoy this example that was actually built in the same month the Seville initially hit the showrooms, September of 1975.
I know this Seville is the stuff of Deadly Sins but I find it difficult to hate on it too hard. In hindsight it’s terrible that GM ended up making what seemed like every one of their cars look just like it for much of the next decade. And I wasn’t too cognizant of it when it was new although I’m sure I drove dozens of them when I was a valet in the mid-’80s in West LA. Or perhaps that was the bustleback one that succeeded this, I can’t recall beyond trying to avert my eyes when those pulled up. But I officially like Novas now so a fancy Nova, how bad could it be?
Just look at that, proud and resplendent, shouting “Cadillac” to the skies above. Is the dot on the “i” actually a separate element? It looks like it here but it’s doubtful to be so. Never mind the chipping of the Innsbruck Blue Metallic paint, this car has undoubtedly seen things in the last forty-five years!
The hood’s already up since it won’t close anymore, the hinges are jacked and the hood is bending when pulled down, I tried and then gave up. The front would look more American if it had an offset license plate but I suppose this was supposed to be chasing the Germans before Cadillac ever heard of the Nürburgring so a center plate it was. I can’t un-see the four little bumperettes now though. Why are there four?
Steelies look good on almost everything but not a Cadillac. Especially with these little whitewalls. Originally the ’76 Seville came with wide-whitewalls as standard, which seemed to be part of the American definition of luxury. But alright, enough waffling, since it’s open and not closing let’s get a little closer and look inside the engine bay.
Yep, 350 V8, 5.7 liters to those of you that metric. But not a Cadillac engine. As a further indignity this was an Oldsmobile engine (then fitted with Bendix fuel injection). And backed by a 3-speed Turbo-Hydramatic which isn’t an issue. 180hp @ 4,400rpm seems alright but the 275 lb-ft of torque @ 2,000rpm is better. Not fast but smooth. It seemed to pull just fine in the one a bunch of us got a ride in at the Auburn CC Meetup some years ago. That one (silver with a fantastic bright red interior and in excellent condition overall) was owned by Sevair, a man who owned one of these AND a Corvair. I think Paul was pulled in two directions at that one…
This one seems to have gotten a new distributor cap recently. The air cleaner is gone, likely the filter was new too, always seemingly the first (cheapest) thing to replace when there’s a problem that ultimately brings the cars down for their date with The Crusher.
It was hot on this day but this Caddy wasn’t afraid of cold temperatures either, not with the block heater plug. Apparently this was available as a dealer installed accessory item, but I’m not sure if this was one of those, that plug looks too new.
I’ve been to the real Seville in Spain. The dust and dirt on this car reminds me of the streets there, they were dusty and dirty too. And the sky was blue. That’s all I have, there is absolutely nothing else about this car that relates to Seville…let’s move on.
Jeez, the wonky wheels always depress me here, they leave one loose lugnut on the steel ones before setting the cars in the yard which makes sense, easier for a buyer to see if it’s correct for their car. I’m not a fan of the “formal” roofline (or is this one “semi-formal”?), it just seems kind of parochial and uptight to me somehow and mostly unique (oxymoron?) to American cars. Speaking of the roof though, let’s take a look at the vinyl top!
Now I’m thinking of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. If it rains, what’s left of the top must look like Islands In The Stream. That’s some rust, but at least it still looks unperforated. It’s spilling down onto the door frame too, that’s an achievement.
That badge is one crispy critter. For how many years did this side of the car face south? The wreath still looks good though, if fundamentally tacky. And a silver vinyl top? Come on. It’s ridiculous but I’ll somewhat shamefully admit this blue car with the silver top is probably one of the better color combinations that was on offer. Besides black with black or something traditional like that of course. And there were eleven vinyl top colors available! That’s more than many cars currently offer in body colors.
The rear; again, not offensive in the least, but also so common with the rest of the divisions a few years later. Lose the badge as on the lock here and without the script on the trunklid this could be an Olds or a Buick or maybe even a Pontiac. I guess it was different and fresh in the fall of ’75 but not for long. Maybe that’s the real reason for the later bustleback, make it so hideous that the others won’t want to emulate it. That’ll show ’em!
Still, it looks to have been rolling on the road at least semi-recently, proving that nothing keeps running poorly longer than a GM car as it doesn’t have the terminal dirt build up of the barn- or field-kept ones. That’s admirable I suppose.
Matching carpet on the inside of the trunk lid is luxury, I shall grant that. Why it’s needed or an object of desire in that location though I do not know. Mercedes only had black-painted metal there at that time if I remember correctly. Ah, there are the optional wire wheel hupcaps! And a spare that hopefully would not ever be needed to be relied on. Some people think a spare is just that, an extra to replace the first of the others to wear out. And then hopefully never have need for another ever again.
Enough standing around outside though. Let’s see what earthly delights await us inside.
Hoo-boy, light blue leather! And ribbed too, the pleasures never end! The “safety steering wheel” looks a little less so without the padded cover in place, never mind the tetanus risk. And how does a solid plastic rim shrink so bad that it has at least a dozen cracks in it? But there’s a lot of other stuff to unpack here, so let’s start at the left side.
That gold crest on the Twilight Sentinel is a bit much, there thankfully isn’t much gold-tone on this car otherwise. Cruise control, and automatic climate control for the driver to have full command of. Nice. The plasti-wood isn’t great but at least it isn’t super glossy or bizarrely textured as in a Granada. Surprisingly decent, in fact, for the ’70s.
When you drive The Standard Of The World you get a ribbon speedometer. And a fuel gauge that’s a complete afterthought up off to the left somewhere. As well as the widest imaginable spacing on a PRNDL display.
To the right of the wheel is the non-8-Track radio, it does have AM and FM but I can’t tell if it’s the optional one with the weatherband button. More gold-wreath knobs, at least for the tuner, the volume one was pawned or something. Toggles for the power antenna and rear defroster are handy but you’d need to remember which is which without the distraction of looking down there. And look, a garage door for the smoker’s package! The clock at the top is cool though, like a clock radio display from the bedside.
I don’t miss cracked dashes, and this one handily reminds the driver of who supplied it. Is it weird how the rest of the world stopped using script for automotive badges well before Detroit did? They were still kind of cool when they were metal and the cars were more sculpted and flowing, but once they turned into plastichrome and the cars sprouted right angles, eh, it kind of looked just as chintzy as it was.
The Seville kind of lost me a bit at this view of the dash. It’s just a solid cliff. A blue solid cliff. With that hideous glovebox door button/knob that looks way too familiar.
Legroom seems alright though. And I will say the seats (at least when new) likely looked very comfortable. It’s begging for one of those molded plastic over-the-hump cupholder/organizers though. Perhaps with a gold wreath to make it fancy.
Neither rear door would open from the outside and I didn’t really want to dive over the front to fumble around so this shot will do. But the legroom in the rear isn’t that much better than it looks here. Sure the cushion is askew, but it seemed a little snug. I don’t think it would pass my 6’1″ with 32″ inseam test too well. But maybe laying down? Hmm.
“Custom” built? Really? Methinks the word “custom” is bandied about way too readily these days. And wasn’t Fisher completely absorbed into GM during the 1920s? It’s as if someone at Cadillac could just ask for a body from someone else on a whim for this week’s production or something. There’s no way anyone in the 1970s was fooled into thinking this was something special anymore. Right? RIGHT?
And finally, the September 1975 build date! Production started in the spring so this was five or six months on. The VIN decodes as the 6 for Cadillac, the S for Seville (K-body), 69 for 4-door sedan body, R for the 350 V8, 6 for 1976, Q for Detroit, Michigan Assembly, and the last 6 are the sequential build numbers starting at 450001. So this was number 34,136 off the line which actually seems very high for September ’75 as apparently total production of 1976 cars was 43,772. Wiki also uses that 43,772 number as cars built in (as opposed to for) 1976 but says that there were 16,355 built in 1975. Either way it doesn’t really match up with what the VIN indicates. Someone here will perhaps know better.
I think Cadillac should have considered this first Seville as a success, it seems to have always sold around 50,000 per year while on offer and volumes never really dropped off although they were hoping for more. It however apparently attracted an older clientele than what Cadillac desired but then again, that’s generally where the money is and where they priced it. Of course Cadillac still hasn’t succeeded in becoming attractive to the youngsters out there as a whole but if they thought this Seville damaged the brand, well, it’s too bad they didn’t gaze deeper into the crystal ball for their next small Cadillac idea a few years later…
Fisher Body. Ah yes, the good old days when each GM parts division would advertise their wares to the public. Who wouldn’t want a car without Guide lamps, Delcotron generator, or Harrison radiator? One of the Smith reorgs later (don’t remember if it was Roger or Jack) finally decided that all this advertising was a waste of time and money. Fisher Body, of course, was melded into the infamous GM Assembly Division or GMAD. What a great acronym for the chaos that followed that move.
Great story on this Seville.
Another great junkyard find by Jim! By today’s standards, the Seville seems like another square ’70s GM product, but I think it’s Cadillac’s last “confident” success. Everything that came after it seemed to be either a struggle or a potential Cadillac “comeback.” The only two real arguments I can think of are the downsized DeVilles in ’77 and the Escalade, but the downsized cars happened across the divisions and the Escalade (and I’m no expert on them) was a response to the Navigator and other luxury SUVs.
Aside from that, you had the V8-6-4, the 4100, the Cimarron, the downsized 1985 models, the Allante…they had some good cars for sure, but they always seemed to be catching up and there were often missteps. I look at the unsold CT4s and CT5s on our mostly barren local lot and I’m not sure much has changed. I like the new sedans, but Cadillac should have probably turned into a line of Escalades about 10 years ago (that’s not my preference, just the realities of the current marketplace).
And the Escalade was a much lower effort in disguising the Chevy under the plastic cladding than the Seville. It succeeds because its size has presence in the most basic way to achieve that otherwise difficult to define measure.
“Confident success” is a good way to describe it, the pricing of these things and engineering shortfalls put it in deadly sin status, however I think it would be fair to say the 75 Seville was the most noteworthy new Cadillac product since the FWD Eldorado, and the last that unapologetically Cadillac in cosmetics in and out without overdoing it(like the bustleback). Everything after seemed to be an effort to imitate BMW and Mercedes with some blatantly phoned in efforts sprinkled throughout(Cimmaron and Catara), where the Seville, certainly a response to European sized luxury cars, wasn’t willing to compromise the Cadillac identity, and that confidence that it could be maintained in this new size class comes through, even with their shortfalls. Compare this car with a late model Art & Science late model at this junkyard and tell me which one has more confidence wearing the crest, the modern ones do everything they can to convince the public “no we’ve changed, look at my edgy styling, feel the acceleration, don’t slow through turns, I can do it all just like the others! Latter day Cadillacs all come off as desperate.
Should we consider this as Cadillac having beginner’s luck with anything called Seville? Because it sure went to hell after these. I have driven the ’83 Seville my father-in-law had years ago and it was a testimony of what not to do when building a car.
You made me remember – I rode in Sevair’s Seville with you and Paul. The seats were mighty comfortable but you are correct – legroom wasn’t overly abundant.
The mind is a tricky thing. Whenever I see a first-gen Seville, my mind races back to a long ago cancelled TV show, featuring a white Seville as a sheriff’s cruiser. All I will say is “Sheriff Lobo”.
I’ll never understand the gratuitous cynicism. Even beyond her grave you mock her mercilessly.
At this point, while technically both feet are in the grave, the casket is still open for viewing. Believe it or not, my concern was I was actually fawning a little too much over this Seville. I don’t actually dislike the car itself conceptually or stylistically which I think I made clear and I do enjoy ones in good nick such as the one we rode in a few years back which helped me see the appeal of them when new, but I do dislike the audacity that possessed GM to pawn it off on the public and then seemingly double down on that with much of the rest of their lineup over the next decade or two.
Given the automotive landscape of the early ‘70s, this is a nice effort and better styling and size than most of what was on offer. GM clogged the roads with cars that looked much like this, but that came later.
Compare it to its rough peers (Granada, Versailles, various Mopars) and it looks good and runs well.
I was barely in my twenties and was able to buy my mentor’s perfectly perfect ‘76 Seville – a Black slick top with Saddle interior, Vogue tires, and wire wheels.
This Seville was a wonderful car mechanically and visually. The slick top was a rare sight and there was always someone admiring it wherever I parked. I was proud of that car and never heard a bad word.
Way to piss in my Cheerios. No worries, you didn’t come off as fawning too much.
I notice that this car appears to be wearing all four of its original Guide headlamps. Things like that are clues that this car may well have been owned by the proverbial Sunday churchin’ old lady or someone similar for a good chunk of its life.
Great overview of this one, although speaking of Sevair I do see a Corvair sneaking into the background in the one shot, hopefully you’ll cover that one next.
I for one completely understand the gratuitous cynicism, because our family had GM vehicles during the 70’s and early 80’s. That shrivelled and sticky piece of plastic over the badge just sums it up.
There were actually four Corvairs and they all got their day in the sun last week! You may have missed the Corvair orgy:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/curbside-recycling-corvair-summer-quartet-could-you-frankenstein-one-runner-from-these-parts/
Oh great, I was on vacation last week getting blasted by 112 degree heat in southern British Columbia
I had a serious love for these back when they were new, and kinda still do, despite being more attuned to the wiles of GM advertising and badge engineering. They say you always want what’s different when you’re a kid, and a Seville was pretty far away from our family’s Beetle. I agree that Cadillac had a boatload of problems, but in my memory the neighbor’s brown Seville wafting down our street still looks pretty good.
Yeah, it was a Nova, all gussied up. Cadillac knew what sold as luxury in the USA, and that is why this car came about. Because American Luxury cars are not what the Europeans considered luxury, we tend to dump all over them, but then, that was not their intention. Is a luxurious American home like an English manor house, a French Chateau, or a castle on a hill overlooking some river, as they tend to be in Europe? No, and for a reason. The American luxury home may steal some decorations from the Europeans, but the home is built as up to date technologically, while using the building materials that offer the best value, not necessarily the most expensive or beholden to craftsmen to build. These American luxury homes value the property around them as much, or more, than the house. They show that the owner is wealthy enough to build such an abode, and is comfortable and to the tastes of the owner, who usually comes from a more humble upbringing, not from nobility like the Europeans. And so goes our luxury cars. Yes, for the most part, they were gussied up versions of the mainstream brands that the corporation owned. A Lincoln or a Chrysler or a Cadillac may be on a new platform, but that platform was going to share itself with the other associated brands sooner than later, if not at the exact same time of manufacture. They were built a bit better, with a few nicer touches, and for a higher price, with a comfy ride for American roads, and as big as possible for the money. Exactly as the American public wanted.
Was this a DS? Quite likely. But then, GM was making stuff that sold pretty well, and they had a decent idea of what the American consumer was willing to buy. We wanted the gold plated, overwrought, gaudy, glitzy and powerful big car as our luxury model to which we aspired, not an overbuilt and over-engineered Mercedes, not a hand assembled Rolls, no, we wanted a Cadillac. And got just what we wanted, until we wanted the European version because we figured out that quality usually overcompensates for quantity.
You make some excellent points, but I would respectfully disagree that this car was a DS. I would say the hump backed model that followed was more of a DS. The criticisms like badge engineering is unfair considering nearly every luxury car brand has done some degree of badge engineering.
Yes, by modern standards you can say the Seville was bad, but compared to it’s contemporaries it’s quality and reliability was not bad. Were Lincolns or Chryslers of the time that much better than the Seville? Lexus did not yet exist for at least another decade. Mercedes did have much better interiors, but on the other hand they were cursed with corrosion problems and ugly bumpers. BMW’s were sportier. but their interiors of the time were not as good as Mercedes and they rusted even worse.
I should have linked to this in the original post, it explains things well:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1975-1976-1977-1978-1979-cadillac-seville-gms-deadly-sin-11/
At least Cadillac still had the decency to totally reskin it, producing a car which looked nothing like the Nova on which it was based.
They weren’t so picky with the Cimarron.
Not the first person to perpetuate the often repeated trope that Seville was just a $12,000 Nova and nothing else. GM designated the ’76 Seville as a ‘K’ body model, as opposed to the Nova-Omega-Phoenix-Skylark models of the time that were ‘X’ models. Sure, it shared in general unibody construction and rear leaf springs, and for a short time, a portion of the roof sheet metal. But once GM stopped installing vinyl tops to hide the melding of the X-car panel to the Seville-specific piece, it lost that vestige of X-car similarity. Not withstanding the junkyard example that seems minutes away from becoming a heavy metal cube courtesy of a compactor, no one looking even at the nicest trim level X-car and a nearby Seville will mistake one for the other. I’ll take Road & Track’s assessment in their October 1975 issue that Seville, while not being an American Mercedes-Benz but a very good Cadillac as best to sum up this model Cadillac over the frankly condescending, almost ill tempered account by Mr. Klein. I do wonder how his evaluation would have differed had the subject car been taken care of , still on the road, and still enjoyed by its owner.
Howdy, thanks for the read and response…but you’re ascribing things to me which I did not write. I never said the Seville was “just a $12k Nova and nothing else”. Please reread my first and third paragraphs. I’ll happily apologize and correct any actual errors I make, always do.
The Seville’s platform was based on that of the Nova (X) and modified from there, enough according to GM so that it got its own name, the K, that is correct. I mentioned the Nova (frankly the Seville can not be discussed without mentioning it without being accused of sweeping that all under the rug) and I also clearly mentioned that I like the Nova. I stated that Cadillac started with the Nova, changed a bunch of stuff and then I said let’s just ignore that and look further at what we have here. as in the example pictured.
You bring up a great point in your vigorous defense though, for something so special and great how did Cadillac not have an appropriate roof ready to go to the point that they had to mandate vinyl tops for two years? Two years out of five total as I understand it not exactly a short time. Why couldn’t Fisher Body “custom make” that from the beginning? Yeah, I’m cynical (to start with) about that frankly schlocky advertising and I believe rightly so. Maybe it did fool people into thinking it made the cars special after all.
Don’t overlook or gloss over the fact that GM themselves set Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar as benchmarks and targets (which I didn’t go into) and meant this model specifically to counteract the drain of their buyers towards the products of Stuttgart, Munich and Coventry. I don’t believe they succeeded at all in that regard. Cadillac themselves considered the Seville a bit of failure in that it did not bring in younger buyers either, but just more of their traditional base that was tired of wheeling around huge barges and wanted something more compact. But no net increase in new to the marque buyers. If you read what I wrote towards the end you saw that I thought Cadillac did better with the Seville than they give themselves credit for.
The formal rear window IS terrible. Yes, perhaps it is cribbed from the RR Silver Shadow. Not a car most would agree was ever the most progressive or modern shape on the planet even when new, except perhaps to the dinosaurs it replaced. In fact I can’t think of much either fussier or more verklemmt than the average RR or stereotypical RR owner of the day, not something to aspire to for most, no matter how much Grey Poupon we all bought.
The dashboard IS also horrible. Many dashboards of the era in American cars were horrible. Besides what I mentioned, that glovebox knob is identical to the one in the Nova. It’s also identical to that of the 1970 El Camino. It’s likely the same as dozens if not hundreds of other GM cars. If this Cadillac was really special and leadership was committed to their “design” that would have a gold wreath on it and match the other knobs on this dashboard. But no. It gets the same shitty parts bin knob that the Seville owner’s housekeeper had in their ’76 Chevette.
I don’t think I am either condescending or ill-tempered here in the least. I also don’t think I stated anything objectively (or even subjectively) wrong, If so please specifically point it out with my quote. What I am is stating my opinion of how I found this car to be. In places I actually stated that I sort of DO like this car and did in fact enjoy an experience with one in as good to new condition as possible.
What you perhaps mistook as my spite was my reaction to the parts of the car that would have been then (when new) and still are now utter turnoffs to me as well as many others. Your opinions may certainly differ but I’ll point out that gold trim on knobs, the wreath itself (!), formal rooflines, crappy dashboards, script font rendered in plastichrome, whitewalls and chintzy Vegas style baublery that doesn’t last isn’t something that even Cadillac does anymore, just it took them an extra two or three decades after everyone else stopped doing so to do so themselves. By 1975 the only people doing so were GM, as well as Ford and Chrysler, neither of whose products were stated targets of this car.
Yes, there is perhaps a time and place for all of that cheap and tacky crap, most of it across town on the Granada of all things, and the styling of the Seville is quite good compared to that monstrosity, no argument. But GM then ruined that aspect too when they appropriated the styling and handed it out to every other division while this Seville was still in the showroom, ruining that trait too as a point of differentiation.
I’ll give this owner all the credit in the world for somehow apparently being able to keep this 45-year old car on the road until now. That is an achievement, no doubt. But it’s also the first one of these that I have seen in many, many years in any state so definitely an outlier and not a reflection of any superiority or longevity of GM engineering. Besides the fuel injection there is NOTHING on this car that is particularly complex or groundbreaking technologically. It was the most expensive car in the stable at the time (bar the Fleetwood 75 limo). They sold about 220k of them, almost all in North America. Yet they do not seem to be treasured, kept, desired or aspired to by almost anyone – the one I referenced as having ridden in was a single-family car handed down from father to son and a rare exception.
Here, read this, also from Road&Track, a little earlier than the one you mentioned and clearly influencing your mentioned review:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-reviews/vintage-rt-1975-cadillac-seville-preview-technical-analysis-and-first-driving-impressions/
In it Cadillac gave R&T a couple of Sevilles ALONG WITH A MERCEDES 450SE TO COMPARE THEM TO. I don’t know how else to convey that the MB clearly was the bogey. That it, until it failed to deliver in comparison as R&T clearly stated in both pieces (this and yours).
I’m sure the Seville was at least as good superficially as any other American car in 1975. Of course it was, it’s a Cadillac. But I don’t think that’s the standard that Cadillac set for itself and I don’t think it’s what the American public should accept either. It should be better. It should be the “standard of the world”, emphasis on “world”. And by 1975, it was not and has not been since. If you want to declare yourself the world’s best, be prepared to be compared to the rest of the world, not just Dearborn and Auburn Hills. This is the same problem that has dogged them for half a century now.
The Seville’s fuel injection is more emblematic of the backwardness of the car as a whole than it’s been given credit for, at least in this thread. It was a knockoff of the 1967 D-Jetronic system Bosch had already moved on from when the Seville launched.
In the period immediately after World War II, Cadillac absolutely was not a biggie sized Chevrolet with frosting and sprinkles. It had polished off Packard to become the aspirational car of the most aspirational nation in the world. It was a combination of quality and manufacturing efficiency unmatched. Any “better” car was a hand crafted bauble that sold in handfuls to domestic loyalists and foreign snobs.
Cadillac took a 25 year toboggan ride until the 1971 De Ville was an Impala in drag. No better, just longer and more gadgety.
You are spot-on in your assessment of the postwar Cadillacs. The 1971 Cadillac was a bloated monstrosity that bore little resemblance to the model years preceding it. No doubt the absence of Alfred P. Sloan truly manifested itself with the introduction of the 1971 model year. From then on Cadillac and GM survived on their past glories.
General Motors could have learned a LOT from British Motor Corporation ten years earlier, and learned what ‘Brand Dilution’ does for sales of each individual marque that becomes a victim. The BMC ‘Farina’-body was shared with six different marques; Austin, Morris, MG, Riley, Wolseley, and Vanden Plas. BMC followed suit two or three years later with the fwd. 1100 series (ADO-16). The MG fans called the Magnette Mark IV an ‘insult’, and Riley and Wolseley were the first to die, and the Vanden Plas name became a top line model name for Jaguar. The 1975 Seville was a pre-cursor of what was to come for the redesigned 1977 full size line which took brand dilution to the extreme, and confirmed it when they started to share engines with different divisions. The Seville set the precedent using Oldsmobile’s 350. To me, the last Cadillac with any sort of opulence is the 1966 Fleetwood Brougham, which was truly a Rolls-Royce contender with just as good build quality and grade of materials with REAL wood and leather inside. After that, as stated, it was all downhill from there; especially when the genuine wood was replaced with plastic to look like wood.
The wire wheel covers in the trunk may be worth more than the rest of the car!😉😉
Is that vinyl top actually silver, or faded Innsbruck Blue to match the paint? Look closely at the area between the wreath and the crest, and you’ll see why I’m asking.
Speaking of which, perhaps Carmine or someone else can comment on something I once read, which I believe to be a myth: Supposedly at one point Cadillac discouraged – or didn’t encourage – contrasting vinyl tops. I find that difficult to believe, because for most of the ‘60s, 70s and ‘80s it seems that Cadillac was going after volume, regardless of brand image.
I’ve always despised contrasting vinyl top colors.
For me, the vinyl top should always match the body color.
I was thinking the same about the featured car’s top. I’m thinking faded blue, as well.
This era of Seville will always hold a place in my heart.
I was at Robinson Chevrolet Cadillac in May of 1975 when this car debuted.
I was 10.
I’ll never have the disposable income to own one of these, but maybe someday I can go “pretend” that I’m a buyer and get to take one for a short spin.
And yes, I even like the looks of the 1980-1985 Seville! I thought it was a very “classic” look.
Speaking of which, the wire wheel covers in the trunk of the featured car are the wires for the next gen of Seville (80-85).
I lived thru the energy crisis of ’73 so the Seville was seen as a radical step in the right direction.
As alluded to in the article, Cadillac picked too many bones from the Nova frame, but the idea of fuel injection was enough to capture the attention of many Americans. Also, semi-unibody (front sub frame) was another Euro flavor that was shocking to the domestic luxury mindset.
Some of the shortfall were leaf springs in the rear which GM did a good job of managing. The most demanding situations this car would encounter were cloverleafs on the Interstate.
The next gen Seville had an ideal base as a Euro fighter (independent suspension all around, uni-body). Another boxy body, enhanced fuel injection, fat sway bars front & rear would have elevated respect for the Seville brand.
Yet, Cadillac went with the Deadly Sin route which lives on as a grad school case study on how to alienate your customer base.
I’d like to see a de-chromed, alloy-wheeled Bustleback, better yet with a nice squared off trunk like the ’86 or ’92. The ’84-5 S & Eldo did have de-chromed dashes, a big improvement.
The next generation, 1980 to 1985 was still a full perimeter frame, designated the K body, but sharing much of its design with the E body Eldo/Toro/Riv of 1979 to 1985. In 1986 they all went to a unibody platform. The same body codes remained and were related. To your point, it definitely 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘢 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘢, but GM blew it.
In my opinion, trying to be a “Euro fighter” was a mugs game for Cadillac. Buyers of the brand didn’t want g forces, a shifter that falls readily to hand or a firm ride. Bahn burning is not what Cadillac buyers wanted. Cadillac tried this and they lost their place in the market. The Escalade is really a modern iteration of a 1977 Sedan DeVille. It is by far the best money maker for the Cadillac brand.
My dream Cadillac of 1980 has a unit body, IRS, four wheel disks, an aluminum V-8 and a magic carpet ride.
Regardless of a car’s actual merits, true Cadillac buyers want a car that’s *better* than the neighbors’ cars, and just plain better in general. That’s a really common human aspiration and it can be pejoratively summarized as “snob appeal.”
By this point, a Cadillac obviously was an XL size scoop of the GM parts bin. It may have been good or bad, but it was just a bigger serving of Chevrolet. It wasn’t significantly different from Chevrolet, so it couldn’t possibly be significantly better than a Chevy. Whatever, the actual merits of Mercedes, etc, it was different from a Chevy, and obviously was a well made product (in the showroom at least), and it worked well enough to become the trend setter for aspirational folks.
The biggest part of the market follows the trend setter, tho reactionary forces usually can get up a little steam going the other way. The same way that style leaders usually enjoy being different/better, there are folks down the ladder who are drawn to be different, which usually means going in the opposite direction from the style leader. Get enough of those folks together and that can be a nice business too.
The trouble is better isn’t black and white, Snobs worshipped at the alter both Mercedes and BMW as luxury products at the time but the two companies didn’t really have much in common besides being German, BMW was the ultimate driving machine, fielding nimble sports sedans, Mercedes was a autobahn cruiser built like a bank vault, each excelled at their own strengths with a different base of buyers depending on their priorities, yet both types of buyers seemed to recognize the brands as upper crust equally. Cadillac too had its strengths, there were things a Cadillac DeVille did “better” than a 240d Mercedes for the type of luxury buyer that value those traits.
Was Cadillac resting on its laurels and getting lazier in its differentiation from Chevrolet in the 70s? Sure, That was the crux of their decline and why Cadillac dropped off of luxury car snobs radars, but the kind of luxury Cadillac was offering was and is still relevant, and probably could have remained relevant in that field if not for further cheapening, various embarrassing blunders and eventual abandonment to chase “Euro” that pleased no one. The irony in recent times is that Mercedes and BMW field products a whole lot more in the vein of the Cadillac style of luxury than the type of cars that made them successes in the US: overstylized heavyweights full of wood trim, plushy seats and loaded with frivolous gadgets, sound familiar?
I can’t say what Cadillac could have done differently in the 70s that would have been the shot in the arm they needed, let alone what would have been realistic with management but matching QC of Mercedes would have been a realistic start, followed by actual better engineering not to be shared across platforms followed by culling entry models. One of the deadly sin criteria’s of the Seville was that it was priced so excessively high, but really that’s where they should be priced, a buyer shouldn’t be able to cross shop a Chevy Caprice with the cheapest Cadillac model. Snob appeal will happen through exclusivity alone, luxury goods shouldn’t offer value for the dollar.
Except for outright speed, all M-Bs were sportier and more athletic than Cadillac. Good brakes, confident handling, supportive seats. The stuff that American brands usually associated with juvenile decorations, not the authority of grownups. The other European prestige cars were advertising to the same group of prospects who already had mentally defected from Cadillac as the standard of prestige and now were looking for a landing spot that wasn’t necessarily a Mercedes. The center of gravity was Mercedes: It’s like Mercedes but…
The 240D customer is an obvious difference of where Cadillac lost the plot. It was a customer who practically *had* to spend that amount of money, but thought (or heard) that Cadillac was a dumb way to spend it. The fact that a Valiant was more car than a 240D except for braking, cornering, seats, and visible build quality doesn’t enter into it. (And those really are worthwhile features if you have money in your pocket and aren’t much worried about covering next month’s bills.)
We can go around about how people ought behave in a rational world, but economics is a *social* science that attempts to explain what happened and predict what will happen.
We absolutely know what happened. All that’s left is to understand why. Maybe a traditional Cadillac with historic Cadillac quality would have continued to rule America’s elite against the smaller European sport/luxury alternatives, but that didn’t happen. GM sent a super sized Chevy against a smaller, sportier concept executed to a relatively jewel like level of detail and got its ass kicked so bad that the brand became inherently second rate, like Belgium.
I agree that modern luxury vehicles are plusher than the European prestige vehicles of the 70s. But those vehicles weren’t harsh for its own sake. That was the necessary compromise. The prestige leaders — adults with authority — were drawn to those cars, and people who wanted to be like them followed if the followers didn’t have powerful opinions of their own. The modern sportier luxury cars still have the feeling of authority without sacrificing much comfort. Expensive SUVs have that feeling too, in another way that prestige vehicles are converging from harsh trucks and harsh sport sedans. The harshness only is intentional when it’s the equivalent of a rally stripe to say sporty, like folks who insist they want a noisy engine instead of a quiet battery powered motor. The plush has been added back in while maintaining enough feel of authority.
Without getting into the pickup truck debates, a crew cab dualie is obviously a dumb transportation choice for most people. If it’s what feels right to you, ok, but for most people, most uses, and most places it *looks* foolish, like Scrooge McDuck’s 40 foot long car. “Looking foolish” isn’t what prestige car buyers want. “Looking cool” is most of the point, except for actual technology enthusiasts–who feel cool by association with technology. Simply going bigger is a dead end strategy for premium vehicles to make last year’s prestige car uncool, because there absolutely is some point in the process where size changes from prestige to caricature. So there needs to be some other differentiator. The German sport luxury brands hit that point in that market at that time.
(There may not be much real difference between a suave urban SUV and a hillbilly pickup, but fashion is a genuine bitch to predict.)
“I can’t say what Cadillac could have done differently in the 70s that would have been the shot in the arm they needed.” Actually, there was just one thing that would have really made a difference. If GM would have treated Cadillac as a luxury brand and kept the ‘good stuff’ limited to bespoke platforms for their cars versus sharing among all the other brands, they might have had a chance. GM, Ford and Chrysler never understood that the Europeans made a luxury platform and then dumbed it down as it aged and was reused on lower price models. They took the basic car and added crap to it and expected no one to be wiser about that fact. MB and BMW and Jaguar didn’t do that, and people noticed.
Remember, in the 1970s, the Cadillac version and the Chevy version shared more than was not shared between them, and Pontiac, Buick, and Oldsmobiles were also more alike than not. Corporate dictates that mandated shared platforms, engines, and styling that did little to differentiate them made it less appealing to pay the price for the so-called snob appeal of a Cadillac when a similar Chevy was thousands less, at a time when thousands made a world of difference in price.
No plasti-chrome or fake wood would have been a good start.
Personally I think the Bustsleback Seville retroactively makes the 75 Seville a deadly sin more than its noted demerits. It was a step in the right direction despite its flaws, that it was followed up by what was effectively an Eldorado 4 door with really really polarizing styling to even the Cadillac base is the true deadly sin, it makes it seem less like the 75 Seville was a more rational Cadillac shifting priorities to more substance but rather just another segment for Cadillac to try gimmicks on.
An IRS wouldn’t be chasing after euro buyers, it could be tuned for the same cushy ride Cadillac buyers were used to, only it would have been inherently even better at it, for the same reason Euro luxury cars went to it way earlier than that. Really they probably should have shelved using the fuel injection system and rather adapted the C3 Corvette IRS with a revised rear floorpan instead. That would’ve been quite something for a Cadillac in 1975.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the first-gen Seville. It’s less a Nova than a Sedan de Ville is a Caprice. Yes, it’s built on Nova bones, but nothing you see inside or out looks like it came from a Nova. Equally important, the mechanicals were upgraded (fuel injection, etc) and the soundproofing and NVH insulation beefed up. The car looked right too – it looked the part of a Jaguar or Mercedes alternative. The only ridiculous thing was a mandatory vinyl roof needed to hide the weld between the Nova-carryover roof (the only major shared body panel) and an extension to extend and change the roofline. In 1977 a Seville-specific roof finally arrived allowing for normal metal roofs, but they also mucked up the cleaner grille used on the 76.
Many of the engineering and marketing band-aides that helped turn a Nova into a Seville did not hold up well over the passing of time.
Driving a first gen Seville today is quite a different experience than when the car was new/nearly new.
I don’t remember many tops that didn’t match, except a neighbor’s dark green over medium green. The first 2,000 made were triple silver, supposedly for quality control reasons.
Rear legroom was a lot better than a Nova. I have a 34″ inseam, and kneeroom was OK if the front seat wasn’t tilted back. The middle wasn’t usable with the hump, but it was too narrow for 3 anyway with the wheelwell intrusion.
The dash was pushed forward so it looked roomier, but the distant cliff felt weird on the passenger side. Your feet shouldn’t be so exposed. My dad’s ’78 Century was the same way.
No comments about the fuel injection system. There’s a good reason so few of these are still on the street, at least with the original FI system: it did not age well. And apparently it’s very difficult to keep in good nick nowadays.
Agree!
One of the engineering band-aides I had in mind when making my above posting.
I remember the techs in my family’s garage trying to diagnose it. I went out of my way to learn how it worked but no matter how many parts we threw at them, they never ran right after a few years. We converted a few to carbs.
I forget the corporation-games involved, but the Cadillac EFI installation was somewhere between a ripoff and a licenced build of Bosch D-Jetronic. D-Jet was certainly a valiant effort, and given the analogue(!) control module and the rest of that time’s technology in it, it worked surprisingly well for a short while. Then the dirty, gummy, nondetergent gasoline of that time crudded up the primitive injectors, the metal-bellows manifold pressure sensor and the resistors and capacitors in the ECM drifted off spec, clueless people touched it in its no-no places, and…well. Here we are.
D-Jetronic was in fact quite reliable if you knew how to service it. When car so equipped came in, the first thing we’d do is check the fuel pressure. That was the source of most of the problems, the pump, not the injection system itself. Next would be to check the battery, as D-Jetronic didn’t like low voltage. When I worked at Chrysler, I still recall my cantankerous boss yelling, “Check the fuel pressure and put a battery i it” every time we had a tow-in. He was usually right, too.
If the fuel pressure is okay, we’d just overhaul it. That mean taking the injectors out and sending them to be rebuilt. The pressure sensor would get old with age and crack and rip, but it was not hard to replace them, either.
The system GM put on the Seville was a Frankenstein thing designed to avoid paying Bosch royalties. Bosch had the enormous advantage of volume over Bendix. Shade tree mechanics were disastrous on early FI systems. Like anything else, if you take the time, you’ll learn how to fix them. The problem is somebody has to pay for that time and this keeps learning new skills from happening.
I found the service manual online. It’s a fun scan if you are a gearhead.
http://www.cadillacseville.org/elctroubleshoot78.html
That’s a very tall if, though, isn’t it! Err…what models were you working on at Chrysler that had D-Jetronic? AFAIK Chrysler never used D-Jet or anything like it, on anything they built or sold.
If Wikipedia can be believed, D-Jetronic was the Bendix Electrojector as debugged by Bosch after Bendix got their hands burnt and sold the IP to Bosch. So then I guess Bendix bought a licence to make D-Jetronic(ish) for the Seville. Round ‘n’ round ‘n’ round we go, wheeee!
The pressure sensors are easy to replace, yep; they’re a fist-sized thing held to the inner fender with a couple of screws. But they are very, very application-specific. Year, model, engine, emissions/altitude package, and transmission. There’s at least one sizeable site devoted to these sensors.
By the time the gasoline on offer was clean and gum-free enough not to constantly foul injectors, all the D-Jet systems were old enough to have badly drifted resistors and capacitors and tired manifold pressure sensors, so one source of problems was traded for another.
If anyone is still wondering about this:
The Bendix “Electrojector” system of the late ’50s gave Bendix extremely broad patent protection for electronic fuel injection while also convincing them that there was no real market for it. So, they let it lie fallow for several years.
In 1967, Bosch licensed (not bought) Bendix patents to develop D-Jetronic.
Bendix then tentatively decided there might be a market for the technology after all, particularly in the face of new emissions requirements, and put out some feelers for potential customers in the American luxury market.
Cadillac agreed to buy Bendix injection systems for the Seville. This involved a commitment to buy 60,000 units a year for five years; since Cadillac didn’t ever build quite that many Sevilles, the system was also offered on some other Cadillac models.
Bendix didn’t initially have the manufacturing capacity to actually make that many units and had to scramble to create it in time to meet their initial orders. Injectors had to be purchased from Bosch sublicenses, since neither Bendix nor Bosch had the capacity to make them in sufficient quantities.
Although Bendix was aware of developments in closed-loop lambda feedback control (which Bosch was actively working on), the system they supplied to Cadillac was open-loop, so its air-fuel ratios were based on predetermined fixed maps. This meant the system had limited ability to adjust itself to compensate for variations in engine tune and performance, even outside of the potential fragility of the system itself.
Canucklehead’s comment that it “was a Frankenstein thing designed to avoid paying Bosch royalties” is incorrect. Bendix still owned the IP; Bosch was a licensee, albeit one with a six- or seven-year head start in building the technology and making it work in service, experience that Bendix did not have.
The internet is fairly anonymous so I will just say it.
I LOVE THE BUSTLEBACK SEVILLE!
Come for me!
Looking at the pictures of the instrument panel, which looks straight out of a low-end GM genericmobile, it’s 100% obvious why this Seville failed in its original mission to attract import brand buyers: Shockingly cheap materials and equally shockingly bad aesthetics.
The Seville succeeded because finally older women who had been complaining for years about Cadillacs being too long got what they wanted: a compact Cadillac. But that’s all it was. It utterly failed to attract the interest of younger buyers who were snapping up Mercedes, BMWs and the like.
I actually knew a couple, in their late 30’s at the time who owned not one, but two ’79 diesel Sevilles. Outliers, I suppose, but they owned a jewelry business, so I suppose the cars fit the desired image. They held onto them for many years, but he was a hobby mechanic. I always figured they felt a need to appear somewhat showy, considering their business, but our area of far Northern NJ was removed enough from the city that in those days folks still steered toward domestic brands. Looking back I find their choice very curious.
Of course there were some. But typically these weren’t true import buyers/intenders. It was just an alternative to a big Cadillac, which after the energy crisis had some genuine appeal. Plus there was a lot of hype around it.
I get the feeling Cadillac, even had they had more development time and money, wouldn’t have wanted a car that appeals to hardcore import sport sedan fans, as that would have alienated the (probably larger) group they were after – the sort of people who in years past would have instinctively bought a Cadillac but increasingly were being persuaded to look at a Jag or Benz first. Cadillac needed to stop the bleeding.
The frustrating thing was that time and money were short in the first place. Cadillac knew from their own studies that buyers were tiring of huge luxobarges, but just couldn’t bring themselves to believe what their own research was telling them. GM had the resources to build the car Cadillac needed in 1975 – basically something more like the 4th gen ’90s Seville, or maybe the LS400. The opportunity was there to build the best luxury sedans in the world, as ’70s Benzes and Bimmers had plenty of room for improvement (the awful air conditioning alone would have kept me from buying one). I do think a car that combined “traditional” luxury and convenience features found on Detroit’s longtime vision of what a luxury car was still appealing; it just needed to also needed to handle well and be made of high-quality materials rather than obviously fake wood/chrome and other tackiness.
Sparked memories of John DeLorean’s book, “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors”, seem to be the order of the day.*
The one you’ve sparked is of some grossly obese, cigar-chomping GM executive scorning the notion that GM had anything to learn from Yurpeens about brakes, especially not silly disc-things. Y’see that brake pedal right there in my Cadillac? It says “POWER BRAKES”. I can be going 30 miles an hour and just touch the pedal and the car screeches to a halt.
GM couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t build the car you describe because people like that were in charge.
*other one here
“It utterly failed to attract the interest of younger buyers who were snapping up Mercedes, BMWs and the like.”
Mistake #1: Wide (or any) whitewalls. The Europeans did offer whitewalls for a while but by 1976 they were almost all gone, the Jaguar XJ6 being perhaps the last holdout.
Mistake #2: Mandatory vinyl top due to the roof not being ready for prime time at launch. Not to be found in a self-respecting European dealership. Corrected two years later, two years too late.
Mistake #3: Anything with gold or quasi-GrecoRoman wreaths on anything.
Mistake #4: The formal-ish roofline.
Those first three things (all purely cosmetic, all easy to fix, all likely cheaper to produce otherwise!) alone would keep most any potential serious conquest out of the showroom. It doesn’t matter how good the car could conceivably have been otherwise, nobody was interested in finding out. And all a case of upper GM management never leaving their gilded castle in Detroit and actually looking at what their desired clientele were buying.
Amen, Amen, Amen, and again I say Amen!
But at least they got one thing right – no tailfins. Though I’m sure that’s been tried.
A slight correction on “Mistake #2”
A vinyl top was also mandatory on the Jaguar XJC for the same reason. It would have taken too much labor at the factory to finish the roof to acceptable standards, so they made a vinyl top standard. (Apparently a few were made without vinyl tops a year or two after their introduction, but they considered ‘special order’ as per Jaguar, and therefore cost MORE than ones with the vinyl top.)
Of course, Jaguar, and British Leyland in general had their problems, and the XJC didn’t sell well, despite its good looks, especially the non-North American market ones without the ugly 5-mph bumpers.
The problem with that dash wasn’t that it looked like it was straight out of a low end generic GM car, but that it looked like a Cadillac dash. Which was cheap and nasty, but in an entirely different way from a dash in, say, a Nova. The Nova and other dashes were straightforward cheap and nasty. Cadillac’s version of cheap and nasty was almost worse because it had pretentions of being luxurious.
While the rest of the interior’s not bad, I was startled to see how basic that dash was. Speedo front and centre. Fuel gauge tucked out of the way. And a clock over there.
Woodgrain is all very well, but I would have expected full instrumentation for the price. Was GM saying “You won’t understand all those other gauges the Europeans have, so we won’t bother you with them”?
It would have made me wonder what else they were cheaping out on.
The dashboard is in my opinion the worst part of this car. Look at this photo of the instrument cluster from a 1957 Pontiac Star Chief that I came across earlier today. Obviously so much nicer and more comprehensive with a full set of gauges.
Here’s a wider view of that ’57 Pontiac’s dash. (The clock is just out of frame to the right of the radio.) I realize of course that safety standards in effect as of the late 60s would preclude the use of shiny metal and the ignition key placement.
Agree with Paul. The instrument panels from Cadillac in these years were a total slap in the face. Cadillac, and many other mid to high end GM cars had those tiny speedometers, a fuel gauge and matching PRND2L, annnd… that was it. If the passenger was lucky, they got a clock to look at.
We spend a lot of our lives sitting behind the wheel, and a few more bucks spent on instrument panel and interior aesthetics woulda gone a long way toward making that time feel more rewarding. A full set of real gauges, properly placed controls and switchgear that don’t feel like Fisher-Price, an analog clock with a sweep second hand- that keeps time. A little less fake stitching and fleur-de-lis and plastic medallions, thx.
My best friend as a child lived right next door to me and they always had great cars.
They bought a pale yellow 1976 Seville new (and later on, a brown ‘Gucci’ edition Seville) and I rode in it both pretty regularly to school and sports and such for a few years there.
The car it replaced was a 1971 Lincoln Mark III, which I liked much better at that time. My father had a ’73 Sedan DeVille and I remember him complaining about the whole concept of the Seville (It’s much smaller, less engine, and way more money!?!!?)
But the Seville was pretty nice, I must admit, seemed roomy enough for 3 kids in the back seat and did look more modern at the time, if not as ‘special’ in the traditional Cadillac manner. It did have the first factory 8-track stereo radio I had ever seen, whichg I am sure my buddy’s mother appreciated, given the Englebert Humperdink and Freddy Fender tapes that were in it. Kinda appropriate for the clientele that these cars ended up with.
What I wouldn’t give for a 1979 Cadillac Seville Gucci Edition…
$5500.00?
My ex and I drove one of these from Detroit to Downey CA in May of 75. We needed one way transport to LA and auto drive away was the way to go. The auto driveway company was delivering the new Caddy to dealers all over the country. I believe Cadillac built them at the GM Hamtramck plant.
I was really surprised when I picked up the car. I seemed to remember they gave us 2300 miles, 5n days, and $100 for gas to get to LA… The Seville was cream yellow with like interior, a beautiful car. We took the interstate which paralleled route 66 some of the way. Since it was new and now one had ever seen such a car, it was amazing how much attention the Seville got on the road. We were stopped several times by local law for ‘questionable’ violations. They wanted to examine the car and we were interrogated about the driveway paperwork.
The car attracted much attention at motels and cafes along the way. When we stooped in Las Vegas, the parking valet alerted the manager at the Stardust Casino/Hotel that we had a new Cadillac and they comped us a room and meals for a day if we let them park it at the entrance.
When we dropped the car off at the Downey Cadillac dealer I has apx 2700 miles on it and I expected to pay for the extra miles. The dealer brushed it off, he had orders waiting. I wonder if they rolled the odo back. It was a great trip with zero problems with the Seville.
I was probably 10. My neighbors bought a brand new 1979 Seville. It was gorgeous and parked on the street in front of their house. They were outside admiring it and my grandfather drove up in his 1965 Impala driving right into their rear bumper. No damage but still gaspworthy.
He got out of his car and walked up our driveway without acknowledging what he’d done to anyone. I told him “Grandpa you just hit their brand new Cadillac” he turned to them and with the air of a statesman smiled and waved and proceeded to walk inside our house and never mentioned it again.
Almost certainly to comply with the law.
Mmm…it’s a regular needle-type item. The needle here is pointing at 0.
Funny you should mention that, because look what’s photobombing pics № 4 and 5 in this post! (speaking of pic № 5, I swear nowhere else gets clouds and skies that look exactly quite like that! Which yard was this?)
(They exported a few of these halfbakeds; see attached.)
My statement was meant in regard to the four bumperettes, specifically the quantity thereof. I won’t assume or pretend to know more than you re the regulations but to need four separate bumperettes to comply with an existing law for a newly designed unit strikes me as odd and I found it worthy of mention. Unless you are saying that the law mandated having specifically four bumperettes.
I call those ribbon style as they remind me of a tape ribbon in the way the numbers are displayed, yes I saw the needle. All as opposed to a dial style instrument with a round or roundish display. Both have needles. I believe you are referencing what I call a moving or rolling ribbon speedometer. Perhaps I could have been clearer.
The photobombing Corvairs already had their day in the sun last week or so. Same yard, same day, up in Greeley. Best clouds on earth.
Bumper: No, there wasn’t a requirement for four bumperettes; I’m guessing/assuming GM put them there to meet the prevailing requirements. Yes, it’s an odd way to do it, but how many times have we seen GM do apparently odd shit to save a quarter of a penny?
Speedo: Ah! Terminology difference. Yep, when I say “ribbon speedometer” I mean the kind in a Volvo Amazon or 140 (horizontal) or the kind in a fintail Mercedes (vertical).
Maybe the centre pair of bumperettes are supposed to be a reprise of the forties/fifties-style licence plate frames?
And how about the postwar Chrysler Town and Country, with triple bumperettes?
Or the snaggletooth ’41 Plymouth with one?
Daniel,
Do you have any Japanese export pictures? I seem to recall the amber turn indicators, front seat headrests also mounted on the rear seat backrest and likely kimono catchers which were usually fitted to US built cars of the era.
I don’t know what country that car is configured for in the pic I posted. Could be Japan, or someplace in Europe. It’s the only one I have—Oliver Twist might have others.
I will kinda sorta go to bat for the Seville. For what it was, it was a decent car. I would have far preferred one of these to one of the DeVilles or Eldorados. These were at least on the old-style 1968-era body structure that gave your a solid-feeling set of doors to slam. And for someone who wanted a Cadillac, this car squeezed out most of the worst of the bigger cars but kept the buttery soft leather and the wide color selection and electric gizmos.
I worked with a guy who drove one of these around 1985. He got it from his father who bought it new (a WWII vet who drove DeVilles and Town Cars until he died). It was showing some of its cheapness at 9 or 10 years old, but was came across a lot better than a 75-76 DeVille would have then. And the white paint with red leather was kind of cool.
I love junkyards, that’s where the real value comes out of cars, no pretense of prestige or marketing fluff, or useless in the real world specs from the rags about zero to 60, just the value of their scrapmetals to the facility judged by scavengers like myself on how well the materials held up and how well engineered they are if you try to find something, and then remove that something from it. Back then this car would have been first owned by a person of means, and now it’s just an old GM with no more value than the bottom feeder class Corvair behind it, yet I bet a lot more passers by stopped to look at the Corvairs while they’ve been in this yard.
I think the design of the dash is ok, the design is very minimalistic in an ironically cluttered way but it’s better than a Mercedes clone dash. Aesthetic things like this are very subjective but I think it would be worlds better if that lower wood theme continued into the glove box area for symmetry with the wood around the column.
It’s easy to smirk at an outdated car in terminal condition, with a half a century of hindsight. But I remember when these cars were current, and they were very well regarded at the time. Just compare it to other cars it shared the road with at the time and you will understand how it looked very fresh and modern in comparison. If you were buying a new 1976 American sedan, was there any better choice than this? Sure, maybe a Nova if you wanted to save some dough. Even with the benefit of hindsight, this seems like a solid choice for that year. And of course Sevilles were expensive. That’s the cost of being the first to own a new breed of downsized luxury car before the rest of GM followed in 1977. Same as people overpaying for the privilege of being first with a fashionable new generation of cell phone today. A dubious privilege, but that’s just human nature and par for the course with luxury brands. And the Cadillac brand still meant something then.
The Nova roots were no secret to us car nuts then either, everyone knew about GM sharing bodies and platforms. No need to act like it was a shock or a sin, it was normal, and quite well done at that. The Nova itself was nothing to sneeze at, and the Caddy added all the proper touches of what at the time was considered luxury to a nice solid base with proven, reliable mechanicals. The late 1970s were the height of disco. People not only did not consider those wreaths tacky on cars, they probably wore them as medallions around their necks. Plastic woodgrain was cool. Vinyl roofs were cool. They were brand new, shiny and desirable. That shark had not yet been jumped. All that went to hell soon enough, but not quite yet. These were good cars in their day.
I agree.
Also they were built of tough components (Olds engine, TH400, big brakes, big rims/tires…) that aged well.
While fresh the fuel injection issues were primarily sensor and pumps, mostly the former. The real problem was finding techs able to diagnose the new technology. As they aged toward clunker status a changeover to carburetor was simple and affordable. Looks like the featured car made it to the end still sporting its fuel injection.
It is exactly because of the ubiquity of this “Sheer Look” on so many GM cars of the ’80s that I’ll probably never fully understand how groundbreaking this look was in the mid-’70s (when I was in diapers).
Joseph, I was 19, and ’round the other side of the world.
To Australian eyes it looked better than the big Caddies, much more sensibly-sized, much more in the mainstream styling-wise, but still a bit weird in an alternative-universe kind of way.
At long last Cadillac looked to have recovered from 1959 and ditched those dumb outdated tailfins! Hooray! The overall shape wasn’t bad; they’d got rid of the bulging sides which so often just made for wasted width. No weird metal sculpture going on just for the sake of it, either.
The front end was a bit overdetailed and busy-looking, which served to make the rest of it look plainer than it was. But that wacky-looking boxy roofline, which was to become an American styling hallmark for so long, was the main visual offender. Practical doesn’t have to mean ugly.
“But that wacky-looking boxy roofline, which was to become an American styling hallmark for so long, was the main visual offender. Practical doesn’t have to mean ugly.”
Which they then corrected/changed for the new 1980 Seville, only to make things even worse with the bustleback tail so that nobody even had an opportunity to comment on the visually much improved rake situation of the rear window….
wacky-looking boxy roofline
Stolen from Rolls Royce, you know.
Also the bustleback!
When these came out, the set the style for GM for over a decade. The “formal roof” started with the Seville. The cars had a base price of something north of $17,000 in Canada, which was an enormous amount of money at the time but it wasn’t long until I saw them all over the place. That’s like $84,000 in today’s money and they still sold lots of them. The styling was so new the cars got a lot of attention.
In the GM of 1975, I don’t think there was anyone worried about the Cadillac brand withering. They sold loads of them, mostly by going downmarket, but all GM cared about was selling loads of them.
When the C-body designs had run their course circa 1983 (in my opinion that is) GM really need to up their game. That doesn’t necessarily mean making a Caddy ride like a BMW, but a modern, unit body car with IRS and a hot motor would have been good for the brand in my opinion.
Nicely sized and attractive exterior. How Cadillac would send one with that dashboard to compare with a Mercedes is beyond me.
Imagine if they had modified the body in ‘80, offered an STS less-chromed version with black walls, tighter suspension and actual Euro influenced interior? Maybe they could have staved off the BMW invasion a bit longer, or at least been competitive a little longer. Instead of waiting until ‘92 for the table scraps.
I didn’t get past the bit about the center mounted license plate, As far as I can picture in my head, EVERY Cadillac (at least as far back as 1941) had the plate in the center. I don’t really think that Cadillac was “aping” Mercedes Benz with the 41,48,59 or 64. So what would make the 75 Seville different. The front of the Seville was “aping” one brand: Cadillac.
Too bad, you missed the rest of a great piece. Did I say they were “aping” Mercedes with the plate location or anywhere else? Cadillac certainly was hoping to get their slice of the luxury market back and it surely pained them to see people choosing 240Ds and whatever else over their “luxury” cars. But I’ll agree with your implication that Cadillac had some great cars in 41, 48, 59 and 64. Trouble is it stopped around there and nobody would continue that list of dates by adding a 75 to the end of it.
The inner bumper guards protect and frame the license plate. The outer ones are a homage to the Dagmars of the 50s. The regular models in ’75 also have 4.
They developed a special front sub-frame joint for the Seville that allowed some vertical movement but not lateral, in order to soften the ride without ruining handling. It probably caused some cowl shudder and squeaking, a common GM problem at the time.
Ahh the Seville. Dad was driving a 1974 Continental Mark IV when one Sunday morning the blasted heavy door knocked her to the ground, to which he replied, “what the hell are you doing down there?” A loud conversation ensued and dad was given orders to come home with a four door car! He looked at the Seville, but decided that the dealer demo dark blue Sedan de Ville would be easier on the check book. What a mistake! That thing was junk from the first day. It lasted in our garage about 9 months before a new 1978 Buick Electra rolled up to take its place. I liked the Seville.
The 1976 Seville didn’t poach many Mercedes buyers, and it’s hard to imagine GM really expecting it to. It might have kept some existing Cadillac buyers from getting acclimated to the firmer, more austere nature of Germany’s luxury brand, though. But the most important thing it did for GM was to get a large number of GM customers used to the prospect of paying more money for less car. Buyers of the 1977 B and C bodies were all treated to cars that matched the $14,000 Seville in many respects, were more roomy and cost less. The fact that their new cars seemed like bigger versions of GM’s most expensive owner-driven sedan took some of the sting out of coming home with cars that were smaller (at least on the outside) and more expensive that the cars they traded in.