(first posted 5/22/2013, as a rebuttal to my Deadly Sin post on the Seville) Any way you slice it, General Motors made many mistakes in its long history. Good cars, bad cars, government meddling, shrinking vehicles and corporate idiocy all have a part in what New GM is today, and why Old GM perished. Did they learn their lesson? Will they turn it around? It’s too early to tell, but one thing I disagree with is that the original Cadillac Seville was a deadly sin. I just don’t see it.
I imagine that most of you CCers have read Paul’s DS article on the ’79 Seville (CC here if you haven’t). It was a polarizing article to say the least, and whether you agree or disagree with his assessment, he made a lot of good points. Yes, the Seville’s start came via the X-body Nova–albeit heavily revised and stretched, to the point of being basically a new car–and the success of the car might well have led the corporate drones to decide on the “tart up a cheap platform for obscene profits” M.O. that led to GM’s 2009 downfall. But come on, the Seville was a breath of fresh air for Caddy dealers!
Consider: The Cadillac de-contenting started around 1969. Interiors lost the aluminum and real wood trim, dashes became much cheaper-looking and plasticky, and even the steering wheels on 1969-70 models were all black, not color-keyed. To Cadillac’s traditional well-heeled customers, this was cause for dismay, but in my opinion the bones were still solid through ’70; in fact, I consider the ’70 the last of the real no-compromise Cadillacs (1970 Fleetwood Brougham CC here).
But that was just for starters. The 1971 model, despite being a very attractive car in your author’s opinion (perhaps due to my exposure to the oh-so-’80s movie License To Drive; the aqua ’72 in that movie was beautiful before it met its fate) was cheaped out, wallowy, and loosey-goosey in the body/chassis department.
The 1971-76s were also gigantic; in fact they were the biggest Caddys ever produced, with only the Federal bumper-equipped variants being longer. Not too long after the ’71 B- and C-bodies debuted, GM appeared to realize this, and made plans to shrink their biggest offerings, starting with the next generation.
But what to do prior to the ’77s debut? Starting in the early ’70s, well-to-do folks were starting to see the merits of a certain three-pointed-star make. And Caddys were getting cheaper (in order to chase more sales volume; Cadillac set a production record in 1973). The wreath and crest was getting a bit tarnished. What to do?
Solution: offer a smaller Cadillac. Customers had been asking for a small Caddy for some time, well before the M-B started elbowing Cadillac, Lincoln and Imperial towards stage left. It was thought that a smaller version would be popular with not only women, who were not particularly enamored of parallel-parking a mid-’70s FWB or SDV, but as a way of offering a more MB-like Cadillac.
Thus, the Seville came onto the scene in 1975 as an early ’76. It proved popular, and Cadillac made money on every one, as it was priced at the top of the range–including the venerable Fleetwood Brougham. Only the Series Seventy-Fives were pricier. I have to tell you, I think it was a beautiful car.
And it sold well. These cars were well made, comfortable, and solid. It had rather advanced engineering for a Cadillac too, with Bendix fuel injection–a feature which, sadly, was trouble. Otherwise, these were every inch a Cadillac, despite the X-body starting point.
Were they fast? No not really. You want fast, get a Ferrari. Were they heavy? You bet! A plush ride and absolute silence when under way were important to Cadillac customers. If they had utilized less sound insulation, today you’d be hearing about how noisy and rattly they were, not how their 0-60 mph times stunk. We could talk all day about how most post-1974 U.S. cars were slugs–at least when compared to their ’60s forebears.
A ’76 Seville would hit 60 in about 13 seconds–not great, but consider all the then-primitive emissions devices on the things, not to mention the 4179-lb. shipping weight. It was still about 800 pounds less than a ’78 Eldo, and 140 less than a downsized ’78 Fleetwood Brougham.
The 1976-79 Seville also ushered in Bill Mitchell’s “sheer look,” with cliff-face nose, tail and roofline. This styling would take the GM lineup by storm, being added to our beloved B-body and C-body GMs in 1977. It would soon become a bit of a cliche, appearing on the mini-Seville 1980-up A/G-body sedans as well, but that was later. In ’76, it was fresh, new and attractive.
So, the Seville was a success. Its new, tidier dimensions and sheer-faced style was a preview of what was to come on future Cadillacs, it sold well, it was well made, and it started a nameplate that lasted all the way to 2004 (or 2011, if you count the succeeding 2005+ STS).
Was it perfect? Nope. The Bendix FI was problematic, it was still based upon a plebeian Nova–no matter how well-disguised it was–and performance and handling to match contemporary Mercedes-Benz and BMW sedans could have been a boon. But it was not a Deadly Sin in my book. The next Seville, with its cartoon Hooper bodywork, and choice of self-destructing Olds diesel V8 or, starting in ’82, self-destructing HT4100 V8, would be much more of a contender. But not this one.
Thanks to PN for providing the photos of this ’78. He couldn’t have taken these without some love for the Seville.
Alternative POV: 1976-1979 Seville: GM’s Deadly Sin #11 – The Sin of Underachieving PN
I have two Seville memories:
1) the 9C1’ed one on the cover of Car & Driver.
2) My neighbor’s Seville burning literally to the ground two blocks from home (injection problem?)
1976-only Sevilles used Nova 9C1 front disc and rear drum brakes, hubs, and wheels. 1977-1979 Sevilles used Fleetwood Brougham four way disc front & rear brakes and wheels.
No they did not! Nova 9C1 used the standard X-Car brake parts with only an upgrade in pad and shoe material. That’s 11″ front rotors and 9.5″ drums. Seville used 11″ drum. Besides the 9C1 used 14″ wheels.
I don’t know how many times I have said it when ever the subject of the first generation Seville comes up, but the Seville doesn’t share anything with the X-Car except the fact that it uses a front subframe instead of a full length BOF design.
Yes, about 95% of the car was not shared with the Nova, but that is what they started with. To GM’s credit, they changed just about everything, unlike some of the Seville’s competitors (Versailles anyone?).
Maybe I over generalized, but in 1976, and I owned a 1976 model, the Seville was a lot closer to the Nova than other years. The car used front disc rear drum brakes and Nova pattern 15″ wheels. 77+ used 5×5 pattern wheels. I would have to do a part by part search on RockAuto to confirm but I have generally accepted this. There was initial grumbling in auto circles that the Seville had leaf springs while the lowly Vega sat on coils. But it did not seem to matter, the car was popular.
That yapping about the first-generation Seville having rear leaf springs is a bogus argument, in my book. Sixties Lincolns and all post-’56 Imperials had rear leaf springs, for the record.
. . . . and of course, the Oldsmobile Rocket 350 V-8 . . . . . a good choice, but those early Bendix throttle bodies were not . . . . we are talking in hindsight. As I recall, you could get a carbed version in the mainstream Caddy, but I do believe the early Sevilles were Bendix fuelies only . . .
I wonder why a SBC 350 V-8 was not chosen. Perhaps it had to do with supply-on-hand for GM, at the time.
I remember that one. The owner added fiberglass fender flares, each about a foot wide, to cover the racing slicks. It was basically a homemade AMG Hammer, 10 years before they came out.
The best part of that car was its (Texas?) vanity plate: 1FASTMF.
It was a California plate. Hot Rod magazine did an article in ’83 about a group of street racers in the LA area and the Seville was one of the cars mentioned. Basically it was a widened Sevile body on a NASCAR chassis, twin-turbocharged big-block Chevy with A/C. At first glimpse it looked like a stock Cadillac inside and out. Those were the days..
John Ward’s bad ass Cadillac?
I admit that of all the GM Deadly Sins I’ve written, the gen1 Seville was perhaps the iffiest one. There’s no question that it was a handsome car, in the all-American idiom of the time. And it certainly fulfilled a need for Cadillac to have a smaller car in the store. And it functioned quite well, without any major issues, although I hear that keeping the fuel injection system going can be a bit of a challenge.
I still think that the Seville should have been a more ambitious undertaking: an all-new new high-tech platform with independent rear suspension, investing in a car to truly take on the challenge from Mercedes and BMW head on. Although the gen1 Seville was successful, I am convinced that it did little or nothing to stem the tide against the ascendency of the German premium brands, except maybe in some parts of the country, or to a very minor extent. Essentially, what Cadillac needed was the equivalent of the CTS: an all-new car fully competitive with Mercedes and BMW in every respect, not just price.
The Seville’s interior design and materials were not anywhere near to being competitive with a Mercedes of the time (see pic attached). And the Seville’s exterior design, despite being attractive, was also not going to win over Mercedes or BMW buyers. It was too “American” at a time when tastes were changing. The fact that it was only available with a vinyl roof for the first few years sealed that deal. For many import luxury buyers, a vinyl roof was the kiss of death.
I don’t say that to diss those that liked the styling and the vinyl roof, but that was the reality with premium car buyers on the coasts at the time. Design and technology are critical, as companies like Apple have proved all too well.
The Seville took advantage of the desire of many Caddy buyers to want a smaller Caddy, but it did nothing to position Cadillac against the premium import brands. Thus, it ultimately was a Deadly Sin, setting Cadillac up for its inevitable crash in the eighties and nineties. I stand by my designation; but it is a nice car to look at, in hindsight.
Good reply, but…
The shopper then for the most part did not care for IRS and such; the few who did bought German or whatever.
The deadliest GM sin was, until the last decade, the GM rank-n-file worker, and his legacy bennies.
That Nova chassis sure made an F-body a great road car, and as for a ‘new, modern’ platform, that would not have added cache nor made a dent in 80-90s perceptions of what a fine car should be. Only folks like us give a dang!
The Gen 1 was a winner.
For me the American-ness is an advantage, at least for the exterior styling. A Cadillac should look like an American car. It would have been a mistake for Cadillac to ape German designs then, just as it would now (I think you have to concede that part of the appeal of today’s CTS and ATS is that they look American, not European or Asian).
I liked the design of the Seville then, and I think it holds up well now. Even compared to other Sheer Look winners like the ’77+ Caprice/Impala and the ’85+ big Buicks, the Seville stands out. The short front overhang, the wheels pushed out to the edges of the wheel wells, the relaxed stance and the lack of fussy details (aside from that vinyl roof) combine into a clean, cohesive design I find very appealing.
I will concede that like every other 70s GM car, the interior looks (and is) cheap, especially when compared to the expressive and creative interiors GM came up with in the 50s and 60s.
Admittedly, it’s a good looking car, but at least they should have offered a “Euro” version: steel roof, alloy wheels, less chrome, and an upgraded interior. That even I could go for, up to a point.
Agreed. The fake wire wheelcovers are dreadful (though a bit better executed here compared to what some other cars of the era sported), and it’s odd that a steel roof wasn’t even an option.
But sometimes it’s safer to stick with what you know. Detroit’s cynical efforts to Euro-ize its cars gave us masterpieces like the Celebrity Eurosport and the looks-like-a-Mercedes Granada.
There was a steel roof, but just not the first year or so, the steel roof came in mid 77, real wire wheels were as close as it got to an alloy wheel, and they did have a console in the 1978-1979 Elegante versions of the Seville, though the shifter was still column mounted.
Though Cadillac had its eye on the MB S280/450 when these were designed size wise, they still wanted it to retain the look and feel of a Cadillac, just in smaller package.
Posting a photo of a dirty and slightly ratty interior Seville and a Mercedes with a better kept interior is a bit loaded don’t you think? I would say the Seville has a more luxurious interior than the same vintage MB, with a greater abundance of power accessories and luxury touches.
I dont really see what so special about the Benz, I know I know, its a sin to knock the Reichswagens on this site, but I’ll be bold, it sucks…..I’m sure its well made, but look at all the black plastic, bus sized non-tilt or tele wheel with a big ugly crash pad in the center, like a DodgeEm car, leather that looks like vinyl and vice versa, yeah the wood is real, what little there is, and chunky cheap looking a/c controls for the non automatic air conditiong, the seats aren’t even freaking power….please…..
I absolutely agree. And those euro design adjustments look dated within a year on Mercedes. Classic American designs hold up over time.
My sister had a 1977 Seville with no vinyl top. It was two-tone blue, leather, not really loaded for a Seville (no cruise, no 8-track and no wire wheels) but it was a really nice car. She loved it and kept it for about 5 years until the fuel injection gave her so much trouble that she gave up on it. (About 80k miles). Ironically she replaced it with a 1979 Eldorado! I remember the Seville being really comfortable and well made. Aside from the fuel injection issues she rarely had any trouble with it and always talked about that car as being one of her favorites.
I’m with you Carmine. The Merc’s interior looks cramped and down right cheap compared to the Seville.
This is whats rusting into the road around the corner though 100 spoke wheels and paint on tyres didnt look OEM this is the car I checked mondays clue against. Its roughly the size of a GMH Statesman length width etc all the fakery, would they drive fast on dirt roads in comfort? The Holden does though they arent chuckable, coulda been a success I dont know we only have used imports and one of those here is in MINT condition i cant find where it parks though its a nice example even by your standards.
Or would people be mocking it like the later Celebrity Eurosport? “They think removing/blacking out the chrome and adding aluminum wheels make it Euro?”
Than call it an STS, as Caddy did later. Is that better. The whole point is that eventually Caddy figured it out (sort of), and made their cars more international in look and feel. Right??
Sure they did, eventually, when the time was right, however in 1975 I bet it would not have been able to sell them. Though if they had tried and failed then maybe we would have not been subjected to the Eurosport.
Well think about it in reverse, the US was quickly becoming MB’s biggest market and they did start adding vinyl tops or column shifters?, though I do remember seeing new S-classes with whitewalls down here in Miami, they didn’t even add power seats to the S-class until the next generation cars, its interesting to note that while Cadillac has become more international, at the same time Mercedes-Benz has become more American, right down to the column shifter on todays S-class.
Todays S-class has show off doo-dads that would have made the most German of German engineers blush in the 70’s
Carmine: quite true; the point being that luxury car standards have converged to a new global standard. Ask me if I have the slightest interest in any Mercedes since about the 1990s.
Tastes are always changing; the 1977 Mercedes of today is the Tesla Model S; that’s the same demographic that was buying Mercedes back then: fast-track professionals, and those with big bucks already. In Silicon Valley, today’s Mercedes is yesterday’s Cadillac.
I don’t have experience driving Mercedes cars, but I have a relative who has been leasing second-hand BMW 7 Series cars since the mid-80s. The first of these, an E23 733i, drove like a large sports sedan. It was a big car, but it had heavy steering, a hard ride, hard seats and a stark cabin. You had to rev the engine a bit to make it go fast, and it wasn’t particularly quiet or plush. The one he drives now has all of the characteristics that big Caddies once had: Quiet as a vault, pillowy ride, effortless acceleration, overboosted steering, heavy & solid. It’s a nice car, but it’s about as sporty as a ’73 DeVille.
No wonder the one-percenters are buying Teslas and Panameras.
The deadly sin wasn’t GM building this Oldsmobile-engined, Nova-chassised, Mercedes-priced piece of opportunism. The deadly sin was committed by anyone that bought one. GM became convinced that their customers were precisely as insipid as they treated them. GM must have felt incredibly betrayed a decade later, when Americans that could afford not to stopped buying their stuff.
@ PN: Coulda called it the 350i.
The Caddy that zigs?
Or how ’bout CTS?
Hehehehe.
The two door looks twice as cool: with shiney chrome spoked rims they did come alive in that format. You don’t see 2 doors for sale ever. A great classic long roof mid sized 70’s star that shined bright when huge lumbering tuna boats from Detroit were chugging past the break water to lay down shrimp nets on American streets.
Tom, Ads for old Coupe de Villes are far more common than four-door versions in the 70s. Ads for old Lincolns are absolutely LOADED with Mark Vs, compared to Town Cars of the 70s.
I concur with Paul’s comments. The Seville was good, but it could’ve been a lot better for a division claiming to be the “Standard of the World,” with a history of innovation. And may I add, excellent Quality Control is part of this, really the Prime Directive. That is what keeps customers coming back in the long run (i.e., to purchase, not service). As Toyota has proven, you don’t even have to make a car very exciting to get repeat business. Evidently Cadillac buyers didn’t care about IRS or gauges or other Benz goodies, but I bet they, like most other folks, cared about breakdowns.
And, so far, nobody is mentioning here the much-higher cost of MB maintenance versus an American car.
Your original piece was pretty much dead on, Mr. Niedermeyer, from the Nova reference to the MB contrast.
Part of the problem here is that the Germans redefined what a luxury car was. In essence, handling, suspension tuning and that je ne sais quoi that comes from the feeling of a solid piece is what distinguish them.
The Detroit approach was more oriented toward defining luxury by means of creature comforts. That no longer works. The fact that your average Kia has more kit today than a Cadillac used to have is a good indication that additional wiring and fancier wheels just aren’t enough to earn a luxury label.
The only deadly sin that I see, and it is more of a conceptual one, is that the success of what was essentially a reworked Nova (albeit a very good one) gave GM the thinking that platform sharing was easily doable. Someone took it too far in their head and we got badge engineered cars that did not look very different.
As far as quibbling over wire wheel covers, grille design, that is all taste and has nothing to do with the engineering qualities of a car. At a certain point, you could buy a Seville with a steel roof, turbine vane wheel covers, and in certain colors that made it look rather slick and less Broughamy.
Here in Norway we have an all original 1976 Mercedes S-280 in the family. I don’t se what’s so special about it?
It looks quite boring, the automatic transmission is absolute horrible with harsh shifts, the engine lacks power, the car has a lot of road noise and the ride is kind of harsh on bad roads. The seats are indeed awful.
The Seville looks good, it had about every thing of equipment, it had fuel injection, and the Turbo Hydramatic was and is a way better transmission than the MB-crap. It’s quiet, comfortable and has a nice ride, even on bad roads.
The Seville was and is a better car than the MB S-Class from 1976. At least to drive, it’s way better. The MB has a bit better brakes, some better handling and a more precise steering. But that’s it. The rest of the car are’nt better than a Seville.
You americans are very harsh to your own car-industry sometimes. Yes, Detroit has built som bad, very bad cars, but they have also built some of the best. What car ever built in the world would live longer than an BOF american car, like a 1978 Deville with 425 and Th400? Or a 78 Caprice with a 350 and TH350? Or a Buick with 430 and Th400? Or a Buick with a 3,8 V6 engine and a 4T60E transmission (I know the trans here is not of the best, but it’s way better than a BMW or a Audi with automatics in the long run).
Yes, old american cars drink a lot of gas, but my 77 Coupe Deville has 248.000 miles on the odometer and my 67 Riviera has 177.000 miles on the odometer. No oil consumption, no noises or any other trouble. Try find a japanese or European car fra the 60s or 70s with the original engine who don’t have any noises and don’t use oil. If you find one, take good care of it, it may be the only one.
best regards from Norway 🙂
You americans are very harsh to your own car-industry sometimes.
A saying comes to mind: “familiarity breeds contempt.”
Thanks! and Welcome!
The idolatry of German Engineers & German Craftmanship, which probably became widespread during the Space Race & continued by the enthusiast-car press, has done its job so well, it’s made it almost impossible for me to believe that there could be half-baked, get-it-out-the-door engineering in their products. That is supposed to be a cheapskate Anglo-Saxon malady.
And yet, the costs of German car ownership are plain enough, & keep me a window-shopper of their products. This goes for Bosch appliances, too; I think they may be overrated, & note that this company has another division making a lot of Euro car parts. A car is only as reliable as its parts.
I regularly went between my ’87 Caprice coupe and an ’86 420SEL Benz a few years back, and while they’re both upwards of 25 years old it was clear to me that if either were new, even if I had all the money in the world I’d get the Caprice. It was so much more of a “logical and sensible” car in every way, from the styling, driving and engineering. The Benz however was more robust and down to business with less trim and fuss all over and had more attention to detail on the tactiles and the look and feel of things. What I hated though was that it took the Benz something like three complex, hard to access parts to do what the Caprice could do with one. Nevermind the cost of the replacement parts. The Benz even with the longer wheelbase rode rougher, the steering wheel was huge, and just wasn’t much fun to drive. It felt more pulled together and substantial, but for cruising and errands I longed for my Caprice. It was slower and sloppier but felt so much more relaxing and natural.
Parked next to the Benz the Caprice looked more trim and finished, sportier, and interesting. The Benz seemed more durable and more of a driver’s car, or to some all about the name, but the Caprice is more traditional and about size and comfort than anything else. It was an interesting comparison- and it would’ve been nice to compare a Caddy or even the ’83 Olds 98 I have now.
I like the Seville interior much, much better than the one in the Benz….
Many (if not all) of GM’s Deadly Sins are not so much that the cars were bad, it’s that they were either bad and successful (at least at first), selling so many that the number of disenfranchised owners’ numbers were exponentially high, or they were good cars that begat bad cars.
The latter is the case with the Seville. It wasn’t bad, per se, but I’m convinced that the success of the downsized Caddy encouraged GM to follow up with what would become the poster child for an idiotic Cadillac decision: the Cimarron. GM surely figured that since they had gotten away with the Seville off the Nova platform, they could do the same with the Cimarron off the Cavalier platform. If not for the Seville’s success, the Cimarron might never have happened (or at least not in the half-assed way it did).
I agree with that statement, they just took it too far. It always seemed to me GM could often come up with a great car but the bean counters would ruin everything.
Back in the 70’s an interior as austere and plain as the Mercedes was not overly accepted by the majority of American luxury car buyers. Vinyl roof, wire wheels, whitewall tires, interiors with some color and color coordination and matching pin stripes were very much the in thing, even through the 80’s. The 90’s onslaught of foreign cars put an end to much of this but during the 70’s it was very popular and accepted. Don’t believe it. Just take a look at most any surviving luxury car or personal luxury coupe from 1970 -1988 and chances are it will have a vinyl roof, white walls or wire wheels not plain black walls, tan plain interiors with black steering wheels and dashes etc. I do not count this car as a deadly sin. Especially if the far worse executed Lincoln Versailles is not considered a Ford Deadly Sin.
Paul, You neglect to mention the Japanese premium brands, like Lexus.
I’d take the MB in a heartbeat.
I just don’t like the back end of the Seville. It seems too off-putting. The interior is fuddy-duddy too.
You are so right about the cheapo interiors on 70s Cadillacs. I had a ’79 Impala sedan 10 years ago, now I have a ’76 Coupe DeVille. I love the Caddy to death, but the interior is not one bit better than the Impala’s, it. might even be worse in a few details.
Maybe the 10 years have dulled your memory, I could tell the difference between a Chevy Impala interior and a Cadillac interior blindfolded and drunk.
It was squeezed by the emergence of the E12 BMW and the W123 Benz on one side, and its excessive resemblance to the rest of the GM parts bin on the other.
Mistakes in the auto industry aren’t like burning yourself on a hot stove. They’re quite the opposite — you screw up today, then it blows up in someone else’s face 15-20 years later, probably after you’ve already retired.
You can’t look at short-term sales volumes as an indication of long-term success. If those sales are going to eventually drive away your customers and prevent new customers from coming aboard, then those sales are more of a curse than a blessing.
Luxury cars need to earn their premium, otherwise they’re just an elaborate exercise in overpriced badge engineering. You may personally like these things for whatever reason, but you have to judge them within the contexts of their brand and the company that makes them in order to assess their benefits or drawbacks. And cars like this basically sent the message that the Cadillac brand wasn’t worth a damn, and that somebody who wanted to have the sense of luxury car ownership needed to go shopping somewhere else.
I think the car itself is not a deadly sin, but what resulted from it is. The car itself is handsome, a tidy size, and still looks like a cadillac. However, IMO, the great success that came from this car blinded the Cadillac team. They saw that they could take a plebeian platform, turn it into a Cadillac, price it high, and find success. I think that while that formula worked well in this case, it led the caddy guys to try it again in ’82 with the infamous cimarron, with disastrous results.
Also, the car’s original mission was to be an import fighter, but instead only 30% of buyers considered a import over the Seville, and less than 15% traded in an import (#s from ateupwithmotor). And with the successor to this 1st gen, any (small) chance of fighting the imports was gone.
Overall, I think that the car, taken by itself, is a great car. I’m a cadillac man, and I would own one of these any day. It’s classy, comfy, and mostly reliable (the FI system being the only real potential troublemaker). However, the mindset that took root at cadillac resulting from this car’s success is, in my opinion, a deadly sin.
I used to work with a guy who owned one of these. The car was about 8-10 years old and well over 100K on it, but it still was quite tight and the red leather was a delight.
I am tempted to respond that this car cost more than the 76 Fleetwood because it was a better car. Seriously, though, the Seville was an amazing job for what it started out as.
I can see PN’s comment above, and think that there was a huge difference between the heartland and the coasts when these came out. These were quite common in the midwest, though in my experience, most buyers were older, traditional Cadillac buyers. I also do not see the problem with “American-ness”, but instead would have gone to higher quality interior materials and perhaps a suspension of something other than leaf springs in the rear. A Cadillac V8 would have been nice too, but I would guess that the big 472 or 500 would have overwhelmed the poor thing.
Between 1976 and 79, Cadillac re-did their entire line. Each was fairly well done, and was certainly successful. They were certainly better quality all-new cars than pretty much any other American manufacturer introduced in that same time period. They could have been better, but they also could have been a lot worse. As we would soon see.
The Sevilles were assembled at Clark St on a separate assembly line and did receive about an incredible amount of attention to detail, almost to the level of the Fleetwood 75 limos.
In 1980, for the redesign and switch to FWD, production was moved to Linden NJ with the E bodies.
The Seville was redesigned to be closer to the Eldorado both in terms of economies of scale (and thus being able to be moved to NJ) but also that when the 77 downsized models came out, they proved so popular that capacity in Detroit was maxed out. C body Cadillac production was supplanted at South Gate California for a time.
I think they also made full size Cadillacs at Linden for a little while before they started to change over to E-body production for 1979, my 78 Cadillac owners manual lists both Detroit and Linden as production plants. Cadillac did take extra time with the Seville, they were concerned about the use of the plebian X-car foundation, so they took extra time and money to make sure it was well finished, they moved the Eldorado to the main full size Cadillac line at Clark St. to make room for the Seville line.
I would have to look at the production charts to see what all was where. At one point, everything Cadillac was built at Clark St. Then volume outgrew capacity and eventually some production was shifted. In 1975, when the Seville came out, I believe everything was built at Clark St. while the Fleetwood 75 was partially finished elsewhere. That changed with the 77 downsized models as their popularity caused GM to spread the love around. When the Eldorado and Seville were redesigned for 79/80 it made sense to move them to Linden as the models were more closely aligned. Eventually Clark St closed when C body production was moved to Hamtramck and D body production was moved to Arlington.
As nice a car as it may be, it is a Deadly Sin because it looks like an Oldsmobile. Take off the grille, I don’t see prestige anywhere.
The prestige had to do with the fact that the Seville was the most expensive (non-stretch) Cadillac, the top of the line – costlier than a Fleetwood Brougham.
While some complain about Seville being rooted from Nova X body, the DeVilles and Fleetwoods were really just stretched Chevy Impalas underneath.
B and C bodies shared numerous parts.
Toyota used this practice, and created Lexus.
Not with any of their top line models: LS, GS, SC, and IS. Yes, they did it with the ES, but that’s their entry level model, and they did/do that a lot more successfully than then Cadillac did with their Cimarron.
Lexus’ key breakthrough car was the original 1990 LS 400; and it was an extremely impressive piece of work. Technically, it was highly state of the art, and yet it had a somewhat softer ride specifically to appeal to Americans (European magazines complained about its ride). And its quality was impeccable.
Simply put, the LS 400 was what Cadillac should have done with the Seville: a high tech world-class car that specifically addressed American’s preferences in ride quality, size, and pricing. And which one was more effective in its intended mission? Which one is still around?
The LS400 married the Soarer and Camry partsbins beautifully and taught the world about building cars, the brandnew widebody Camry came out in 89/90 and set new standards that the rest of the world saw a dumbed down version of in 94, little ole New Zealand was selected as favourite son and given the Camry as a test market proving ground Toyota tailored the car for our market and let it loose.
“And which one was more effective in its intended mission?”
Well unless we were there when said mission was set it is hard to say.
If the mission was to sell a fair amount of product at a very high profit margin, then the Seville was outstanding at fulfilling its mission, the LS not so much.
If the mission was to take a bite out of a competitor’s market share, regardless of the cost then the LS fulfilled it’s mission.
If the mission was to stem the tide of the loss of market share then we will never really know how the Seville did since we can’t go back, remove it from the market and see how many Cadillac buyers chose to go elsewhere rather than purchase another traditional Cadillac, nor how many didn’t step up to the full-size Caddy.
As far as which one is still around that is a bit of a loaded question. The automotive landscape changed more dramatically between 1975 and now than it has since 1990. GM also liked to add new model names and eliminate or move the old names down the ladder. Admitidly dropping a name was frequently done due to the poor reputation that it earned, however if that was the reason GM dropped the Seville name it certainly wasn’t due to the original version. The Bustle back, HT4100 and to a lesser extent the Northstar, certainly take more of the blame for ruining the reputation of the name.
Wow comparing a 1990 LS400 to the 1976 Seville. Why not compare the Seville to a Cressida? No wait that won’t work because Toyota didn’t introduce Cressida here until 1978. When it did come it was an example of the best they could do and it was no LS. The Mercedes were good but the W123 was ugly as sin and the S-class hideously expensive.
A more fair comparison would be against the 92 Seville which was the turn around car for Cadillac. I would argue that the CTS is the spiritual successor to the Seville and it is handily outselling the latest LS which is as dead as a car line can get. The 14 CTS is going to sell like hotcakes, at least out here in Calif, and will be the envy of Toyota/Lexus.
So yes let’s look at which one is still around and how things will look later this year.
“The 14 CTS is going to sell like hotcakes, at least out here in Calif, and will be the envy of Toyota/Lexus. ”
The CTS is more of a competitor to the IS/GS models. It sits somewhere in between them.
Cadillac doesn’t have any sedan that competes in the $70k-100k USD market that the LS plays in.
Has the LS really become that expensive? No wonder the sales are so bad. The cheaper GS ain’t selling so great either so it’s not just the price 😉
Paul’s point was that the original LS (the successful one) was priced at $60K in today’s dollars which is about where the new CTS will sit. That’s why I made the comparison.
Those original Lexus were loss leaders designed to grab market share no matter how much money was lost. Then once they got that market share they started cranking up the price so they could make a profit. Of course they found out that when they didn’t undercut the Germans significantly on price they couldn’t move anywhere near as many vehicles.
“Wow comparing a 1990 LS400 to the 1976 Seville.”
In business terms, they’re comparable. The issue isn’t with the model year, but with the roles that they played or could have played for their companies.
Had it been done right, the Seville could have been Cadillac’s opportunity to fight off the German invasion. There was still a chance at that time to keep BMW and Mercedes on the fringes and to maintain the domestics’ positions at the top of the luxury segment. But for that purpose, Cadillac failed utterly and completely, as should be obvious to everyone now.
The LS was Lexus’ opportunity to take on the Germans. They succeeded brilliantly. Toyota has since dropped the ball and lost the momentum, but when they first launched the car, Lexus scored a direct hit.
There is no comparison between the 1st gen Seville and LS on any terms.
The Seville was designed to take the profit margin to a new level and provide an alternative for customers that were looking for something smaller.
The LS was designed to take a bite out of Mercedes market share no matter how much money was lost in the process.
Seville did fight off the invasion. Perhaps not in terms of the trade-in being an import but it sure as heck intercepted a large number of folks who would have otherwise bought German.
I have the scientific data of overhearing my parents’ friends talk about their new Seville purchases and what else they considered. Not much else available on the web, believe me I’ve looked.
Remember that the pool of import luxury vehicles at that time was small which would preclude large trade-in numbers for anything.
I just described how they’re comparable.
The Seville was a lost opportunity. What GM wanted to do with it and what it should have done were two different things.
GM eventually filed bankruptcy because of the culmination of decades of these kinds of lost opportunities. The cat ran out of its nine lives in about 2008.
GM failed completely. It only exists today because of the heroics of outsiders. Over the decades, it lost a majority of the customers that it once had and burned through a lot of goodwill. How much more proof do you guys need to see that these GM was a horribly run company and caused its own demise?
Completely agree on the all-new models after 1980. In Craig’s post we covered the reasons for that. What we are talking about here is the 76-79 Seville.
Putting the FWD stuff through the same ringer as the original Seville would have resulted in a far better outcome. That’s the only link I would make.
And they shouldn’t have moved so fast but that was because of CAFE pressure that some people think wasn’t a factor.
GM was the largest car company in the world, with operations in at least four continents at the time, including Europe, and a lot of cash. And you’re trying to tell me that all of that wasn’t enough to help them to figure out how to make a proper four-cylinder FWD car?
Back in the day my parents owned a 79 Seville. Both then and now I think they are very handsome cars but it was the worst car we ever owned being unreliable, terrible fit and finish, mechanical problems and interior seem to just fall to pieces. As I remember it was not a very powerful car either. It was our last domestic car.
The car in this article is actually a 1977. 1976 & 1977 Sevilles used the striped pleated design while 1978-1979 used a bowl shape.
It is relatively easy to tell the difference between the four years of the Sevilles.
The Seville was designed with roughly the same level of badge engineering as many of the Japanese premium brands, using a base platform, sharing many mechanical components but working the body and interior enough to make it not so obvious.
The Seville was a hit for this idea both from its smaller size and the fact that it was able to be pulled off without having to invest in an entirely new platform.
The Seville Fuel Injection system was not troublesome, at least not to the level of the V864 or HT4100. Warranty rates were not excessive, most of the perceived “trouble” was more psychological, the fact that it was one of the first true EFI cars on the road and something new to learn both from the standpoint of the driver and the mechanic. New systems always have a higher learning curve so some of the perception might be affected by that. As far as general reliability as time goes on, other than degradation of the solder joints inside the ECM, the cars have held up relatively well. I tell owners to find a spare ECM, and perhaps a spare coolant sensor (the car has two but only one is going to take a car out of service). All of the other parts can be relatively easily obtained to worked by someone familiar with the car. I certainly would have no trouble recommending a clean well kept example to an aficionado and not worry about it been driving regularly.
I will readily admit that GM has had many failures in its time, starting not too long after this car debuted, but this car was not one of them. If anything, the Seville showed that GM could adapt to the market successful. Evolutionary change like this works great. And would have served GM a lot better if all the other cars were done similar.
As for Lexus, the LS400 was the flagship car, and priced accordingly. Same with the Infiniti Q45. When you charge house money for a car you can afford to be different. However the rest of the Japanese premium brands are by an large reworked versions of more plebian models. Some of the other more unique models were paid for with the profits from the other models. And I suspect, if I dug deep enough, that there was existing engineering in there somewhere. It is extremely time consuming and costly to clean sheet a car today. You either have to price it high, or make it up in volume. Or subsidize it but car makers are loathe to do that except for only a few halo type cars.
But wasn’t this Seville a flagship car, too? It was the most expensive regular-wheelbase model that Cadillac offered during those years, if I recall correctly. It certainly wasn’t less expensive than a DeVille.
The Lexuses that are reworked versions of less expensive Toyotas do not sit at the top of the Lexus line-up.
Craig, the 1990 LS 400 was priced at $35,000, fully equipped.That’s $60k adjusted). The 1977 Seville’s price ($12,478) adjusts to $50k. To my knowledge, the Seville was not quite as well equipped, but that may reflect the difference in time frames.
Either, way, $10k in today’s money is not that much difference for what were the two top-tier cars of these respective makers. And the difference in terms of what they were like as actual cars was miles apart. Have you ever sat or driven an LS400? Like day and night, from a Seville, in almost every way conceivable. Much more difference than 13 years difference might suggest; more like a whole different epoch.
“the 1990 LS 400 was priced at $35,000, fully equipped.That’s $60k adjusted). The 1977 Seville’s price ($12,478) adjusts to $50k. ”
Paul I think you’re forgetting that the Lexus was priced well below the competition when they first hit the shores here. In other words Toyota lost a huge pile of profits on every single model sold here just so they could dominate that market in a very short time. Toyota could get away with this because the Japanese government manipulated the yen in a way to help cushion that blow a little less. So that $35K was probably closer to $45K in 1990. That’s more than $10K difference which is still a ton of cash to a lot of people who bought those cars back than.
Yup, Toyota was out to take market share what ever the cost, then once they established it they stopped dramatically undercutting the competition and put some profit in Lexus. The first LS were loss leaders. I’m not saying it was a bad idea in fact it worked out pretty well for them in the long run and certainly that was their intention.
Yes I have, Son #1 has the before-mentioned shop and has serviced just about every kind of car on the road. Granted, we have become something of a mechanic-of-last-resort for a lot of these cars, so the 6 or 7 LS400 that have come in have been around a while. With that said, one of the problems with this higher end cars, Europeans included, is the high cost of maintaining them after warranty. A lot of marginal people buy these cars later in the car’s life to add some prestige to their life but are not prepared for the cost of ownership. Complain you may about $400 tuneups because there are TWO distributors. They are great cars when new, but can become very difficult and costly when they age. They are also somewhat of a mechanic’s nightmare as the LS400 requires a lot of special tools like the European cars which add to the cost.
I will say this, a clean 1978 Seville will get me noticed more about town than an early 90s Lexus. I was in Rite Aid parking lot the other day in my 1983 Eldorado and a younger guy maybe in his early 30s frantically ran me down driving a newer white Volvo wagon put his window down and said “I wanted to catch you and say I like the car.” HT4100 problems be damned it was worth that in spades.
Yup that is Japanese “high tech” for you while the Americans were going to crank triggered ignition and eliminating distributors Lexus put in an extra. To add insult to injury they used crappy 5.5 mm Hypalon wires that won’t last 10 years and 150K like the 8mm silicone like GM and Ford used.
The Lexus LS, GS, IS and the former SC do not share platforms with any US-market Toyotas, and each of them has/had an essentially unique platform unto themselves. Certainly, they all had/have Toyota counterparts in japan, since Lexus as a brand has only been recently introduced there. Only the entry level ES shares its platform with the Camry as far as passenger cars are concerned.
Some folks get on this bandwagon in which they assume that every automaker has made the same mistakes, which results in this effort to find false equivalency. That includes the badge engineering accusations.
Lexus has two badge engineering jobs for the US market: the ES (now based on the Avalon, formerly based on the Camry) and the LX (a gussied up Land Cruiser.) That doesn’t really compare at all to a period when Chevy, Olds, Buick and Pontiac and often Cadillac were essentially offering four or five trim levels of the exact same stuff.
No it was not, not even close, though they did start with an X-body at the begining, Cadillac made so many changes to the X-car that it became a K-body, the wheelbase was stretched, underneath standard sizes 15″ Cadillac wheels were used, the transmission was a TH400, no other X-car had that, the engine was unique to the Seville, it was an Oldsmobile short block finished by Cadillac with fuel injection, all the interior components were Cadillac sourced with the exception of the door handles, Cadillac made changes to the fire wall to make room for a larger air conditioning system with full Cadillac automatic climate control, so in short, you’re wrong.
A poor choice of words on my part–I assume you’re referring to the first paragraph? They did start with an X-body, but by the time they got done with it, it was essentially a new car.
I dashed this off in about an hour after work last night and a few things slipped through the cracks. Fixed.
No, it was a post from LAx that has since vanished into the ether….
The LS400 married the Soarer and Camry partsbins beautifully and taught the world about building cars, the brandnew widebody Camry came out in 89/90 and set new standards that the rest of the world saw a dumbed down version of in 94, little ole New Zealand was selected as favourite son and given the Camry as a test market proving ground Toyota tailored the car for our market and let it loose.
Bryce, the Camry had absolutely nothing to do with the LS400; zero.
This car, by itself was not a bar car at all. I drove them, and liked them much better than the gigantic Cadillacs that preceded it. If I were to pick a caddy from the 70’s, to actually drive on a routine basis, this would probably be the one I’d pick. And as for the Nova platform, GM did a much better job with the Seville then Ford did with the bage engineered Versailles.
That said, I see this car not so much as a Deadly Sin, as an opportunity missed; assuming that the European luxury car buyer was the intended consumer. I think that is what Paul and the others are getting at. But as a downsized Caddy, it’s fine.
Great write-up, and a great companion to Paul’s Deadly Sin take. As a kid growing up in New Orleans in the 70s and 80s (coastal city, “quirky” import buyers along with large contigent of conservative buyers–so not quite NY or L.A. but not Peoria either), I’d say this generation Seville was on target for what it needed to do. Some of my parent’s friends had them, and I got a lot of exposure from my grandmother’s neighbor, who was a Cadillac dealer, where they sold like hot cakes. So in the comfortable neighborhoods throughout the Big Easy, there was a lot of good buzz about these cars. Enough familiarity carried over from the existing gargantuan Caddies, but the cars managed to come across as a unique and “savvy” choice. It was evolution versus revolution, which for the solid majority of affluent customers who were forward looking but not early adopters, was right on target.
While I agree that in hindsight the interiors seem chintzy, they were in vogue for the majority of 1970s buyers. Just as Mercedes, BMW, Audi and to some degree Lexus define the de facto luxury standards of today (they represent majority thinking on expensive “good taste” for our era), Cadillacs, Lincolns, senior Buicks and Olds, etc. defined that style for a broad base of aspirational America in the 1970s. Tastes change, but the herd mentality remains.
The MB interiors, while super high quality, had an austere, hard feel that was offputting to a large swath of higher end buyers at the time. I’ll never forget one time in late 1978 when my parents, who undoubtedly felt that they had good taste (just ask my mother today, she’ll tell you!), rode in a friend’s new Mercedes 300D. As a budding car enthusiast, I was dying to hear about that car, so with a laugh they shared their impressions: basically, they were appalled. They thought it was hard, noisy, smelly and slow, and couldn’t believe it cost more than a Cadillac. Basically a car for the lunatic fringe. Whether the cars themselves were actually good was almost secondary, as perception was being sold first and foremost.
When that magic percpetion is lost, the results are catastrophic, as GM has learned. Other than SUVs, high-end domestics are now the fringe products in upscale American suburbia. Therefore, highly praised products (at least by the automotive press) like the new ATS or CTS will fundamentally have trouble gaining traction, since they are not seen as being the socially acceptable style choice. Buy a Cadillac car instead of the Benz today, and you’re on the lunatic fringe in many, many neighborhoods. Protest all you want with “it’s better, etc., etc.” you’ve made a non-mainstream, non-aspirational choice. And therefore the Cadillacs really aren’t fully competitive, especially in the premium market. Also hurting these cars (and debatably a Deadly Sin) is the Escalade, an unbelievably cynical product which allows Cadillac to cash in on their “prestige” in a profitable segment with minimal investment. But it is in no way a real premium product (or remotely even a real Cadillac … more of a giant Cimarron II in a way), and therefore hurts their credibility when they do attempt to serve up the real thing. So the cycle of doom continues.
This Seville may have been cynical, and it definitely could have been better, but it was more than good enough, which made for great business. Had this Seville been followed with something based on the Opel Senator, for example, Caddy might have stayed on trend and gradually moved their customers along to new ways of thinking. Or given that GM was solidly on the FWD train at that point, even a more linear E-body evolution on the original Seville style (versus the bustleback–which my parents and their “good taste” crowd thought was too over-the-top) would have been interesting. Hell, even a FWD X-body that was truly, fully reworked might have continued the momentum (dangerous territory I know).
No matter, they had it, and they lost it. Just arguably not with this car, though it was getting awfully close to the cliff, along with the general product cheapening and volume selling that was beginning to plague Cadillac. But in the 1970s, it was a classic cash cow business and a license to print money. The lobster was comfortable in the pot, oblivious to the rising heat and seeminly unaware that things would soon boil…
Well said. And I readily admit that Mercedes of the seventies were austere, and I’ve written about the “Mercedes Mania” that gripped CA at the time. High priced 240 Diesels; a bit of a joke on American yuppies.
Mercedes had not yet full come to terms with their American buyers and the market, in their arrogant way. But that changed quickly enough, and by the the eighties, that could not be said (W126, W124).
Mercedes’ ride and seats were developed for long and fast autobahn driving, not lolling along on the freeway. It was a culture clash. But Mercedes learned, and their later products were more “America-friendly”.
But the sheer overwhelming quality of those old Mercedes materials, and their bank-vault construction and solidity already were qualities that many favored, and were willing to accept as part of the deal.
I remember so well the Mercedes Mania in SoCal that Paul writes about. The bottom line is if in the 70s you showed up with a new M-B at Dan Tana’s restaurant in WeHo and your friend showed up with a new Seville, guess which one the parkers put in the front row? That legend continues to put thousands and thousands of C250’s on lease into the streets and highways throughout SoCal today. Maybe M-B will kill the goose with the down market models on the way to the US but for a very long time now it’s been producing the golden eggs.
“Therefore, highly praised products (at least by the automotive press) like the new ATS or CTS will fundamentally have trouble gaining traction, since they are not seen as being the socially acceptable style choice. Buy a Cadillac car instead of the Benz today, and you’re on the lunatic fringe in many, many neighborhoods. ”
This. Spit randomly off an overpass in one of Seattle’s affluent suburbs like Bellevue or Kirkland and you’ll probably hit a BMW 3 Series, Mercedes C Class, Infiniti G37, etc.
I know the new ATS exists, but I’ve never seen one outside of my local Cadillac dealer (Chevrolet-Cadillac of Bellevue). And most of the CTSes I see locally have the telltale rental car barcode in the left rear window.
Granted this is the West Coast not the Midwest, but Cadillac really should be selling more cars where I live, given the incomes & demographics.
Excellent observations. I saw the same thing. My father considered a new car in 1974 to replace his 72 Mark IV. He and I walked around the Mercedes dealer’s lot after hours one evening, and he was appalled at what he saw. He refused to believe that anyone with half a brain would spend more money than a Mark for something slower, smaller, noisier and harder riding. At that time it took some work to get a Lincoln north of $10K, but $12-13K Mercedes sedans were all over that lot, and I believe that I recall seeing something that broke $20K. Dad never did want a Benz, he remained a Lincoln man (whenever he could afford one) until the end of his days.
We all know that the Mercedes was top quality with a body rigidity of a brick, but there were a lot of performance and comfort tradeoffs then. It took a younger generation to make the leap to the German concept of Luxury. Even then, I have always wondered if an American luxury car had been made with the quality of a Benz but with the performance and comfort of a Cad or Lincoln (as had been the case up to the early 60s), I wonder how differently things could have turned out.
Essentially, the 1990 Lexus LS400 did just that, except for maybe not being quite as big as a full-sized Caddy. It was a brilliant synthesis of the European and American approach to luxury cars, and it had a huge impact on Mercedes. They had to get off their high horse, and become more pragmatic, as well as lower their costs. The result was more “Americanized” Mercedes, but at the expense of the quality of materials, to some extent.
I need to shoot an early LS and do a CC on it. A very pivotal car.
Its always the same, its like a “bank vault”
Bank Vault
Bank Vault
Bank Vault
Bank Vault
Who wants to spend all their time in bank vault? They might be safe and solid, but not necessarily luxurious.
I’d rather spend my time in a bordello!
I’m seeming to agree with you a lot today, not that I normally disagree, though you could have found a picture of a Caddy with a proper “Bordello Red” interior to better make your point.
Give me bank vault structure and bordello interior. I’m not hard to please. 🙂
I tend to agree, I have driven many Lexii that have been in for service and while they are well built initially, their antiseptic feel is a turn off for me and as they age the cost and difficulty of repairs make them PITA. If I was wealthy enough to buy one new maybe I wouldn’t mind because it would be under warranty and I wouldn’t touch it anyways. But as a 20 year old car, h*ll no.
My biggest gripe is the lack of a hood ornament. A major point of contention between the wife and I over the CTS-V has been my desire to have a hood ornament installed. Since she drives it more I acquiesced since I have other vehicles to satisfy that need.
That was one of Cadillac’s signature touches, that little gun-sight wreath and crest a small little reminder of what you were driving.
At one time, Cadillacs had “bank-vault” solidity.
I was at one of the All-GM Carlisle shows a few years ago. A man was showing an all-original 1956 Cadillac Series 62 sedan. He said, “This Cadillac was made before GM really starting taking all of the quality out of it.”
He then gently pushed the door to close it, and it latched easily and completely with a solid, reassuring “click.” No “two-slam” GM door on this Cadillac, even though the car was almost 50 years at the time.
That is bank-vault solidity, and, unfortunately, Cadillac had lost it by the 1970s. (The car was plush for its time, too.)
So, yes, bank-vault solidity on a Mercedes was a big deal at the time.
this is my first time visiting this site&i am very glad to find this,seville&its sisters skylark&nova stayed in assembly line here in Tehran by GM until 1989 or so,very reliable&bulletproof cars indeed.all sevilles came with 350 engines&either automatic or 3 speed manual.novas and skylarks had the obtion of 231 cubic inch or 350s,all tough as nails&i would say after several decades most of those are still on the road.i just wish my government was having a better relationship with America so we could have new American cars here.i am tired to see Korean or Japanese cars(Chinese cars recently)every where,they are soulless&ugly in my opinion.anyway here a photo of my grandpa’s 79 Seville next to my dad’s 82 nova.greetings from iran.have a great time everyone.
Welcome! And I hope the same thing.
Greetings to you, as well. Those of us located stateside often forget that our distinctive car culture extends beyond our borders. It’s good to get the perspectives of people like you and “Harley Earl” in Norway, above.
Cheers and welcome, Bijan.
@ Bijan, do you have an uncut version of the photo showing both the Seville and Nova together since they might be a better comparison side by side photo because part of the Nova portion was cut-off. If so, can you please reload it. Thank you
Tom, Tom, Tom…tsk…tsk…tsk. I thought we were friends? Cadillac compadres?
An article on the 1978 Cadillac Seville without mentioning the two most important points of the 1978 Seville? Really?
1. The Cadillac Trip Computer – the first all-digital dash and monitoring system for a domestic car.
2. The Seville Elegante package. We had to wait for “Carmine” to bring this up?
I think I’m gonna cry.
The Cadillac Trip Computer (available for 1978 and ’79 Seville models):
And, my number one most desired classic automobile…
The 1979 Cadillac Seville Elegante: (wallpaper)
I am holding out hope that I will run across an Elegante, either curbside or at a show, and give it its due. Fingers crossed 🙂
My theory is, there HAVE to be some of these out there somewhere in the world!!! Under 30k, Elegante, moonroof, Trip Computer, real wire wheels. They just HAVE to be out there, somewhere!!!
“Where, oh where art thou 1978 and 1979 Cadillac Seville Elegantes!?!?!?”*
*(with low miles and fully loaded, of course)
You and i think alike Mike…………….the 79 Seville elegante is one of the most stylish, classy automobiles ever produced. The only sin here is……………..that i dont have one!!!!
First in car trip computer and digital dash in any car in the world, take that Mercedes!
This option was EXPENSIVE at the time, something like $985, which is like $3G’s today.
(I know that there are going to be some people that want to point out that the Aston Martin Lagonda had a digital dash in 1976, true, but the 1st car never reached a customer until 1979)
I think that the reason why so many of Paul’s DS selections are controversial is that many of the “deadly sins” weren’t BAD cars. They’re more like close-but-no-cigar cars. GM saw the problem with their B-bodies and was ready to give the coastal Americans what they wanted: a tidy, less-garish, super-premium luxury car. So they did all that, but still somehow missed the point. GM could’ve done so much better with the Seville. Especially at that price point, it should have been a no-compromises car.
It could’ve been the mega-bomb that stopped the German luxury invasion. Instead, this was Cadillac’s Maginot line. Ambitious and pricey, but it didn’t quite serve its purpose.
This is the only installment of the Deadly Sin series where I don’t agree that the subject matter deserves to be branded as such – although I’m not entirely sure I’ve read all of them. I wasn’t around for the TTAC era of CC, so I’m still catching up… and yes, I have read the one on the C4 Corvette.
I do agree with the specific criticisms and overall assessment in the Seville DS article, but I lean more towards the “glass half full” side on this one. All the negatives related to this car were really in GM’s reaction to its success. The Seville itself could have been improved in many ways, but for the time I think it was an outstanding effort and a great example of the “right” way to do platform (not badge) engineering. Styling-wise, they appear kind of tame and dull from today’s perspective – but that’s only because GM managed to dilute the appeal of this look by transposing it across several models where it never belonged, and well past its sell-by date. Cadillac in 1975 was still a very specific “thing” and still holy to a large portion of its customer base. Introducing their first non-gargantuan model ever was a tricky proposition and could have all-too-easily been screwed up. IMO, this car hit the mark as close as anyone could hope for. Redefining the brand at that point would have been a mistake, but the Seville managed to take it in a whole new direction while still being intrinsically “Cadillac” in most ways that mattered. The look was right, the size was right, standard EFI was a nice touch… and I think that pricing it at a premium above all other models was probably the right move as opposed to trying to market it as a budget/mid-range Caddy (see: ur-Rambler for similar strategy). In many (most) ways, I also feel it was legitimately a far better car than the rest of the Cadillac lineup at the time, which justifies the sky-high pricetag despite its humble beginnings and smaller size.
Where Cadillac failed, in regards to the original Seville, was not following it up with anything worthy of its promise for well over a decade. They threw all those good vibes in the trash overnight with the second generation model (a complete disaster, IMO) and learned all the wrong lessons from its success. I would argue that the 1992 Seville was a worthy successor, but by that point it was one of only a few bright spots in a long, dark era for GM as a whole. It wasn’t really until the CTS debuted that Cadillac started getting back to what they started with this car in 1976.
“The Cadillac de-contenting started around 1969. Interiors lost the aluminum and real wood trim, dashes became much cheaper-looking and plasticky…”
I might be wrong, but I think 1966, not 1968, was the last year for real wood in the GM cars of that era. (I know there have been exceptions such as the 1973 Grand Prix and Grand Am doors, console, and dash.) 1967 was certainly the transition year for the Bonneville and Grand Prix; real wood veneer had been used through ’66. I was also fairly sure that Fleetwood Brougham door panels used real wood in ’66 but not ’67.
As for the dashes, I lamented (at the time) the passing of visible bare painted metal on GM dashes in most of the ’69 cars, replaced by soulless, nearly featureless molded plastic panels like that of the ’69 Electra 225. Even some new-for-1968 dashes with some bare metal visible (for example, Tempest/LeMans/GTO) were substantially redesigned for ’69. I don’t know whether it was safety, cheapness, or both that led to that first unwelcome wave of plastic dashboards.
Our ’67 Bougham had stainless and/or brushed aluminum on the dash and doors, but ,my ’68 Brougham has wood veneer on the doors and dash. My ’69 60 Special has veneer on the doors, and is noticeably thinner than the ’68. I believe that 1970 was the last year for the real wood veneer.
’69 had real wood. ’70 did not.
It was primarily for safety. Dashes had to have an energy-absorbing quality that wasn’t previously required.
Craig was asking if switching to FWD was the core problem or if it was just bad execution. “Would people have still purchased absolutely perfect cars that looked the same?”
He then answered his own question by saying “People loved GM cars, warts and all, until they started to not look like GM cars.”
I totally agree. That’s why I have always had a problem with the first Seville being called a Deadly Sin. The product was a terrific, trend-setting money-maker that delighted its customers. It represented the good ol’ GM where, in record time, they could achieve magic by putting their best and brightest product people on it.
No slippery slope here. The products that came out next, in great numbers and again in record time, were from a completely different management structure. The cars no longer looked like GM products, especially the Cadillacs. No one was minding the competitiveness ship like they had so well with the first Seville.
My ’86 Fleetwood Brougham is from the same year as the ’86 Seville in the article that started the GM retrospection. This 27 year old car took four adults to the country this weekend in supreme comfort and achieved 20MPG. It certainly got a lot of attention. Same company, same production year except that one was born out of the new GM the other the old.
Could the yellow Seville and Brougham have been mistaken for anything other than a Cadillac?
I did enough defending of the first Seville in the old post so I won’t go there now. But here is an argument that DS should not apply even to the direction of the company at the time of the first Seville’s gestation.
With the switch to FWD they should have gone slower and kept in place the checks and balances (or at least senior people) that took the company to such great heights in the 70s.
Your trunk appears to be missing.
All joking aside, I feel it’s necessary to point out that even with our full-size GMs (I have an `88 Caprice Estate) there were still too many fundamental similarities to justify paying more for the Brougham. Chevrolet would gladly sell you a fully-loaded Caprice, which, aside from the air-ride and extra length in the wheelbase, did everything the same (if not better) than the Brougham.
But that’s ancient history. In 2013 terms, Broughams are beautiful, and yours is no exception. I too fully enjoy loading up my Caprice with friends and hitting the road. People love the fact that there’s people facing them in the rear seat. That will never get old.
That is a fine looking wagon.
After what seemed like an eternity of chopped salads and grilled salmon these days it’s rare not to find mac ‘n cheese, meatloaf or fried chicken on the menu of a trendy new restaurant.
It may be my imagination but there seems to be a newfound appreciation for American comfort and style in the hobby car area as well. At least with the 77-92 B/C/Ds where affordability, reliability, good MPG and manageable size take away some of the guilt.
Like new-age comfort food these are without the bloat and overly processed nature of earlier incarnations and a nice change of pace.
The most shocking part of these comments is that some people actually like the interior of this car. Whaaaaaat????
That chunky dashboard is the one thing I’ve always really hated about Cadillacs from the time GM got into plastics hardcore in the early 70s all the way up through the 1992 Brougham. Completely horrible, doesn’t even look like something that belongs in an automobile. Picture it without the fake wood or steering wheel and it looks like something you should be typing UNIX commands into, not driving. I may even go as far as to say I think it’s the worst ever, but I’d really have to rack my brain.
“The most shocking part of these comments is that some people actually like the interior of this car. Whaaaaaat????”
Yeah, I always thought the weakest point of most American cars from 1975-2000 was the interior. It was always seriously low rent compared to the foreign competition, with lousy ergonomics and cruddy materials. Rattled like crazy after a few years, too.
Granted there were a few brights spots like the 1st generation Taurus, which had a pretty nice dash and interior. Especially in SHO form.
Look at the Mercedes dash Paul posted and other than the “center stack” it looks straight out of the 50’s or a pickup with the gauges sitting in a pod on top of the dash like an afterthought.
You are right about the interior. I gave up looking for a gen 1 Seville for three reasons. it was too hard to find a decent car, the EFI scared me and the interior was a disappointment.
Both cars that I looked at had EFI issues. Even the best kept one had a “miss” at idle that the guy said no one could fix. Apparently a known issue. The second one had a replacement fuel pump that sat on the frame and was incredibly loud. Aside from somehow sourcing a NOS part my understanding was that a noisy retrofit was the only cost effective solution for when the original high pressure pump failed.
Swapping to a carb is not possible with Calif. smog check.
The final straw was when i saw the interior up close. As a kid I admired these from outside but had never been in one. The door panel especially was a disappointment as the armrest area lacked structure and the switch gear for the locks was unlike anything else used on a Caddy.
The front seats also sat a bit low and the rear cushions were short.
I got 90% of the styling in my FWB (total sheer look) but have a much better car in terms of ride, roominess, interior materials and fuel economy. Non-4100 FWBs are at least seven years younger than the newest G1 Sevilles which makes it possible to buy from original owners.
It is telling that the modern Cadillac is essentially modelled after foreign (specifically, German) luxury cars. I guess that shows who won the desirability race in the end.
The American luxury car offerings seemed so far behind the foreign offerings – especially the big BMWs and the gas V-8 Mercedes-Benzes – by the late 1970s that it wasn’t even funny.
Where the Germans had spartan refined interiors and excellent engineering that would allow cruising at 100 plus miles per hour in safety and comfort, the American response seemed something like “Oh, sure, we have emasculated pushrod V-8s that barely outrun a Pinto to 60 mph…but…we haz TRIP COMPUTERZ & BROUGHAM LEATHERZ YO!”. To someone who was born in the early 80’s and whose first memories of Cadillac are of sofas on wheels that the Greatest Generation drove, I’m surprised that anyone finds these cars desirable at all.
In my eyes, GM made some decent cars even in the dark days of the late 70’s. The Bandit Trans Am 6.6 Liter was tacky fun. The C3 Corvette – especially in competition orange – would be a fun classic and daily driver, even if a modern Hyundai Elantra would embarrass one in the 0-60 sprint in stock form.
But late 70’s Cadillacs?? I guess they might be better than Lincoln or Chrysler’s efforts of the day. Their interior quality is barely even on par with the ’87 Olds Cutlass Ciera my parents had a long time ago, and the interior design is even more primitive. Those ridiculous overstuffed bench seats look comfortable but aren’t after a couple hours in a car so equipped.
I own a ’75 Fleetwood Brougham, a ’76 Seville, and a ’88 BMW 635CSi, so I have the unusual ability to contrast the German versus American; and ‘old’ Caddy versus the ‘International Size’ Caddy. No ‘Deadly Sin’.
That 37 year old Seville (98K on the clock & the original fuel injection) is one of my favorites to drive. Cadillac really achieved their goal:
– Dynamic driving: the steering isn’t completely Cadillac-numb and handling is tight ad light years ahead of its Fleetwood brother. There is feedback to the driver (no, not a German level), yet it maintained a Cadillac ride standard. And that ride was very different from the Fleetwood, which I’ve described as “…driving a barge mounted on marshmallows.”
– Downsized, but with space: the interior had adequate space; I’m 6’3″ and I can sit as comfortably in the back seat as in the driver’s seat. The trunk is right-sized. Parking and turning radius are right sized.
– Comfort: the seat cushions, bolstering and leather haven’t worn out and very comfortable today.
– And Cadillac addressed gas mileage using a 350.
Basically, that’s just what Cadillac set out to do.
It’s very interesting to me that the 1st Gen Seville always draws lots of commentary at CC. Yet 37 years after its introduction, save for the Elegante, it’s one of the most marginalized Cadillacs in terms of collectibility.
78 Seville you must have bought yours some time ago. Gen 1 Sevilles are immensely collectible. It was so hard to find an all original low mileage car that I gave up. The only one I’ve seen worth considering was a bronze one on eBay a few months back that I believe went unsold at a bid of $15K.
Other than that agree 100% with what you have said.
Calibrick, Try Craigslist—-it’s a million percent better than E-Bay.
Tom, thanks for mentioning the movie “License to Drive” — somehow I’d never seen it! I’m watching it now and I can’t believe the amount of ’70s and ’80s cars — deadly sins and on up! The ’72 Cadillac is just the beginning. Thanks!
Paul, the paragraph starting “I still think” sums up your difficulty in writing this story. It was not what YOU wanted. It was, however, successful, mildly popular, showed off the coming sheer look designs and was a good-looking car.
I actually wrote this CC; Paul did the original DS post.
As for the Seville not attracting younger buyers or import fanciers I found this from Carmine’s post last year…
“Actualy first year demographics of Seville buyers indicated that not only were Seville buyers much younger than the average Cadillac buyer, it also indicated that 30% were new to the brand and of those 30%, most said that their 2nd choice if the Seville wouldn’t have been available, would have been a car from a foreign make.”
Unless those are brown numbers from Carmine let’s let the data speak for itself.
The numbers were kosher, but no matter what you show them, revisionist history will tell them that this car was just a fancy Nova, that this car never did what it was supposed to do, that this car was not well liked. etc etc etc
Yup, they should have made a Mercedes fighter.
That way they could have sold it to like 3 people. They would have alienated there loyal customers while the people who were buying Mercedes would have never even considered it. Maybe they might have taken 10% of Mercedes market share with the car which meant the sales would have been like 5% of what they actually did.
Eric, I know you’re being ironic, but I think your point is correct. There were already plenty of Cadillac models for Cadillac buyers. Imagine where the company could’ve gone if they made a car that attracted Mercedes buyers (at Mercedes prices!). Perhaps it would’ve turned off the de Ville and Fleetwood crowd, but it would’ve put Cadillac in a far better position for the 1980’s. The Japanese are the ones who discovered the magic formula for luxury cars: what the mass market really wants is something between American plushness and flashiness, and German austerity. The Seville could’ve been the car that invented this segment instead of leaving it for Lexus.
As I said before, the Seville was by no means a bad car. But the more I learn about it–how much GM had invested in improving its X-body underpinnings, how high they priced it, and the fact that GM’s execs really intended to build an import-fighter–the more I’m disappointed by this missed opportunity.
Well said. No truer post has been made. My family would be the poster child for your statement. I was a fourth generation GM customer my family having started with Buicks back in the 40’s. We abandoned Cadillac and went to Lexus and have never looked back. Cadillac never understood quality and customer service. It’s a brand that cannot find it’s identity today making everything from trucks to station wagons. This is what was once a neat car is now an insignificant brand. Since leaving GM and Mercedes and coming over to the Lexus camp we have not returned a single car to the shop for a mechanical failure of any kind. The quality and outstanding customer care has been unbelievable. And as for an earlier comment about expensive Lexus expensive repair bills; I have never had one and my LS has every available option including air suspension. Now excuse me as I run out to check my car from fear I have jinxed myself with this statement.
My point was that at that point in time most people who wanted the 3 point star would never accept a wreath, no matter what it was put on. The people who were buying Mercedes then were looking to be different they didn’t want an old man’s brand they wanted something new and hip, they were that era’s hipsters.
I just can’t get past the different angles used in the A, B, and C pillars on this car. I think if the B pillar was straight up and down and the C pillars were totally squared off, the car would have looked much better. Maybe it’s just me?
Paul, JPC, and CAGuy: Interesting observations, I, too, can attest to the “Mercedes Mania” that seemed to grip Southern Cal in the 70’s. I can remember Johnny Carson one night being goaded by Ed McMahon into revealing to the audience what kind of car he drove. He tried to dodge the question, but finally admitted sheepishly, in that sort of Stan Laurel way he had, that he drove a Mercedes Benz, whereupon the audience broke into cheers and waves of applause. Kind of telling for what was going on in the upper end automotive sphere then, no American luxo-barges for the king of late night TV.
Around about 1974 or 1975, with my dad beginning his quadrennial search for a replacement for their ’71 Lincoln Continental, I talked him into visiting the local MB dealer (W.I. Simonson in Santa Monica) to check out this burgeoning Mercedes craze. I remember going for a test drive in a 280S, and his general take on that experience as being kind of a “WTF,” and “If I’m going to spend that kind of money I’m going to get something bigger and much more comfortable with enough power to get out of its own way.” Compared to the LIncolns and Caddys of the day, the MB was so much more slow, austere, hard riding, and simply “too foreign” for his taste. He never even vaguely considered a Mercedes again, seriously thought about a ’76 Seville, and wound up getting his dream car, a ’77 Coupe de Ville, and that turned out to be his last car.
It did, in fact, take the younger generation (me, in this case) to make the jump from that old school American car approach to the MB experience. In 1976, I couldn’t wait to get into a ’74 280C that was coming off lease at the company I was working for, but I had to trade off the comfort and performance of my ’70 Cougar XR-7 for that. Kind of ultimately regretted it in a way (that slow, clunky, austere, hard ride thing again), but the allure and prestige of the MB marque drew me in like a moth to the candle flame. And therein was the genesis of my love/hate affair with MB for the next twenty-five years, until I came to my older and wiser senses and returned to the Ford family fold .
funny thing it’s that here the ’70s S-Class was viewed as an overtly garish, tacky beast, made up just for the american market with none of the class of the earlier models, i guess it was the point where the stereotype of the Mercedes as a balkanian gangster’s car started…the Seville, from another point of view, was quite succesful in europe for an US-car and you’ll find plenty of ’em in switzerland…
Ownef of 8 sevilles the most beautiful car in my 60 years
I would take the Seville any day over the Benz. Make mine a ’78, with no vinyl roof, and two-tone paint in dk brown and metallic sand, one of two multi-tone paint options offer that year.
I had an ’87 VW Jetta back in the ’90s – had my fill of “German engineering” thank you very much!
Any time I go dream shopping on Ebay the first generation Seville is the FIRST thing I look for. I was 10 in 1976, and I can tell you EVERYONE was talking about the new “Baby Cadillac”. I still find the design beautiful. And interior material quality and fit & finish in these was 5 notches above anything else in the Cadillac lineup, albeit not quite up to Mercedes standards. I still want one.
The Fleetwood Seventy-Five was well built because many processes were done by hand.
I happen to agree that these first-gen Sevilles were most definitely not deadly sins. The real DS is when GM tacked that upright rear roof line onto almost everything it made in the ’80s.
I love Cadillac products in general . I have a 78 Coupe Deville with 17K original miles I always liked downsized full size Cadillac’s. I also have more modern 2013 Escalade EXT Premium package has 34K miles
Not a deadly sin. It was an attractive decent car, though charging more than a Fleetwood brougham was sinful. I rode in on nice and it was nice like an 80s Chrysler fifth avenue.
The wheels look really big why is that?
The pricing worked, though – it was meant to prevent any perception of the “small” Cadillac as an entry-level “junior edition”. And it sold at that price.
Hi, sometime today or tomorrow, i’d like to put up some pictures of my ’79 Seville to go in the thread. But, since you mentioned pricing in your comment, I thought I’d post the window sticker now.
It does open larger/ high res here click/magnify to view it better.
I’m missing the trip computer, moonroof, Elegante’ package and a couple small items, so fully equipped, the price could be approx. an additional $4,700 added to my sticker price. So you’re coming in around $22-23,000 area.
Remember, the average new car (not other Cadillacs), at the time was in the 5K range.
“The wheels look really big why is that?” < this guy def has the wrong size/profile tire on that car. it looks awful. besides the sidewall, if you look up close, it's a really ugly tire (sidewall design details), to begin with and isn't a good choice for a car like a Seville. but i doubt he is going for 'looks' or OEM on anything that needs attention here.
Here's a picture of my car with correct size tire & WW, and how much it effects the Seville's looks.
Of course, I did have to custom order these tires though, as you can't just grab something like this 'in-stock' these days.
here’s a few more pics for anyone who may not have seen “Christine’ here over the years.
The window sticker is here a couple posts up above.
She is a 1979, 2 owner, 39K Illinois car. Laramie Beige, with Antique Saddle leather.
No carb/intake conversion here… I have restored and maintain the fully operating, now reliable OEM multi-port Bosch/Bendix fuel injection system.
A wealthy business owner bought my Seville new back in 1979 as a gift for his wife. (Like Allen Ludden did for his wife, Betty White). When she passed away, the car sat in his garage for over 8 years, but for rides to the Cadillac dealer for maintenance. He decided to marry again at almost 90yo! He said the new wife wanted nothing to do with driving that car, making it available and I grabbed it. My main reason for choosing this one was the mileage and the beautiful Saddle interior color.
Much more stories to tell sometime here about my self-repairs/maintenance, car shows etc.
I take the each year to an all Cadillac show sponsored by the original selling dealer out in Chicago suburbs.
…
…
…
Totally agreed on all points with this article! I think that the design, for that time, was fresh and new, and took Cadillac out of being a big, bloatmobile, that could appeal to a wider variety of people (including women). In general, I find that the ’77-’78 lines of GM cars with the smaller designs of the G bodies, as well as Impalas, had really moved GM into the next design phase of smaller, cleaner styled, even if the quality wasn’t there. I suppose that because of the Nova platform, and also because the car was smaller, that it could be argued that there was less car for the money, but to me, the unique design for the era and the risk was what made it a successful car. The design still looks clean and uncluttered, and could easily (IMHO) pass for a mid 80’s car.
I’d agree that it was the next gen Seville with the design and diesel and HT4100 were true deadly sins. Also, the Cimarron was a true deadly sin, as well.
I am glad that Cadillac kept the real wood up to the 1969 model year. The ’69 had real wood and the ’70 did not.
The Gen I Seville was a smashing success. And when they took it from a sober, elegant car that a subtle, sophisticated, wealthy taste leader would look good arriving in to a garish, look-at-me mobile in Gen II is the deadliest sin of all. Gen I was Old Money. Gen II was Nouveau Riche. It was a sudden swerve of strategy, a 180 degree turn.
GM had a great franchise in the first Seville, and they threw it away with the second car. Why?