(first posted 1/18/2016) Let’s face it, Cadillac’s downsized, front-wheel drive 1985 de Ville (and Fleetwood) do not receive much love, and probably get even more hate than they deserve. Despite better fuel economy and space efficiency, these downsized cars didn’t convey the power and prestige of previous “BIG” Cadillacs, and to many, they simply did not look like a true Cadillac. Thankfully, over the course of their production span some welcomed improvements would come.
Changes for 1986 were ever so slight, but nonetheless appreciated. Stylists gave the de Ville wider rocker moldings and extra trim surrounds for the rear windshield, boosting its “formal” appearance over its Buick and Oldsmobile platform mates. 1987 saw the return of more prominent tail fins, making the rear more recognizable as a Cadillac.
In 1988, the anemic 4.1L HT4100 V8 was enlarged to 4.5 liters, bringing 20 additional horsepower and 45 more pound-feet of torque, for total outputs of 155 and 235, respectively. Despite the appreciated power increase, the de Ville still looked short, stubby, and a lot like the Ninety-Eight and Electra, as well as a number of even smaller, less prestigious GM cars.
Thankfully the trend of change would continue on a larger scale for 1989, when an extensive update gave the de Ville a decidedly more “Cadillac” appearance. Now the volume leader by a large margin, Sedan de Villes were given a 3-inch longer wheelbase for extra rear seat space and wider rear doors. Along with restyled, longer front and rear overhangs, overall sedan length was up more than 10 inches over the original 1985 model.
(Lack of space for a wide-angle shot required a little photoshop help)
Although the cars still exhibited the unconventionally low and lean looks of the 1985-1988s, the stubbiness was mostly gone. Overall, the restyled 1989-1993 de Villes looked significantly more grandiose and substantial than their immediate predecessors. In fact, every body panel on the sedans save for the front doors was new.
To reduce weight, front fenders were now made from a composite material instead of steel. Although in the short term this was beneficial in the defense of dents and scratches, over time these fenders became susceptible to cracking.
The redesigned rear, with traditional Cadillac “fin” taillights and wider C pillars, did wonders for the de Ville. With the added length, trunk capacity was up 2.3 cubic feet to a volume of 18.4 cubic feet overall. Even with the extra bulk, curb weight for a base Sedan de Ville still came in at under 3,600 pounds.
Inside, Sedan de Ville presented front seat occupants with a “Dual Comfort” 45/55 split bench in either standard Royal Prima cloth with Contessa cloth inserts or available leather seating surfaces and front headrests with vinyl trim. Six-way power adjustments were standard for the driver and available for the front passenger.
Rear seat passengers gained an extra 2.5 inches of legroom for 43.6 overall thanks to the longer wheelbase for 1989. The wider C-pillars and elongated roofline allowed for a larger parcel shelf complete with a storage box. Rear outboard seats also gained separate headrests, previously only a Touring Sedan feature.
Up front, the bi-level instrument panel was carried over from before. Most essential functions such as switches for lights, climate control, cruise control, and the vehicle information center were located on the control pod wrapping around the steering column.
Although situated within easy reach, depending on steering wheel and seat position, it could become partially obstructed from view by the steering wheel. Unlike the up-level Fleetwood, which featured “Genuine American Walnut” woodgrain veneer, regular de Villes made due with the faux plasti-wood throughout their tenure.
Coupe de Villes, meanwhile, rode on the same wheelbase as before, though they were given much of the sedan’s new sheetmetal complete with larger overhangs for a greatly improved, more substantial appearance.
The following year of 1990 saw the 4.5L V8 gain an additional 25 horsepower for a total output of 180 horses, thanks to sequential multi-port fuel injection. A driver’s side airbag was also now standard, having been a newly-available option the prior model year.
1991 brought an even greater host of changes in the areas of styling, powertrain, safety equipment, and additional comfort features. Up front, de Villes boasted a bolder, more prominent grille that now lifted up with a redesigned “power dome” hood. The big news under that hood was a new 4.9 liter version of Cadillac’s “High Technology” V8 (the final evolution of the HT-4100), now making a very competitive 200 horsepower and 275 pound-feet torque.
Anti-lock brakes, previously optional, were now standard and traction control was newly option. Rear seat passengers gained adjustable heating/air conditioning vents, and the driver gained a safety lock button for the rear windows to ensure that no small child (or dog or drunk person) accidentally opened it and fell or threw something out.
Speaking of windows, standard EZ-Kool solar-control glass was also new to block out more UV rays than before. Automatic door locks were also now standard and new central door lock/unlock switches were added to the driver’s door and trunk. A brand new option this year was remote key-less entry.
Electrochromic dimming inside rear-view mirrors and heated outside rear-view mirrors were newly standard for 1991, as was the previously optional Twilight Sentinel automatic headlights and shut-off delay. All de Villes now featured paint stripes and new 15-inch alloy wheels as standard equipment, with the expected wire wheels discs still on the option list. De Villes also came standard with painted metal roofs, though both a full-padded vinyl roof with electroluminescent C-pillar wreath-and-crest and a full-cabriolet canvas roof were also available for extra charge.
Additionally, 1991 marked the return of the limited production Touring Sedan, which was previously offered from 1986-1988 in both 4-door (pictured above) and 2-door (as the “Touring Coupe”) form. Although no one would confuse it with a BMW, the Touring Sedan was targeted at de Ville buyers who sought a little bit more road feel in their Cadillac.
Although engine output from its 4.9L V8 was the same, over the base de Ville, Touring Sedans featured standard traction control, a speed-sensitive touring suspension, thicker stabilizer bars, 16-inch aluminum alloy wheels with Goodyear Eagle GA all-season tires, and a marginally wider final drive ratio.
Visually, Touring Sedans were separated from regular de Villes by different lower bodyside trim, a large grille mounted wreath and crest (as opposed to a stand-up hood ornament), lack of chrome wheel arch trim, and the aforementioned 16-inch wheels.
Inside, Touring Sedans featured an upgraded interior featuring front seats with integral lumbar support and a modest hint of side bolstering, American walnut accents, and French-stitched ultra-soft leather seating surfaces in “Beechwood” color, similar to that in the STS.
The last two model years of this generation de Ville would see few changes. For 1992, the Touring Sedan’s standard traction control and speed-sensitive suspension joined the option list on regular de Villes. The latter would become standard for 1993, but apart from a few minor trim detail changes, this generation de Ville remained relatively unchanged for its swansong season.
While Cadillac may have tried gaining the attention of a few European and now Japanese luxury import buyers with the more driver-oriented Touring Sedan, the reality was that most de Ville buyers were part of a diminishing faction who exclusively sought old-school American luxury car virtues. Those seriously considering a de Ville were unlikely be shopping over at BMW or Lexus, and vise-versa.
Among these luxury car buyers, the de Ville essentially owned this corner of the market, its only true competitors being Chrysler’s New Yorker Fifth Avenue and Imperial, and Lincoln’s Continental. All three of these front-wheel drive, 6-passenger luxury sedans’ sales paled in comparison to the Sedan de Ville.
Truthfully, there was nothing that could have been done to this bodystyle to restore the Sedan de Ville to the former stature of its rear-wheel drive predecessors. Yet its 1989 restyling and subsequent improvements nonetheless created a de Ville that was a huge leap forward over the 1985-1988 models, making it look greatly more substantial, premium, and deserving of the Cadillac de Ville name. While this generation de Ville will always have a scrawny look to it, I think age has treated these Cadillacs well, as they come across as more elegant and finely detailed than their immediate successors.
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Please stop it.
I want another Toyota-Week, a Honda-Week would do it for me as well.
Due to my total lack of interest in Japanese cars I didn`t spend as much time with this site as I usually do, so I got a lot of work done last week.
I am a lawyer and there are still some files on my desk that I have to work on urgently, so please stop bringing up topics like the downsized Cadillacs that keep me away from doing my job.
Thank You.
Better than an 85 but very poor in comparison to town car
Agree! I’ve wondered how many Town Cars these weak, awkwardly styled, unreliable Caddys “sold” for FoMoCo.
From an aesthetic standpoint, the downsized styling works better on the Sedan De Ville than it does on the contemporary Eldorado. It’s not graceful, but it’s at least practical, suggesting that the interior is cavernous (which as I recall it was).
The frustrating thing about the Sedan de Ville is that the lower body styling is really rather nice; if the greenhouse were in better proportion to the body, the cars would look loads better. The padded vinyl roof definitely doesn’t help because it exacerbates the unfortunate visual proportions of the greenhouse and because it exaggerates the sense that the backlight is directly over the rear axle, making the whole car look front-heavy. (And on the four-door, the way the trailing edge of the passenger doors cuts into the vinyl is just hideous.)
The Cadillac “Knife edge” formal styling didnt scale down to well on these cars
did it. ?.80 Lincoln Continental was worse!.
To my eyes, the basic aesthetic fault is that the greenhouse appears about two sizes too big for the rest of the car, an impression exaggerated by the way the side windows dip below the beltline. Good for visibility, but it makes the car look like a kid wearing an adult-size hat.
Of course, everyone today complains about the gun-slit windows we see on too many cars.
You’re right about the green house being too large, but somehow this isn’t what bothered me about this generation. Interestingly, to me anyway, is that while I love the styling of most 1960s Cadillacs, what bothers me the most is that on the Devilles, the greenhouse looks a bit to SMALL for the bodies, especially on hardtops from 1965-1970.
Like everything there’s a happy medium, The downsized 77s had the perfect sized greenhouse IMO caught in between two extremes.
I don’t necessarily think dipping below the beltline is what exaggerates the size though, plenty of attractive cars do that(pretty much every aero Ford of the era), what looks so wrong on these caddies is the door skin appears little taller than the glass is, which is exaggerated even more so by the trim/cladding these often used on the lower body.
As Matt says, there are happier mediums to be had. Both earlier and later downsized Cadillacs managed it without looking so gawky. (And for the record it is possible to have a low-slung roof without making it into a machine gun bunker — the third-gen Prelude I used to have had outstanding visibility and was very low overall — although there are penalties in entry and exit.)
Matt> I don’t think the window dip is the main cause, although it does exaggerate the effect. Good point about the body-side cladding, though. That hadn’t occurred to me, but you’re right.
My Pop got a 1989 Sedan DeVille, and it fell under the heading of “be careful what you wish for…” He had always loved Cadillacs, but had never gotten one when he was working, because he worried that it would give the “wrong impression.” Pop hated the downsized Cadillacs and thought they looked really stumpy, so he was never interested in those. However, the redesign for ’89 did make it look more like a proper Cadillac again, so when he took an early retirement at 62, he decided to finally reward himself with the Cadillac he’d always wanted.
It was roomy and very cushy. It did look like a Cadillac. And it was utter junk. Problem after problem plagued the car just as soon as he drove it home–in fact the “check engine” light came on when he literally had just left the dealer. When it wasn’t in being fixed, the cheapness of the interior trim was painfully apparent, with misaligned pseudo wood and subpar leather that crinkled and got wear spots almost right away. As for the driving feel, it was no where near as enjoyable to drive as the Pontiac Bonneville SE that Pop had driven previously–and the Bonnie had a nicer interior too, with an attractive instrument panel and a more contemporary feel inside.
So after all those years of waiting and dreaming, after he got the Cadillac, his reaction was “this is it? This is the best they can do?” Kind of the “Sloan Ladder from Hell”… as we’d had Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Buicks, and then finally a Cadillac, and “the best” was actually the worst of all. It was very disappointing and the final nail in the coffin for GM cars in my family. Literally that car was the last GM vehicle any of us have bought–and we’d been a GM family for generations, since the corporation was formed. Oops.
As for the Cadillac, it died on the Causeway bridge crossing Lake Ponchartrain in a torrential thunderstorm, leaving Pop stranded. He was so mad he had the car towed back to the dealer and told them to keep it. It was replaced by a new 1991 Honda Accord SE, which felt more like what a Cadillac should than anything GM was churning out at that point.
This was quite a story. I too, own a Cadillac. A 2003 DeVille. It sits more than I drive it, layed up now with a steering gear problem that could run me about $1,700 to repair. And that problem with less than 70,000 miles on it! At 6 ft. 3 in tall, 250 lbs., I don’t relish buying any of the usual foreign midgets on the market so I spend my days in my Dodge truck. My wife, at 5 ft. 2 in. is at home in her Chevy HHR and has no complaints. Torn between sinking more money into that Caddie or dumping it. Trouble is, at age 68, I don’t want those ugly car notes that stretch me into my 70’s… Practicality will win in the end.
Find a low mileage Avalon or Camry that you can pay off in 2 years. There are plenty out there. Mission and peace-of-mind accomplished.
Most of the old Cadillac traditionalist buyers I knew moved over to Lincoln Town Cars or imports. Our neighbor did buy one but dumped it after two years for a Grand Marquis. He cited shoddy build quality and reoccurring warranty issues as the reason.
GN: That’s the same thing my Father said about the 72 Ambassador Brougham he purchased new: “If this is AMC’s best car, I’ll never buy another”.
Good story, GN. I can sympathise. I too owned a ’88 Bonneville SE for some years and found it to be an exceptional car. My used 97 Deville was inferior in every aspect of driving dynamics, such as handling, steering, ergonomics, brakes etc. The Caddy was obviously tuned to be numb, isolated, uncommunicative and mushy, all of which made it more distracting and difficult to drive. I am surprised that GM thought their customers really would want it that way.
I willsay, though, the materials, fit and finish on my 97 are exceptionally good, much better than past years.
GN:
That was the same experience a faculty dean/colleague at my university had with one of these Cadillacs. It was a truly terrible car, constantly at the dealership for one kind of thing or another, large and small. When the transmission died the second or third time she traded it, on my recommendation, for a new Lexus ES300, a revelation in reliability. Her family had owned GM cars back to her aunt’s loaded 1949 Olds 98. Never again has an American car graced her driveway.
I’m surprised he didn’t buy a Brougham. I’ll bet he would have been happier!
In the hot rod world the taillights on these are very popular.
That’s the one good thing you can say about them? 🙂
I’ve got to confess I’ve always quite liked the look of the ’92-’93 Sedan de Villes (sans vinyl roof), but given GM’s well-known quality problems of the time, I know I’d be horribly disappointed. Pass.
Final answer: No. These were the K cars of Cadillacs. GM sold Cadillac’s soul for volume. This was the result.
GM had already sold Cadillac’s soul for volume. These cars were all about CAFE compliance.
I do not disagree, and consider CAFE to be the most damaging thing to the U.S. auto industry over the last fifty years. But once CAFE came in, GM had a decision to make – to keep Cadillac what it had been in the 70s (luxurious but still selling in significant volume) or make it a boutique high end car, and incur a guzzler tax if necessary. GM made its choice.
In fairness to GM, Ford and Chrysler would probably have made the same choice had they been able to afford a new clean-sheet platform and powertrain like GM was.
I don’t agree that CAFE was the most damaging thing to the U.S. auto industry. Hell, they’re the ones who practically wrote it, faced with the alternative of fuel taxation at rates in line with the rest of the civilized world. No, my vote for the one thing most damaging to the American auto industry would be the 55mph National Maximum Speed Limit enacted in 1974. This made the industry’s beancounters’ eyes light up cartoon-style, with a cash register “ch-CHING!” sound effect: suddenly they could take giant wads of money out of just about every part of every car, because all they had to be capable of was 55 mph. That allowed for MUCH cheaper powertrains, suspensions, brakes, tires, steering systems, and overall quality and durability. That immediately became a new norm for the industry, comfy as painkillers, while it simultaneously destroyed American cars’ international competitivity and enormously widened the yawning gap between the quality and performance of American vs. foreign cars.
American cars’ international competitivity was already shot to pieces by the huge size they had grown to by the sixties. In many foreign markets it just wasn’t feasible to drive an eighteen-footer every time you wanted to go anywhere, not to mention the huge fuel costs (including fuel taxes, true) needed to keep the beast alive. The iconic American standard of living may have allowed for this, but other countries’ sure didn’t. Your intermediates, which were a more competitive size for a luxury car, in many cases weren’t even offered to us, and were still awfully thirsty. In Australia, we had home-grown alternatives better suited to our environment. In Europe, well…..
To be sure, the 55 may have allowed cheapening-out of the engineering as you say, but from an international perspective American cars were out of the hunt already, anyway.
CAFE was fine in theory, and in a closed market it might have worked, but in a free market like the US it had the unintended consequence of hobbling the local manufacturers while in a sense almost giving an advantage to foreign companies more accustomed to building efficient cars. From here it looked almost like your government was trying to destroy your motor industry.
Fair points all, but again, CAFE was not imposed by government dictate. It was the American auto industry’s own loophole-riddled alternative to the prospect of realistically high motor fuel taxation. It certainly wound up handing over large chunks of the passenger car industry to the imports, but just look at the fruit it’s borne the industry in the form of enormous sales volume of enormously profitable SUVs, long subject to no CAFE requirements because they’re “trucks”, now subject to much laxer CAFE requirements than cars because they’re “trucks”. The classifications, also largely written by the industry, are such that the Chrysler PT Cruiser was considered a “truck” for emissions and CAFE purposes. Whatta damn joke. This is idiotic. We’d’ve been much better off doing it the way the whole rest of the civilised world does it: fuel taxation. Buy whatever vehicle you want, as long as you can afford to feed it.
Also, the Australian market actually did heavily favour American-type cars with big 6- and 8-cylinder engines until the oil shocks of the ’70s. Falcons and LTDs, Valiants and Chargers (not to mention Phoenixes and Chryslers by Chrysler), Kingswoods and Commodores and Caprices, etc.
Daniel: I agree about the fuel tax, but not about the 55 mph speed limit.
In fact, America’s best handlers and high-speed cars came out shortly after the double nickel. Think GM B-Bodies with the F41 suspension and radial tires. Those cars made any previous big American sedan utterly obsolete in terms of dynamic qualities, except for pure straight-line acceleration.
And that was just a start. Ford’s Fox body developed into a very capable high speed machine, as either the Mustang 5.0 or T-Bird Turbo Coupe. I routinely crossed the Mohave in my ’83 Turbo Coupe at 110.
I could go on and on. Yes, there were some seriously weak cars during the “Malaise years’, but that was directly the result of Detroit struggling to meet CAFE regs and perceived further gas price increases with mediocre technology. But once they got fuel injection and three-way cats, performance and speed went up again quickly.
The single biggest thing that hurt Detroit was the iffy-to-shoddy quality. Once folks had a taste of Japanese quality, they rarely came back, except maybe for trucks.
True enough; your F41 example alone is enough to support your point. But I still cannot muster any sympathy for the industry “struggling to meet CAFE”. It really was their own petard.
There was a zero percent chance even the Watergate Congress would have passed European levels of fuel taxation, and it would only have been over Ford’s veto. They’d have been run out of town on a rail. Instead, they passed price controls and emergency rationing regulations which made the ’79 Iranian embargo a catastrophe. Clinton had to settle for a 4 cent increase in ’93, at a time when gas was relatively cheap.
They were already on their way down when CAFE hit. IMO it all came down to emissions. The domestic industry wanted to build the cars they wanted to build, and ***** anyone who thought differently, let alone tried to make them do anything different. So it started in the 60’s.
It all became about meeting smog regs as cheaply as possible, then blaming everything on them. Low power? Smog. Bad MPG? Smog. Poor drivability? Smog. Except Germany managed, by going to FI early. Even Japan managed, albeit with a mile of vacuum lines, but managed to accomplish all 3 while undercutting Detroit on price. Detroit regarded the imports as pesky, but not a real threat. And we all see how that turned out.
I agree that the 55 mph speed limit caused great damage, but CAFE should have been phased in more gradually, possibly over a longer period of time. As Adam on the Rare Classic Cars You Tube channel expressed, CAFE hurt the domestic automakers because the Europeans and Asians had to do very comparatively little to comply, while Ford, GM, and Chrysler had to spend tens of billions to comply. GM rushed too many cars and engines into production that weren’t ready to comply with CAFE. Particularly the V8 diesel and the X cars could have used at least six months to two years more development, but were introduced prematurely to comply with CAFE.
I had a 1992 coupe Deville, White diamond ,white interior and a black half rag top with a sunroof. I had Tru spoke wheels and vouge tires. Also the gold package . 4.9 litre motor. The car was really sharp looking and was fast. Never had a problem. But it rode like crap. When u hit a pot hole or train tracks- the car bounced all over. I bought the car brand new. It was one of the nicest on the road at the time. But it just wasn’t a Cadillac. The only thing that felt like a caddy is when u opened the door. They somehow made those doors heavy on those downsized coupes. After my Lease was up I bought a 1995 Eldorado that I loved. Super fast , but also rode like crap. Same color combo.
By the way I was 21 years old at the time when I owned my first caddy. I’m now 51 years old and was going to buy a 2018 XTS about 6 months ago. And they ruined the car again. 19 inch wheels on it. My friends Impala drove better then it. Instead I bought a 2018 Linclon Continental that rides way better.im done with Cadillac, unless it’s a CT6-V Edition.
In 2010, when searching for a cross-country vehicle to transport a post-operative wife (and which resulted in our lovely Ford van), I found a 1991 Sedan DeVille for sale not too far from the house. I had never seen it before as it was never parked outside.
I drove the Cadillac. It was cavernous inside, rode even better, and the way it drove totally camouflaged its having about 150,000 miles. The older gentleman who owned it wanted a measly $1800 for it – and he had bought it new.
The rub? It ran like crap, something I attributed to a bad sensor, vacuum line, or combination thereof. Of course when I mentioned this, along with an offer of about half his asking price, I was told there was nothing wrong with that car and it ran great. Yeah.
AUWM is correct about this design being practical. Seeing them now at 25 years old does not elicit some of the guffaws associated with the mid-70s offerings. These were quite drivable with the inherent smoothness being a more controlled thing than its predecessors.
It’s like Cadillac’s Fiat Multipla. A lot of the things that make it visually unattractive also make it very sensible from a practical standpoint, particularly for older drivers — lots of room, easy entry and exit, lots of visibility (although I suspect it’s still one of the many cars where you can’t see the nose and tail from the driver’s seat if you’re of average height).
You have a great point on visibility. Thinking back, I could not see the corners of the hood (I’m 5’11”) although I could see the wreath-and-crest hood ornament quite plainly, floating in the real estate ahead of me. I’m not sure I even put that Cadillac in reverse.
Good way to put it. I was going to compare it to today’s Subaru Forester (I’m sure the demographics of Forester buyers…well, overlap with the demographics of this DeVille’s original buyers).
I was thinking Cadillac’s Austin 1800; gawky proportions, arguably ugly, but oh-so-practical packaging.
I agree overall with JPC. If I had to have one, I would insist on the Fleetwood Sixty Special model, which got the wood and seating appointments befitting the big Fleetwood Brougham, which Caddy by this time was barely advertising. It is doubtful that anything could have attracted 80s yuppies to Cadillac, but these certainly didn’t, and they debased what remaining presence and cachet the brand did have.
Certainly these sold well, but had the ’94 model appeared in ’86 with a 4.5L V8, it’d have been better for the brand.
I’ve never owned one but the complaints about the build quality and reliability have been uniform on this blog and off. Despite its decontented powertrain, 1977 interior, and throwback styling the ’86-’90 Brougham was just a better quality car.
Like pretty much everyone else, I was utterly disappointed with the way the 1985 models turned out. But, stylistically at least, I always thought the series of modifications, and especially the 1989 facelift, was remarkably effective and transformative. The wheelbase stretch and longer rear doors was really key in restoring some of the lost presence. I think the Coupe De Ville suffered by not getting the same stretch. The front and back treatments looked good too.
I don’t recall if the subject car’s “cabriolet” partial vinyl roof treatment was a factory option, but it does the car no favors. The plain steel roofs look best, but I do recall there being a full padded vinyl roof option that I found oddly appealing. In fact, as much as this look was by then very passé, I really liked the full vinyl top and rear fender skirts of the face lifted Fleetwoods of this era. I also liked how the different treatments, like the Touring Sedan, gave the car a very different look, and I thought Caddy had a great selection of alloy wheels during this era.
Of this series, I always thought the Fleetwood version looked best. And when it went back to the D platform in 1993, it combined the body of the Brougham with the styling of this FWD Fleetwood, or so it seemed to me. It looked good in darker colors.
My folks had a cranberry red metallic 88 Coupe DeVille, identical to the one pictured. My Dad thought it was the most beautiful car he’d ever seen. My Mother called it a “show boat”. He bought it for her and it was just not her style.
Went back to the dealer 18 times for oil and transmission leaks.
It was roomy, quiet and rode and drove smoothly. I loved the just right size of it, but preferred the 85-86 tail lights that seemed to have better details on them.
Great article. For all the negativity, the efficiency of the design is admirable.
It’s also worth noting that Consumer Guide and Motor Trend wrote pretty favorable articles on these C body downsized cars when introduced saying they rode and handled much better, were quicker and more efficient and that it was surprising how much interior space they got inside with a car that was no longer than your average Cutlass Sedan mid size. The trunk certainly suffered going from over 20 cu. ft. to around 16 and the narrower width made it more of a 5 seater with some overlapping as CG put it.
I owned a 1985 Park Ave coupe for a year as a Winter beater with 130K miles on the clock. It was a one owner trade in at our dealership and still looked good and was mostly rust free. All it needed was an oil change, tires, brakes, wipers and a $20.00 transmission modulator valve which was making the transmission shift erratically and with delay. The owner thought the transmission was going bad but we knew better. That car was very well packaged inside with loads of legroom, rode and drove very smooth and the 3.8 with port injection felt very lively despite only making 125 horses.
That 85 Park Ave basically cost us nothing as it was traded on a pickup truck back in 1997 so for the cost of tires, brakes, the valve and an oil change I had the cheapest Winter car ever and surprise it was very reliable and terrific in the snow and that car would roast you with it’s efficient heater. So for the years of 1985-1988 I would prefer the Buick and Olds over the Caddy. They didn’t suffer the HT 4100 issues, the Buick V6 seemed more reliable when teamed with the 440 transaxle and these cars were a bit simpler. The Cadillac’s during these years seemed more troublesome but my next door neighbor did have a 1988 Sedan Deville in light blue with well over 100K miles that gave him no trouble other than a window regulator and he sold that to one of our employees that drove it for another couple of years before smashing it in an accident involving a drunk driver!
I do agree the 1989 refresh made a big difference in its appearance. They were roomy. As an owner of a 1995 Deville, I would have probably bought a 90-93 Deville over a Town Car. I hated the looks of the 90-97 TC when they were new and still hate the looks now.
In Dec of 1997 Motor Trend did a match up between the Deville Concours and the TC Touring. The Deville was the better car
http://www.motortrend.com/news/cadillac-deville-concours-vs-lincoln-town-and-country/
My view of the sedan has softened slightly, it doesn’t look completely disproportioned, at least until they’re given the requisite padded brougham top the geriatrics just couldn’t resist. The coupe however has only gotten worse looking with time.
The biggest problem with the Coupe was it was really a 2 door sedan that was built by a company that was known for building coupes and they were telling us that it was a coupe. We weren’t fooled.
By the mid-late ’70s, was there really any difference between a “pillared hardtop” coupe and a 2-door sedan?
I would argue that any 2-door version of a 4-door car built on a unique wheelbase and/or with a unique roofline is a coupe rather a than a 2-door sedan. So the 85-88 Coupe de Ville maybe could be considered a 2-door sedan, but when the Sedan got a longer wheelbase in ’89, the Coupe became a true coupe in every sense of the word.
I like your reasoning.
Well, the word “coupe” comes from the French couper, “to cut,” which in my mind can refer either to a shortened wheelbase (ex. ’70s midsize coupes compared to midsize sedans) or a lowered roofline (ex. pretty much every modern coupe built on a sedan platform).
In the 50’s the coupes were the same wheelbase as the sedans, but the bodies of the coupes and convertibles were longer than the sedans.
What? The bodies of the coupes in the 50s were longer than the sedans? Please give us some examples of that.
According to the Motorera website (which may be wrong) the 1955 series 62 sedans were 5494 mm long vs 5669 for other series 62 (coupes and convertibles?). Wheelbase is 3277 mm for both.
For 1957 sedans are 5484 and coupes are 5611.
The classic car database lists them as the same size? Wikipedia (not to be trusted I suppose) shows coupes longer than sedans.
+1
I’m still not a fan of these cars, I really am not. They will always look like the stubby, poorly built jokes that they are. I still remember one very fondly, it used to be in my neighborhood for the longest time. It was in bad shape, the paint was gone, the tires were flat, it was covered in cobwebs. It finally got sold last year and replaced with a used Hyundai Genesis that the owner promptly let a big rusty shear form in. I still see these cars around, driven by the same demographic that bought them new, and that’s only because the parking spaces in southern California are too small and narrow for its bigger rear drive brethren (You would think with the amount of SUVs people drive around my area, they would make the parking spaces bigger, but apparently not.)
I bought a used 85 Sedan deVille in the early 90s. I needed a full size family car and the prices on them got me interested. Mine wound up being fairly decent, although the oil pump failed while driving. Fortunately, I was driving and stopped it right away. I replaced it with an updated part but never fully trusted it after that. It was really nice on the road, power notwithstanding. Oh, and the paranoia that the engine would go south at any moment.
Well as always I am going to voice opposition to all the negative comments on here. These cars really don’t deserve the extreme bashing they get on CC.
Having driven one from new in 1990 it was truly a refined luxury car that was actually ahead of its time in many ways. My Dad’s final wish before passing was to get a new Cadillac so he purchased off the showroom floor a Medium Sapphire Blue 1990 Coupe deVille Spring Edition. That car never gave us one problem. Ever. And I know others that owned this generation of FWD deVilles/Fleetwoods and they were very happy with their cars, too. They were extremely roomy, fuel efficient for their size, fast and easy to maneuver. And they rode great. I can’t tell you how many people rode in that car and commented on how nice the ride was. And of all of you saying how ugly the coupe is I totally disagree. We would get comments on that car all the time! I actually used to drive that car a lot, taking my father to get his treatments in Boston from Providence so I can tell you first-hand that the fit and finish and drivability were top notch on that car. It handled superbly and was a car that was truly worthy of the Cadillac deVille name. Dad passed in 1993, and Mom kept driving it until 1998 when it had about 90k+ miles on it. Just recently she mentioned that car and how nice it was.
Were there some things about it that weren’t so great? The strange looking steering wheel for one. A horrible blind spot from the roof treatment and formal small rear window. And the climate control system wasn’t as user-friendly or customizable as it could have been.
But poorly built? Hardly. You could tell that ours was built with care. It was screwed together well, never a rattle, and as I said earlier not once did it go back to the dealer for a repair or warranty work. EVER.
So, there you have it. I am a fan of the 89-93 FWD Cadillacs and I always will be.
We have sold many examples in these years and for the most part I’m scratching my head at all the comments of poor reliability and shoddy workmanship. If anything the 1989-93 cars greatly improved the quality as by this time GM had the 440 transaxle sorted out, the steering rack was far superior with the seal issue having been resolved and the 4.9 liter V8 was far superior to the HT 4100 in every way and drastically cut down warranty repair work. In fact GM stated that it was one of there lowest problem engines of the time. Sure they had there issues but most high end luxury cars do even to this day. We do see the occasional power window regulator or inop condition or other electrical problem, once in a while a bad trans axle with high mileage and the occasional leak. But none of these issues are common or hard to fix and owners seem to like these cars. The Panther Town Cars of this period were nice enough cars but certainly had there own issues starting with electrical and suspension so they aren’t as god like reliable as many make them out to be!
I recently photographed a 1991 Fleetwood Coupe, and will hopefully get around to writing a CC on it one of these months. I was fortunate to find it, since evidently there were fewer than 1,000 Fleetwood coupes made in their final years.
I’ve always been attracted to the post-’89 versions of these cars, particularly the coupes. However, with their excessively long overhangs, the coupes do look a little odd at some angles — like the 2-dr. version was clearly an afterthought.
This article was a great history of this generation of de Ville.
A friend of mine had one, a ’90 or 91 with 4.5L engine. He was getting up there in age, so when we would go do things together, frequently I got to drive it. Despite the late ’80s GM “weirdness” as far as controls, etc, go it was a damn comfy car to drive. Plenty of power, and it was stone reliable. And I agree about the greenhouse appearing too big, but probably a good thing given the median age of the target buyers. Yet another GM product I will always like, despite the fact I bleed Blue Oval. GM cars of this era are like children; great as long as they belong to someone else. 🙂
I loved these generations of Cadillacs. My Partner bought a 1993 Sedan deVille “Spring Edition” from Florida. It was a rare option package, only available in the U.S. It included: full carriage roof, digital instrumentation, body-colour door handles, lace aluminum wheels, perforated leather seats, the gold trim package, and some other equipment. When he drove it home to Toronto (Ontario, Canada), a friend of ours who was visiting (who worked for Cadillac in the States) told us about this rare package. We miss that car now, after selling it, it had lots of pick-up! The car was beige metallic with a dark brown roof.
To add to this article, here are two variations of the more upscale sisters: on the left is the 1992 “Sixty Special” (NOT a “Fleetwood” that year), and a 1992 Fleetwood Coupé.
According to my 1992 Edmunds price guide, the FWD Fleetwood lineup consisted of the coupe, sedan and the Sixty Special.
1993 was the year the Fleetwood name was dropped from the Sixty Special.
Good article. My buddy has a 91 or 92 Sedan DeVille in mint shape that he’d got for around 4 grand, which I think is a pretty good price. His is two tone–white with grey lower trim, with what are probably premium rims (ie: none of the photographs of the cars in this article have them), with a full vinyl roof and gold emblems/ hardware. The 4.9 engine has some decent power numbers, and the 275 ft lbs of torque is more than enough to get the car moving pretty quickly. They’re a great driving/ riding car with lots of comforts (it’s one that you don’t feel like getting out of), and I agree with you that the square, boxy lines have aged well.
As you say, the composite material fenders are prone to cracking…..both of his have cracked, and there’s nothing that can really be done about it. They tend to crack in the middle, on the top edge. I suppose one could reinforce that area with some sort of tape or fiberglass tape.
The only reason that Cadillac survived these disastrous years was the massive sales momentum and brand loyalty built up over the prior decades. When GM management realized its mistake, it took its sweet time ‘correcting’ it, doing further damage. Everything they’ve done since is an effort to gain back what was lost.
As I’ve note before, a luxury car reputation is a fragile thing: difficult to establish, only possible over a continual high standard for quality and engineering, but easy to damage with simply one series of mediocre, inappropriate cars. Cadillac built it, damage it and now is spending billions to get it back.
On proportions, the greenhouse was grossly outsized on these FWD models. If the lower had be 15-20% larger with a longer wheelbase than a Studebaker Lark, it might have been a decent contender. Having lived through those years and developed a preference and liking for Cadillac, these were a horrible disappointment and will never be forgiven for what they did to Cadillac as a serious luxury car……
GM would have been wise to have dumped Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac and focused on making Chevrolet a good basic line of vehicles and Cadillac a premium luxury line.
I don’t understand that line of thinking, I don’t think any model was necessarily helped by being a Chevrolet, it’s the Plymouth of GM. Their popular models had their own identity, not the brand equity. People bought Camaros, Monte Carlos, Corvettes, Silverados. Conversely, Oldsmobile sold Oldsmobiles to people and on and on with the other divisions.
I’d tend to agree here with Someoneinthewildwest…….I think that at one point, the individual brands within the GM banner had more autonomy and individuality to build their own engines and get creative, but probably moreso as the 70’s closed and certainly by the mid to late 80’s, the last vestiges of that pretty much were gone. GM pretty much homogenized all of their divisions, turning them into a shared parts bin affair. I personally think that GM could have done without Oldsmobile after the late 80’s, when almost all of their cars (if not all?) became front wheel drive, but certainly GM had cemented their fate to some extent when they axed individual divisions’ specific motors.
To a certain extent, as well, one wonders how thin that they had spread themselves……perhaps if they had less divisions, each one would have been more able to concentrate better on what they could have been doing better and improving on. I’ve long thought that they should have had a performance only division……consolidating the Camaro, Firebird and Corvette into a sporty, wild brand, and then the DeVille’s, Fleetwoods, Delta 88, Regal into one more upscale brand.
As it stands, it’s a shame that the Firebird/ Trans Am had to get axed with Pontiac.
Basically this is where GM is now after the bankruptcy. After world war two, there probably was never a good time to reduce the number of brands. People still morn the loss of Pontiac and Oldsmobile.
However, the Toyota model is a basic line of vehicles with one luxury brand lineup. This allows Toyota to focus on making each vehicle as good as possible. With GM’s lineup they had to make 5 copies of each vehicle, each with a different style, and probably had to cut costs by reducing quality.
Buick was kept, but how it is different from Chevrolet is not clear.
Much agreed. Here’s my take on where Cadillac went wrong–many luxury brands earlier in the 20th Century had gone out of business/ went bankrupt etc, because of various factors. Just think of what the Great Depression had did to the auto industry……if luxury cars were always for the elite, there’s always been an even smaller group amongst that elite that can really manage to always afford the absolute top of the line (people with “old money”, etc, that are more secure in their purchases, investing and smart expenditures). The rest of that class of elite spend foolishly, as they’ve never before had the money to spend on such extravagances, sort of like a gambler that wins big on one big hand, but quickly loses it afterwards on a series of ill advised bets and not knowing when to walk away from the table.
This pertains to the upscale car market in that with that fluctuation in elite money, also comes a bit of a killing frost, as well……you want customers to stick with your brand, but they cannot do so if they don’t have the money in the future. Packard tried to hang on and had conceded somewhat to selling to lower financial tiers of buyers, but with that came the reduction in the company’s integrity. If too many luxury brand owners see too many other people with the same things, it starts to become too available and loses its elite status.
This is where I think that Cadillac went wrong. I can’t fault them for making their brand more affordable and available to a wider audience, but it was through a series of terrible decisions and brand affordability that they had almost committed suicide. Things like the HT-4100 were short sighted and did colossal damage to the brand.
Cadillac’s engine problems were due in part to the engines being designed on the razor edge of technology, and unfortunately were on the wrong side of the edge. A big part of the problem was GM’s use of aluminum, which they should have had sorted out.
You would have thought they had heard of the Vega and it’s Al block problems. But maybe not, Caddy engineers probably didn’t talk to Chevy engineers much.
In the photo of the Touring sedan above, the proportions look eerily similar to the Cimarron at first glance.
I strongly disliked these downsized Cadillacs at first, and I still don’t particularly care for the early examples. But the ’89 facelift fixed so many of the problems, and turned these into legitimately good-looking cars. Fully agree with previous comments that these had far better detailing than the following generation, even if the proportions were a little off I wouldn’t mind having an ’89+ sedan, particularly a Fleetwood. However they’re getting hard to find in good shape, most of them having long since been separated from their original caring owners and having languished in the bargain bin for far too long. When I see a DeVille of this generation, it’s usually a very tired beater.
Did Cadillac really lose sales to Lincoln because of this car? Couldn’t the salesman just point them to the Cadillac Brougham across the showroom if they didn’t like the De Ville?
I have a 92 Sedan DeVille, and I absolutely love it. I drove a 93 for 14 years, until a texting teen in an SUV drove into it, parked in front of my house. the 93 had 207,000 mi on it, and I trusted it to drive anywhere. The 92 now has 178,000 in it. They seem to have a problem with coolant leaks, and oil leaks, and like to go through water pumps. I love the ride, the power, and the comfort.. They’re a compromise, between the old and the new.
I have a 1990 Fleetwood with the very comfortable leather interior and real walnut trim. It had less than 75,000 miles when I bought it and after spending some pretty good money to replace the fuel injectors plus associated plugs, wires, etc. it really runs great – amazing ride, lots of power and reasonable handling for such a big comfortable luxury boat. I love driving this car and get lots of comments on it all the time – especially from passengers who can’t believe that a car could have such a nice ride. I love the styling and agree that do you have to buy the 1989 and up models for it to look like a real Cadillac.
Here is the picture
The fake wire wheels and fake convertible tops became status markers that drove the snooty rich away from Cadillac to the Germans.
To say the least, the down sized ’85s lost some of the presence of the previous model. But judged in a vacuum, the sharp, razor-edged styling works. From the start, they might have added more of a power-dome hood. Also more of a suggestion of tailfins. But IMO, the real problem was with the Touring Edition, meant to attract import buyers. Instead of going for cosmetic add-ons- fog lights, lower body cladding- the touring sedan should have simply been the base de Ville. With less bright work but stopping short of “blackout” exterior trim.
Limit available colors to subdued tones. Add upgraded wheel and (black) tires- topped off with the FX-3 suspension. Inside, firm bucket seats- maybe horse hair instead of foam. Let the import buyer sniff out this deceptively “base” model- priced the same as the standard De Ville. Then let word of mouth do the rest.
I own a 2014 Cadillac XTS VSport Platinum, which to me has the qualities of presence and big horsepower that I think Cadillacs should have. However, Lordy, I’d love to have an interior like that red one at the top of this article – huge windows, super plush seating, and no console. The interior on my XTS is just beautiful with superb quality, but there is just something about that red interior that strikes me as more Caddy-like and pampering.
There had been a well kept champagne colored Coupe De Ville with antique vehicle plates at high rise apartment along a path I walk and jog regularly, and got a lot of passing exposure to it over the years.I wouldn’t say it is better as time has gone by, but I didn’t mind the sight of it, I don’t know what happened with the owner but it’s no longer there and I have to admit, I miss seeing it.
These look so behind the times from Mercedes, Lexus et al for the era but it’s hard to make a Cadillac look like a Cadillac with clean unencumbered aerodynamic(to a tastefully reserved degree) styling trends the competition had without ending up looking like the Devilles that succeeded these, which I ultimately think was for the worse. I can appreciate this generation their post-facelift/butt implanted for still clinging on looking the part even if it was a losing effort, had the core proportions of the 85 platform/body not been so stubby and airy these revised ones could have been all the better.
I prefer RWD, but I don’t necessarily think FWD was a problem for Cadillac, in fact I think it was kind of natural as a layout comfortable luxury with a totally flat floor, but Cadillac never had a FWD design that looked any bit as good inside or out as the 68 Eldorado. Platform sharing compromises made these all too obviously corporate cars with a different suit, RWD Devilles could look pretty effectively differentiated from a Chevy Impala or Buick Electra, but for whatever reason that really got lost with the switch to FWD, and highlighted at the worst time possible a major problem Cadillac had that Mercedes didn’t: Mercedes was it’s own company, with its own cars. Cadillac was a costume over a GM platform
It wasn’t just the size reduction. The weight-reduction imperative made everything seem lower quality, too.
Almost 7 years later to my original post, I now own one. Absolute pleasure to own and drive. I get complements everywhere I go!