It’s the late ‘90s. Cadillac is (arguably) still the epitome of the traditional American luxury barge, softly-sprung and complete with boxy styling, gaudy detailing and little appeal to anyone born after the Andrew Sisters’ heyday. What was GM’s luxury division’s game plan? One, getting into the SUV racket – hence the Escalade’s 1999 debut. Two, get something European in to compete with BMW – oops, that turned out to be the Catera. Never mind. And three, get the De Ville out of its ‘70s outfit to woo a few slightly younger customers into showrooms.
But there was another key demographic interested in the big Caddy – and quite the influential one, too. Did GM preview their new and improved DeVille is a few consumer clinics involving the pimp, gangster and mafioso community?
Because those guys were happy with the old DeVille’s looks. They just tweaked it, tastefully, using all manner of aftermarket bits from E&G Classics and other reputable sources. How would that work on the new cars?
Like a charm, of course. The carriage top looks so natural, once you see it, you just can’t imagine the car without it. It’s just like those chrome exhausts poking out: hard to believe GM didn’t make those from the factory. And the “5.7 LITER” call-out? That just makes this car the ultimate De Ville, as it apparently swapped its troublesome Northstar for a hot SBC.
What, you have your doubts because this is a FWD car? When there’s a pimp, there’s a way. OK, to be fair, it’s a lot simpler to just stick a 5.7 litre emblem on the rear end than it is to put the actual thing under the hood, and this car is, as I think we’re starting to get by now, more for show than anything else. After all, who but a tiny number of car nerds would know it’s really only a 4.6 litre V8 (and a rather poorly regarded one, at that) behind that oh-so-classy aftermarket grille?
While they were at it, I bet whoever stuck on the “5.7 Liter” script also put a “DHS” there, as I understand that only the standard De Ville had the stand-up hood ornament. On the other hand, if this was one of the few dozens of 7th gen De Villes that were sold here new (the taillights seem to indicate as much), perhaps they mixed-n-matched things a bit to curry favour with the local clientele, which is partial to such little gimmicks. DHS, by the way, stands for “De Ville High luxury Sedan” – really rolls off the tongue, hence the acronym. The performance-oriented DTS had 300hp on tap, but the DHS and standard De Ville made do with 275.
Looks like the interior is holding up decently well, for a 20-year-old GM product. Can’t say that curvy dash exudes “high luxury”, to be honest. More like an attempt at Art Nouveau, but with more buttons. It’s almost like something by H.R. Giger.
Buying one of these in Japan about 20 years ago would have been a serious display of devotion to Cadillac. These cost ¥8,250,000 – a hefty sum, to be sure. For almost the same money, you could get a Nissan President, a Jaguar XJ6, the a fully-optioned Toyota Celsior or the cheapest Benz S-Class or BMW 7-Series on the menu. Oh, and the Lincoln Town Car, too.
With such an expensive and exclusive canvas to work on, someone with magic fingers and a tremendous sense of measure and artistry applied this blue “carriage top” to this sad-eyed De Ville. Never seen anything quite like it. Rolls-Royce, you better watch out!
In full profile like this, and with a decent amount of distance to make the trim pieces look a little less clunky, you really get a Sopranos vibe out of this Caddy Nostra. All that’s missing is a couple of bullet holes and a corpse somewhere. Leave the gun; take the cannoli.
The grille and the chrome rims kind of change that to a pseudo-pimpmobile look. But this generation’s thyroid eyes and non-formal roofline really don’t lend themselves to the classic accoutrements of the genre. On a 1975 Cadillac, the pimping looks awesome. On a ‘85 Cadillac, it’s fine, if a mite overegged. Maybe a ’95 can still pull it off. But the 21st Century De Ville’s styling, i.e. the design cues of 1990 that Cadillac just applied ten years late, just ain’t pimpable. It’s simply not square enough of a shape. You want to get a Hummer or an Escalade. Even the pimps and the made guys are going SUV now. How sad.
But you still need a few token pimpmobiles to keep reminding the rest of us how profoundly weird, unbearably long and strangely widespread that fad was in American automotive history. Pity E&G Classics, who made a lot of this aftermarket bling, went under in 2020. I’m sure there are other artisans who can step in and propose something for this very niche, but very cash-rich market. Get ready for the Celestiq or Lyriq with a landau top. What? Glass roofs? Hmm… Might be the real end of an era.
Related post:
Future Curbside Classic And Driving Impression: 2005 Cadillac Deville – Nice Car, But Is It A Cadillac?, by Tom Klockau
Jeez, following up yesterday morning’s Aston Martin Rapide with this is like having just enjoyed a pain au chocolat in that little cafe near Montmartre and reaching for your cafe au lait only to realize that someone (a tourist) has dropped their Marlboro into it.
These seem, if not extinct, mighty thin on the ground in their homeland nowadays, or at least basically invisible. I don’t know if Joe Dennis is scrambling for his camera when one passes him on his walk to work, but I doubt it, Tom’s Future Classic title below notwithstanding. Perhaps another decade. Or two.
It’s mostly a case of what’s the point? The Seville was more sveltly styled (I can’t believe I just wrote that about a Cadillac) at least until 2004, after which it went all Matrix funky angled, and the bygone target market wasn’t looking for this either. And you are correct, the Escalade was starting to make big inroads, first in videos and then on the streets to today’s ubiquity.
The typical dealer and Pep Boys add-on gimmickry seen here are just the kick in the knickers. I wonder who owns it and congratulate them for at least keeping it impeccably tidy, and curiously peep at the 1985 license plate; perhaps 1985 to the current middle aged generation is the new 1955 that is somehow so fondly remembered by the prior one? I know I have some fond memories of that year with all the upsides of youth and very few of the adult experience downsides…
It must have employed the full expertise of Cadillac’s designers in ’99 to come up with a design so artfully molded to look as if it was done by rank amateurs that it could pass, in and out, as a bad but cheap copy of something desirable, but I defend the self-defacing owner of this one.
It actually looks better.
The swap may be possible. The LS and 5.7 share a bellhousing and the LS4 was FWD. There is a guy local to me in southern New England who used to sell a kit to fit LS engines to Northstar transmissions. Mostly because the north star trans can hold more HP than the one they put behind the LS4. he had a FWD monte carlo putting down like 700hp at one point.
That said I doubt it’s had a swap done.
OMG the cloth top installer trimmed and covered the top 5th (or so) of the gas cap cover! Epic effort!!!!!!!
A far cry from the OTT extravagantly Luxurious, over chromed RWD FLEETWOOD and Broughams that WERE Cadillac as The Standard of the World! At least it’s STILL a bit of the Cadillac Mystique with the custom roof and grille. I’d take it any day, over the BLOATED SUVS at BLOATED prices, currently built by Cadillac, which IMO are totally CADILLACKING.
The only thing I remember about this generation was the night vision option where models equipped had a curious black circle in the grille. This one obviously doesn’t have that.
It looks kinda cramped inside not much rear leg room and not much space up front either just compared with my car, somebody just ran it thru a Super cheap auto catalogue and called it good.