Although you don’t need me to tell you, take a look at this ravishing woman. Now whatever you may be imagining about this young twenty-something blonde, try to imagine what kind of car she drives. A BMW 3-Series convertible maybe? Or what about a Mercedes 560SL? Whatever comes to your mind is probably something that shares her athletic, stylish, and sexy characteristics – in other words, not a 1987 Cadillac Seville.
Car companies have been using beautiful women to sell cars since the dawn of the automobile, but this one is definitely a stretch. Kudos to the ad agency that created this for trying, if you could call it that. But this type of woman shared very little in common with the Seville’s target buyer, other than that she could be their daughter or even granddaughter. I think it’s safe to say that the ’87 Seville failed to resonate with most young women reading Vogue Magazine. The top half of the ad is still very nice though.
More Seville goodness: CC 1985 – 1991 Cadillac Seville: GM’s Deadly Sin #21
Like, I thought this Caddy thing would be like all groovy and knarly, but, like, it like totally blew chunks. Like, my grandpa has like this Caddy that’s like a total land yacht. Like, this new thing doesn’t look anything like what any sort of like regular car is, like, supposed to look. Who the hell, like, thought this was a good idea?
This is a Cadillac? Like, gag me with a spoon.
—————————-
Okay, I lived through the ’80s. At that time, this little lady would be in a white VW convertible. Her Aunt Ruby Jewel would be in this Seville.
That would be this totally tubular car:
Having started college in the fall of 1987, I can assure you that the VW Cabriolet and the BMW 3-Series were very popular among the affluent young ladies in my class. (I’m not sure the 3-Series convertible was quite out yet, but it was popular when it did come out.) Outliers would have been Mercedes 190s or Saab 900s. This ad nails the look of the time for the model, but I never saw anyone my age driving a Cadillac unless it was grandpa’s old Coupe de Ville, ironically (was hipster irony around in 1987?).
As for me, I was a scholarship student and drove a 5-year-old Civic.
As the girl on the left there is no doubt she would be in a white VW rag top. Now as the she is in the center, on the right that and in the full view it is not as clear cut. The girl in the center would probably be in a Toyota, maybe a Celica. On the right who knows.
She should be in a Chevette. Or a Pinto. That’s what she deserves. I mean, if all you are going to do is make selfies and text and talk while driving, why drive at all? (Modern day people behind the wheel–I can’t call them drivers, because they are not.)
They’re operators, not drivers.
Ah yes, the ’80s, reaganomics in full swing, southern Californiaish feel to the ad. This young model would be driving a Tercel, if she is smart, or a Chevette, if she isn’t. The Cadillac would be her agent’s car, her Aunt Ruby Jewel, if in Socal, would be driving the Cabriolet.
I know about Aunt Ruby Jewel and her Cabriolet because I gave her a hand putting air in one of her tires at a gas station in LA back in 1987.
I was a nice young man in those days.
🙂
hehehe. Back in the days when Nicolas Cage didn’t look too weird.
When Madonna was still human.
Thanks for the lunch hour giggles…… +1 Jason, “Gag me with a spoon!”
One of the more misguided ads I’ve ever seen…pretty impressive that anyone thought it was a good idea! Maybe – *just* maybe – if the Cadillac in question was an Allante rather than a Seville, it would seem slightly less absurd.
I’m picturing some Iacocca-clone auto executive in Michigan in golf pants and white shoes ordering up this ad, totally convinced they could totally sell Cadillacs to those young preppies out on the west coast because he gave one to his daughter who was diplomatic enough not to say what she really thought of it.
She looks like an ’87 Mustang GT convertible driver.
Ah the Tiffany look….
You know as a child of the 1980’s, I look back on that decade and think to myself that the 1980’s was such a cutting edge decade with computers, early cell phones, Star trek The Next Generation, cars with fuel injection and digital watches. Then I see the fashions and clothing styles of the 1980’s and I think wow, did folks wear that?
I tend to agree with Jason Shafer, the definitive young chick car of the 1980’s was the VW Rabbitt convertible/Cabriolet or a Mustang convertible
C’mon, what’s wrong with white rimmed sunglasses? Matches the whitewall tires and fake wire wheel covers.
Obviously it is her “grandfathers” car. He took her to lunch and is now going to take his “granddaughter” shopping. I’m sure the young woman has a Rabbit convertible for those times she drives.
this is like soooo totally eighties.However, it wouldn’t, be Jewel’s car,it would be daddy’s.She would probably have something by The Bangles or A Flock of Seagulls playing on the cassette deck.Like so totally grody. Gag me with a spoon!
Tampa, Boca, Ft. Lauderdale….what? No Bal Harbour?
Not even Dadeland?
She is a bit young for Seville, maybe it’s her bosses car, and she’s his new receptionist?
They could have used a Cimarron…..
“Oh Daddy, your new Seville is so cute! It looks just like a Grand Am, I love those!”
++1
This is GOOOD nlpt; I think you hit all the bases with this one!
I always thought the Eldo from this era was the one that looked like a Grand Am, but that’s probably because I mostly saw the 2 dr versions. Either way, they look way too similar for comfort. Haven’t seen a Pontiac of that era in ages though. Most were a rustbucket POS back 10 years ago whent I did see them.
I don’t mind Cadillac trying to target younger buyers, but as a teenager at the time, I was never impressed with this Cadillac.
Hi Jason,
I don’t imagine that the ad is trying to attract young female buyers; rather, I imagine it is trying to attract the, uh, um, “older gentleman” who wants to be seen as “$omehow” attractive by a certain $et of young females.
They still fell flat on their face. If those gentleman reading Vogue were given the option of picking anything from the ad, they would probably take the sunglasses…
Really? This doesn’t look like a car that would attract anyone older than 25-35 yrs.
This doesn’t look like a car that would attract anyone.
Shut up Tifanny.Its a Cadillac and it costs twice as much.
Let’s get physical. I’m surprised she doesn’t have a bottle of Evian in one of those shots; before cell phones got small, before pagers were big, walking around with a bottle of water sticking out of your workout bag was the way to show how together you were, because it was seen as wasteful and self-absorbed, in a good way — only for people with money to burn, which was almost as enviable in the Reagan era as today. Maybe the ad was just another way to approach the middle aged man who thinks the Seville has the class to get him a young blonde accessory?
I still remember when bottled water first came out. A local paper ran an article on this new overseas craze, along the lines of “Fancy anyone paying for water! How silly! That’ll never take off.”
My how times change.
God, in Jersey in ’87 her hair would have had a higher PSI rating than one of the tires on this lux-o-barge.
You can’t blame them for trying. They had a smaller newer car that they were probably hoping would go up against the Mercedes 190. The problem was, the young successful couple that I knew that drove a 190 came across more like CPAs than daddy’s overaged Valley girl.
This could have been an ad for an Allante.
But not a Seville. Even the original ’75 Seville, when contemporary and popular, was not suited to this demographic.
Whether you prefer Teutonic roadworthiness and craftsmanship, or Broughamy softness and ease, this car will never be “America’s ultimate luxury sedan” for either camp.
Aside from all the previous comments, this ad typifies what went wrong at Cadillac and for that matter GM. When the mid 70s Seville debuted, it was a new direction and a new look for the Cadillac brand. YET, in only 10 years “they” managed to throw that new direction into a tailspin of sorts. If the ad didn’t say so I would think this was any model Cadillac from the mid 80s. Never mind that it looks (vaguely)like any sedan from GM.
The idea that you could sell an nearly anonymous sedan to a young woman shows how clueless GM/Cadillac marketing was. They would have been better off dusting off those images from the 50s when a young woman sat in the car, looking at the man who was so….smart (?)for having chosen this car AND her to be seen with.
BTW, if she had the price of a Seville, wouldn’t this woman more likely be driving a BMW convertible? She doesn’t quite fit the “Valley girl” image, but looks more like a very savvy/brand savvy Yuppie.
” Never mind that it looks (vaguely)like any sedan from GM.” I wouldn’t say “any”… at least it won’t be mistaken for a lowly Chevy 😀 !
True; they never looked that misproportioned.
I can’t conceive of any woman that age in 1987 wanting a Cadillac. Maybe one twenty years older who is a realtor would have bought one.
They bought New Yorkers. Or the Deville. Or the Fleetwood.
The Seville would be too cheap for a Realtor.
Nobody with 20/20 vision would want one of those it looks as if a 3 year old drew a car from memory. Did GM stylists get paid in jellybabies back then? its horrid maybe it has all the creature features but having to look at walking to it to get in would be too much for me to be able to keep lunch down.
These ads seem related to the Farrah Fawcett Mercury Cougar ads. 🙂
I’m still chuckling at the lead headline.
“Look for the drive that inspires EXPRESSIONS of the elegant spirit of Cadillac.”
That had to come from 5 different ad men after a 3 martini dinner at 8 pm with a 7 am deadline.
Copywriting by committee.
I majored in advertising in college. I can assure you that those in the industry are usually clueless about the product they are hawking…but no worse than whoever put it out sometimes. Our project was the Toyota Echo…what a turd. We were expected to make that heap of crap seem hip and happening to twentysomethings. We all know what happened to that thing.
What a find! This ad, and the comments, had me laughing out loud. The entire approach is pathetically misguided–a prime example of the depths of GM’s idiocy, which nearly drove them to bankruptcy in the early 1990s (not that they improved much even after that first near-death experience). No clue about properly identifying target customers, crafting powerful images/messages, or even basic product development. All from the company that arguably perfected these practices for the automotive world in its heyday. The mighty giant had fallen with a huge thud, right onto the pages of Vogue.
“I play tennis, I talk on the phone, I wear one glove like Michael Jackson – and I can borrow my Grandfather’s Cadillac!”
Wow – I can only imagine the meeting of the advertising guys. “OK, Phil – the client won’t listen to us, and thinks this car appeals to stylish young women. They want a campaign that appeals to this demographic, and won’t take no for an answer. So, barf one up and have it to me in a week.”
CC is so educational. I forwarded this ad to my son who is in college and an advertising major. Turns out he had a class discussing print ads and this one was used for much of the class period as the professor and students listed and discussed the many things wrong with it.
The ad better fits female Jaguar buyers, though perhaps the models are a bit young for that. Jags had more style & flash, if less reliability.
Yeah, I bet Clarissa Darling would want to aspire to a Seville!
The typical ones would be in something cheap and trendy (VW), and the ones with money/daddy/680 Credit Scores would have something still hip and trendier, but pricier (Mustang convertible, Porsche,…)
The young girls that drive Sevilles bought them for $1200 in the Facebook classifieds.
Since we’re talking Cadillac, she might match up with a black Escalade, but that truck wasn’t around in ’87. So, I’ll have to second the suggestion of a 3 series.
A square body Escalade???
I like it!
Nah, she’s too young for an escalade…10 years and a few kids later, then yea. These days, a young woman with a good job and a sense of style is likely driving an Audi A4 or a 3 series BMW.
Hmm, would have thought the mistress would have gone for an Allante not a Seville.
WOW. Whoever crapped this out was horribly out of touch. A woman like that posing next to a Fiero? Check. Firebird? Sure. Thunderbird? Why not? But this car couldn’t possibly appeal to anyone young or hip. The contemporary El Dorado might have gone to a fifty something divorced woman who still had some mojo going….but only in the Midwest.
The topic of using beautiful women to sell cars reminded me of an ad I saw in the A-C-D museum when I went in July, maybe some of you saw it on the CC get-together.
It is for a Cord 810 and starts, “She is young – vibrant with energy – radiant with health – throbbing with vitality…” It has a small drawing of a Cord and a large drawing of a pretty girl with arms raised and wind whipping the very thin clothing that covers her perfect body. Very classy, but maybe that’s what makes it probably the sexiest ad using female beauty to sell a product, automotive or otherwise, that I’ve seen from any era.
I think that GM recognized that the downsized FWD Caddy’s lost them their core buyers. They were frantically casting about for somebody, anybody! to buy their cars.
Obviously they hoped that they might be able to lure in naive fashion-conscious rich young women, gambling that -while they would be aware of the Cadillac name- they wouldn’t have a clue about cars otherwise.
I have to say that although the Caddy clearly fails here, when I saw the Oldmobile Trofeo (a sister car) I instantly thought of a girl I knew in college, and imagined that this would be what she would be driving some 5 years out of school. She had family money and was still a devout believer in American Cars. The Trofeo would have been (IMHO) her ideal of modern and stylish.
The link to a picture below is a little unfair for comparison to the 87 Caddy as it is from 92, after GM finally gave permission to get away from the !@#%! formal roofline. I think it may have worked better for what GM was trying to do.
http://car-pictures.cars.com/images/?IMG=U2OLGEI1.png&WIDTH=624&HEIGHT=300&AUTOTRIM=1
So much to love here. The playing tennis with lipstick on, the clunky old phone with the receiver no where near the mouth, the Michael Jackson glove and the two-tone dress that matches the two-tone car. And that “Expressions” headline, wow. It’s like an SNL spoof of an 80s ad with Jan Hooks playing the lead character.
It reminds me of those Lindsay Wagner ads for the Southern California Ford dealers that ran in the 80s. I read somewhere that she arrived drunk for every shoot.
Yep, take it to :16. Drunk as a skunk and NO SEATBELT. Cue “Bionic Woman” music.
And God I miss Jan Hooks already.
I noticed that too it was probably the best take out of 70 that day. Clang, clang, clang went the trolley RIP Jan.
I’m saying Adobe in her memory….
Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, a Cadillac?! How very.
Yet if you look at the contemporary Cadillac TV commercials, you see something different. The women are older, early-thirtyish with a confident and competent look about them. You could well imagine that they are Frank Sinatra’s “blue-blooded girls of independent means” (It Was A Very Good Year). Not a bubblehead among them.
“Cadillac Style”
Nice! When I was attending the local Community College back in those days, I had a mad crush on a girl in my French class who looked like this…of course, she drove a Nissan 300ZX!
Alfred Sloan turned in his grave when this ad hit.
What’s that black thing with a coiled string that the middle one is holding to her ear?
Heard in the office this morning: “if the power is out how is she calling us from a land line?”
She kinda looks like Jeri Ryan (Star Trek Voyager’s Seven of Nine Borg character) it might even be Jeri Ryan….
If so she has aged a lot better than the car!
You really can’t blame them for trying with this ad. You can always sell a younger image to an older person, but it doesn’t work the other way around. The biggest mistake would be to actually show the target age customer in the ad. No one ever did that! Even the imports were bought by older folks than the models in the ads. This is a pretty extreme example, but after all, if the older woman (with the wherewithal to buy the car) could imagine herself as this young, active, tennis playing professional, all the better!
That Cadillac Seville was definitely an AARP special even back in 1987. Most young woman at that time living in Southern California would drive a VW Cabriolet, Nissan Pulsar, Toyota Celica or MR2 along with the Honda CRX and Prelude. The Yuppies living in that same area would drive a BMW 3-series, Saab 900 or a Volvo 740/760.
The ’87 Seville looks like a small Coupe de Ville. Nothing sets it apart from the crowd as did the prior bustle-back version.