For 1977, Cadillac scaled back its C-body De Ville and Fleetwood Brougham to the more rational dimensions of their early-’60s ancestors, with less weight, better gas mileage, and much-improved maneuverability. The ’77 models were better cars than their massive 1976 predecessors in nearly every way except styling — kicking off a long and frustrating trend of downsized Cadillac models that often looked much worse than their outsize predecessors. Here’s a ’76, ’77 and ’85 shown in accurate relative size to each other for comparison.
One of the most depressing arguments I routinely hear about Cadillac is that the division lost its way because it had to downsize in the ’70s and ’80s. I’ve seen Cadillac stylists and design chiefs of the time declare, more or less outright, that all Cadillac really had to offer was grandiose size, and when that was taken away, there was nothing left to sell — a contention that strikes me as a real self-own coming from the people most directly responsible for making Cadillac products appealing.
When it came to Cadillac, I think buyers were primarily interested in perceived lavishness, of which size was only one aspect. For a long time, a new Cadillac was a car for high rollers, or people who wanted to look like high rollers — the sort who would slip the hat-check girl a fifty or give the bartender a hundred without waiting for change. By the ’70s, most Cadillac buyers were not actually that financially carefree (there were a lot of working-class Cadillac owners struggling with home-mortgage-size car notes), but they wanted to look like they didn’t need to worry about splitting the check.
Cadillac division managers and sales executives fretted over every dimension, worried that they might lose ground to Lincoln or even Imperial in the bigger-is-better rankings, but I doubt that most Cadillac buyers even glanced at the specifications. The average customer was probably far less concerned with a few inches here or there than with whether the car as a whole gave the desired impression of indulgence and “class.” I put “class” in scare quotes because a lot of the real high rollers had moved on by this time. Cadillac in the ’70s was a mass-market brand, selling in very large numbers to middle-class and working-class people of sometimes very questionable taste. There were still enough well-heeled Hollywood types driving Cadillacs to bolster the brand’s prestige (Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. both owned Fleetwood Broughams in the mid-’70s), but they were now the exception rather than the rule.
The 1977 model year is often considered the first major Cadillac “downsizing,” since the C-body cars (the De Ville and Fleetwood Brougham) lost up to a foot of overall length and over 3 inches of width compared to 1976. From the standpoint of exterior dimensions, this was not so much a downsizing as a retrenchment, and not the first: Cadillac dimensions had peaked in 1959–1960 and then cautiously retreated for a while in the early ’60s.
Cadillac’s 1961 “downsizing” was not driven by concerns about fuel economy (which was hardly improved), but by a desire to step back a little from the Wurlitzer jukebox flashiness of late-’50s GM cars. There had also been owner complaints that contemporary Cadillacs had gotten too big for their garages and too cumbersome to park. A 1959–1960 Cadillac had a wall-to-wall turning circle of more than 49 feet, big enough to make some drivers want to radio for a tugboat to help guide them in.
The 1961 models trimmed 3 inches from their overall length and made front suspension and steering changes that reduced their turning circle to a more manageable 45.7 feet. Cadillac also introduced its short-lived short-deck models for buyers concerned about their cars not fitting in their garage, although interest proved much less than anticipated.
By the mid-’70s, another retrenchment would certainly have been due even without the energy crisis and the enactment of federal CAFE requirements (which first took effect for 1978). Cadillac width was now effectively restrained by lighting laws requiring truck-type marker lights for vehicles over 80 inches wide, but the addition of 5-mph bumpers had pushed the overall length of even the entry-level Calais and bread-and-butter De Ville over the 230-inch mark. The long-wheelbase Fleetwood Brougham was a gargantuan 233.7 inches long by 1974, long enough to erase nearly all the earlier efforts to bring the turning radius of these cars within reason.
All of the big GM C-body cars were downsized for 1977, but someone studying the specifications of the new Cadillac might well have declared, “Suddenly, it’s 1961.” Here’s how the major exterior dimensions compared:
| Year | Model | Overall Length, in. | Wheelbase, in. | Overall Width, in. | Front Track, in. | Rear Track, in. | Overall Height, in. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Fleetwood Brougham | 233.7* | 133.0* | 79.8 | 63.3 | 63.3 | 55.3 |
| 1977 | Fleetwood Brougham | 221.2 | 121.5 | 76.4 | 61.7 | 60.7 | 56.7 |
| 1961 | Fleetwood Sixty Special | 222.0 | 129.5 | 78.5 | 61.0 | 61.0 | 56.3 |
* Fleetwood Sixty Special Brougham; Calais and De Ville were 3 inches shorter.
Unlike in 1961, improved fuel economy WAS a priority for the 1977 cars, so in addition to paring away some exterior bulk, Cadillac made a concerted effort to reduce weight, trimming pounds from the body, frame, and engine (which shrank from 500 cid to a mere 425 cid). The base shipping weight of the Fleetwood Brougham, which shared the same wheelbase as the cheaper De Ville (as it had from 1959–1964), was down to 4,340 lb — a whopping 873 lb lighter than the 1976 Fleetwood Brougham and 430 lb lighter than the similarly sized but considerably more sparsely equipped 1961 Fleetwood Sixty Special.
This did come at some slight sacrifice in interior room. The De Ville and Fleetwood Brougham lost a little over an inch of shoulder room in front and 3.1 inches in back, and hip room was down about 2½ inches both front and back. However, the popularity of “Dual Comfort” 50/50 front seats (standard on the Fleetwood Brougham) made clear that sitting three abreast was not a high priority for most late ’70s Cadillac buyers.
The Fleetwood Brougham lost enough rear legroom that the folding rear footrests that had been standard since 1966 no longer made much sense. Foot rests were still installed at the beginning of the 1977 model year, but they were deleted mid-year in favor of seat-back map pockets.
Reduced weight and a slightly less monstrous engine did improve fuel economy: EPA combined ratings for C-body Cadillac models improved from 13 mpg in 1976 (12 mpg with the optional Bendix fuel injection) to 16 mpg in 1977 (14 mpg with fuel injection). Consumer Guide suggested that 14 to 14.5 mpg was a more likely real-world average for the 1977 models, but that was still up about 2 mpg from 1976.
I know some people still balk at any mention of fuel economy in connection with vintage Cadillacs, but Cadillac was selling more than 300,000 cars a year in the late ’70s, many of them to buyers who weren’t really that affluent. Moreover, the aggregate fuel consumption of those cars had a sociopolitical impact beyond just their owners’ pocketbooks. As it was, the improved mileage of the 1977 cars was only barely keeping pace with the increased number of new Cadillacs on the road.
The 1977 Cadillac C-body models had chassis improvements that gave them noticeably better composure without sacrificing the expected cushy ride. (Consumer Guide thought the ride was actually improved, thanks to significant reductions in unsprung weight.) Wall-to-wall turning radius was reduced by over 4 feet for the De Ville, by a full 5 feet for the Fleetwood Brougham.
In nearly every practical respect, the 1977 De Ville and Fleetwood Brougham were better cars than their immediate predecessors, but GM Styling VP Bill Mitchell and Cadillac studio chief Wayne Kady let them down. I realize this may be a controversial opinion, since the ’77 cars sold extremely well (even better than the ’76 models), but I think the styling of the 1977 Cadillacs was squarer and starchier in ways that just aren’t very pleasing to look at.
Since I don’t own a tugboat, a captain’s hat, or a bosun’s whistle, the oversize 1976 Cadillac isn’t really my cup of tea either, especially the Nimitz-class Fleetwood Brougham, but the outgoing four-door models were considerably better-looking. (I think the two-door Coupe de Ville had been a lost cause since 1974, but that’s another matter.)
My problem with the 1977 Cadillac is not that it was smaller — for my money, Cadillac could have easily trimmed another 6 to 8 inches from its overall length with no ill effect — but that the way it takes up space looks much stiffer and more self-conscious. It’s like Kady’s stylists rebelled against even this fairly modest reduction in exterior dimensions by making the ’77 look as blocky as possible. As with the later Lincoln Continental Mark VI, the 1977 Cadillac has the air of a lanky teenager who’s been told to sit up straight and resents it.
I keep wanting to call the 1977 Cadillac “Chevy-like,” but for all its taxicab/cop-car baggage, the 1977 Impala/Caprice had a crisp grace this Cadillac mostly lacks. That’s hard to accept given the Cadillac’s much higher price: The original sticker of the gold car pictured above was $13,411 including destination charge, a relative worth of almost $80,000 in 2025 dollars. At that price, why did it still have the cheap and fragile filler panels between the rear fenders and the taillights? Why did its B-pillars look like they’d been hammered down like tent spikes between the side window frames? What was the point of the rigidly framed wheel wells that make the GR78-15 tires look like space-saver spares? To at least some extent, these issues probably reflect the fact that Cadillac was the tail rather than the dog in the GM shared-body downsizing program, but surely they could have done better than this.
Every automotive brand has some off years, and unlike some of the Cadillac studio’s subsequent efforts, the 1977 De Ville and Fleetwood Brougham are not offensive, just uninspired. I probably wouldn’t be inclined to pick on them if this hadn’t also been the point where Cadillac styling effectively turned to stone for over a decade. Instead of just another redesign that would be swept away within a few years, the 1977 design became a rigid template from which Cadillac stubbornly refused to deviate even as the automotive mainstream went other directions.
There are few more aesthetically painful indications of that institutional stubbornness than the further-downsized FWD De Ville and Fleetwood that were introduced for 1985. Notwithstanding the persistent whining of Cadillac designers and loyalists, the FWD C-body was a perfectly reasonable overall size — even in its initial 1985 form, it was bigger than a W124 E-Class Mercedes-Benz — but as a styling exercise, it was almost as embarrassing as the pathetic Cadillac Cimarron.
A FWD De Ville/Fleetwood was still a big car by contemporary American standards, although its packaging did leave it with surprisingly little usable trunk space for a car of this size.
The principal problem with the FWD C-body Cadillac was not its size, but its shape and its detailing. Wayne Kady and company had tried to adapt nearly all the styling cues of the 1977-vintage De Ville (which hadn’t looked all that good to start with) to the significantly smaller platform, with disastrous results.
The 1985 FWD De Ville ended up looking like a toy car — awkwardly re-scaled and foreshortened to accommodate dolls or action figures while still remaining small enough for a child to carry. A later stretch of the tail and (on sedans) the wheelbase improved trunk space, but didn’t entirely rectify the clumsiness of the C-body’s basic proportions.
Perhaps the worst indictment I can offer of the stylistic failure of the FWD De Ville is to compare it to the BMW E32 7-Series sedan that arrived during the run. The 1988 E32 735i was almost infinitely better-looking than the Cadillac, although the two cars were very similar in exterior dimensions:
| Model | Overall Length, in. | Wheelbase, in. | Overall Width, in. | Front Track, in. | Rear Track, in. | Overall Height, in. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 BMW 735i | 193.3 | 111.5 | 72.6 | 60.1 | 61.0 | 55.6 |
| 1988 Cadillac Sedan de Ville | 196.5 | 110.8 | 71.7 | 60.3 | 59.8 | 55.0 |
True, the 7-Series was a RWD car, with minimal front overhang that would have been hard to achieve with the FWD De Ville. However, the Cadillac fared no better in comparison to the 1986–1988 Acura Legend sedan:
The Legend was also FWD, and somewhat smaller than the De Ville in most dimensions:
| Model | Overall Length, in. | Wheelbase, in. | Overall Width, in. | Front Track, in. | Rear Track, in. | Overall Height, in. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 Cadillac Sedan de Ville | 196.5 | 110.8 | 71.7 | 60.3 | 59.8 | 55.0 |
| 1987–88 Acura Legend sedan | 189.4 | 108.6 | 68.3 | 59.1 | 57.5 | 54.7 |
In four-door sedan form, the first-generation Legend was rather bland, but its proportions were fine, and it suffered none of the inept toy-car foreshortening of the De Ville, despite being 7.1 inches shorter overall.
Cadillac made things worse by continuing to sell the 1977-vintage Fleetwood Brougham well into the ’90s, updated with a succession of different engines and occasional fits of deplorable cost-cutting (for instance, four-wheel disc brakes, standard in 1977, disappeared in the late ’80s and never returned). The RWD Brougham was no longer a volume model — nor could Cadillac afford for it to be, given its size and thirst — but its continued presence in Cadillac showrooms was a tacit vote of no confidence on the division’s own newer products. By 1990, the Brougham symbolized a rather pathetic longing for the pre-regulatory era, back when GM unilaterally set the standards for the industry and “Engine Charlie” Wilson could confidently tell the U.S. Senate that what was good for General Motors was good for America.
Bill Mitchell famously complained that styling a small car (a category he defined very broadly) was “like tailoring a dwarf.” That remark has always rubbed me the wrong way, both for its obvious insensitivity and because much of the clientele of actual tailors is people who aren’t built like fashion models, and yet still want their suits or dresses to fit them in a reasonably flattering manner. There are limits to what even a brilliant tailor or a brilliant stylist can do with a given platform or set of dimensions, but a customer paying for a tailored suit or a new Cadillac has a right to expect it to at least try to make them look good, not just sneer at them for not being the right size or shape.
I don’t doubt that a lot of the responsibility for Cadillac’s various stylistic own-goals of the ’80s and ’90s could be laid at the feet of the division’s rapidly diminishing autonomy and reactionary management, which clung to the old-fashioned styling cues and tacky gingerbread the way a drowning man might clutch at a boat anchor.
However, I’ve read enough commentary from Cadillac designers of the time (on Dean’s Garage and elsewhere) to see how truly resentful they were of downsizing, of aerodynamics, and of the idea that they might actually have to compete for newer generations of buyers with automakers from Germany or Japan. Cadillac fans might sympathize, but the division couldn’t afford that kind of arrogance, any more than a tailor could afford to turn away every client who isn’t built like supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
GM once understood better than anyone that it’s easier to sell a good-looking car, even one that falls short in engineering or quality, than it is to sell a basically well-engineered but dorky-looking vehicle. However, when it came to small cars — or even smallER ones — that basic commercial logic was too often overridden by a bad case of the don’t-wannas. It’s like the designers wanted to go on pretending it was still 1965 forever, and treated any deviation from their preferred dimensions as a grievous insult for which buyers and the public needed to be punished, even as Cadillac market share diminished and their corporate superiors contemplated pulling the plug.
Related Reading
COAL #7: 1977 Cadillac Coupe de Ville – The Things That Dreams Are Made Of (by Jose Delgadillo)
Vintage C/D Review: 1978 Cadillac Coupe De Ville – “Surprise! Opulence Can Be Fun!” (by me)
My 1978 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham – Finally, I Get To Experience Cadillac Style (by Chip Downs)
1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D’Elegance And Talisman – Go Brougham Or Go Home (by me)
Decade De Ville: Cadillac’s Bestselling ’70s De Villes (by me)
1990 Cadillac Sedan De Ville And Fleetwood: Cadillac At The Crossroads (by me)
See, I’ve always thought that the 1977-1979 Cadillacs were fairly good-looking cars, compared to the sheer mass and excess of their predecessors. But all the other B- and C-body GM cars were just as nice looking and cost less. Then you look at what else you could get for about the same money and, well, a person wonders what there is about the Cadillac other than the perceived prestige. I’d prefer a Buick Electra — in fact, I used to own one.
Interesting. Some styles do not downsize well at all. The older Caddies were so long and low, and maintaining the length:height proportion crucial to this look becomes impossible at some point because there is a minimum cabin height. The insane front and rear deck lengths mean this proportionality is lost very quickly when downsizing.
The more modern aerodynamic designs you highlight can keep their relative proportions at smaller vehicle sizes, but even they start to fall apart at some point. Consider the recent Audi sedan lineup, a classic case of “same sausage different lengths”. It worked well going from A8 to A6 to A4. But once you got to the compact A3 you had this over-tall under-wide stubby bubbly sedan that reminds me too much of a Yaris or Aveo.
The comparison the the Legend, wow. Shame on GM for so many reasons. Especially this:
However, I’ve read enough commentary from Cadillac designers of the time (on Dean’s Garage and elsewhere) to see how truly resentful they were of downsizing, of aerodynamics, and of the idea that they might actually have to compete for newer generations of buyers with automakers from Germany or Japan.
I never thought any of the 1977 B/C bodies looked as good as the 1975-76 version – too boxy, not enough differentiation between brands (there was one set of doors for Chevys, Pontiacs, and all wagons, another for Olds and Buick. Cadillac was entitled to their own sheetmetal and they took good advantage of it. The Caddies didn’t quite look as good as their pre-downsized selves but they came very close, and the 1978 tweaks helped things, especially the new taillamp. Cadillac was very smart to introduce the crisp, hard-edged “sheer look” on the ’75-1/2 Seville, their most expensive sedan, so the ’77 C-bodies could bask in their aura. It is essential when introducing a new styling language to apply it to your high-end car first. Otherwise you get a full-size ’62 Dodge two years after the lookalike Valiant compact, or a Chrysler’s TC by Maserati two years after the lookalike half-price LeBaron coupe and convertible. There are many examples that prove this theorum – Lincoln Versilles – but also manufactures that introduced cars in the right order (The new Camry usually arrives a year or two arter the Lexus ES, causing buyers to consider the Camry a Lexus at a bargain aprice, not an overpriced Toyota.
The utterly collapse of GM’s once-vaunted Design Department is one for the history books. The rot started quite some time back, with the promotion of utterly mediocre designers like Wayne Kady, who spent his entire career fixated on some absurd childish bustleback notions of car design. Take a look at this rendering below, of a V16 concept. It encompasses all that was wrong with GM Design and Kady: it’s absurdly locomotive-size enormous; take a close look at the minute steering wheel and dashboard. And of course it’s utterly garish, camp, childish, and a stylistic mish-mash. It’s from 1967; co parent it to Gandini’s ground-breaking Lamborghini Marzal from the same year:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/design/lamborghini-marzal-the-heartthrob-of-1967/
How do you think Kady would have made out if he had a applied for a job at Pininfarina, Bertone, Ital Design or any other of the European design houses by showing them this rendering of his, as well as some others?
My take on Kady and the fall of GM Design:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/the-cars-of-gm-designer-wayne-kady-slantbacks-and-bustlebacks-from-beginning-to-end/
This car looks like it came straight out of Duckburg.
The following comment was not true: By the ’70s, most Cadillac buyers were not actually that financially carefree (there were a lot of working-class Cadillac owners struggling with home-mortgage-size car notes), but they wanted to look like they didn’t need to worry about splitting the check.
In the 1970s and before if you bought luxury car like a Cadillac, unless it was a company car, you likely had wealth or high income. To finance any new car you had to have a 20% downpayment, and the term was usually 3 years.
If you could not meet the standards you got a less expensive car or a used car.
The issuing of loans (now) at 20% or higher with lengths longer than than expected life of cars to people who don’t meet income or credit standards was not legal (usery laws) like today. Relaxed lending laws has lead to debasement of luxury car prestige because almost anyone who is willing to sign up for crazy rates and long terms can get almost any vehicle.
So in the 1970s and before having a new Cadillac either meant you made it (or had a job with a sound employer who wanted you to look like you made it).
The lending (usery) laws were considered moral laws (going back to the bible), to prevent unscrupulous lenders from taking advantage of people not educated in finance, as well as to keep the banking system sound.
48 month car loans were very much were available in the 1970s, and were quickly becoming more popular. By 1974, even the major captive finance arms of GM, Ford and Chrysler offered longer term (42 and 48 month) loans. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/16/archives/auto-buyers-are-taking-loans-up-to-48-months-to-meet-rising-prices.html
By 1976, over 25% of car loans were 48 or more months, and a number of banks and finance companies were already offering 60 month loans. Full details here: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/FOMC19760614Memo01.pdf
A bank ad offering loans up to 60 months in 1976 is attached below.
Down payments back then were nit rigidly fixed; typically a dollar amount was negotiated. And most buyers had a trade in, which typically negated the need for a down payment at all.
In any case, given the strong rise in average household income during the ’60s and early ’70s, and the increasing affordability of Cadillacs, yes, they were very much accessible to a wide swath of Americans, not just rich ones.
I think General Motors ruined Cadillac by deciding to cash in on big sales in the 70s fundamentally misunderstanding how to sell a luxury item. Once Joe six pack was able to buy a new Cadillac It was only a matter of time. And Cadillac also went down market. If you look at its pricing strategies. You think somewhat at General Motors would know the history of Packard. But General Motors thought it was immune to the normal laws of marketing, I guess.
I was born in 1964 and by the time I was in high school Cadillacs were for old people and generally thought of as tacky.
That picture of the dashboard with all that fake Wood just blows me away who thought fake wood was a good idea and who was impressed by it?
Between the ’76 and ’77 to me it’s all the corners and edges that ruined it. It certainly wasn’t just Cadillac that was afflicted with this disease during that era, but I never liked it. It’s like they had to make everything rectangular to prove it was efficient.
I have always found the 1977 Cadillac blocky and awkward. It’s worst angle is the rear 3/view that shows the beltline dropping from rear to front like stairs tops- rear fenderline drops to windowpane which drops to fenderline. And the too-busy sedan greenhouse. The design improved with the 1980 restyle, but still in a retro kind of way.
Are we far enough out that we can finally agree that the entire CAFE thing was a stupid waste of time and resources. Yes, it forced automakers to downsize in advance of a couple of fuel price scares, but what about when fuel prices went back down? The fact that a stopped clock is right twice a day doesn’t mean that a stopped clock has any real use.
Are we far enough out that we can finally agree that the entire CAFE thing was a stupid waste of time and resources.
Of course it was. A much better solution would have been to raise the federal fuel tax, as high as it took to achieve whatever the strategic energy independence, environmental or geopolitical goal was. The problem with that is that it would have impacted the working poor disproportionately hard, at least in the early years, because they couldn’t afford a new more efficient car and mostly only big inefficient cars were available as cheap used cars. But that would have been resolved within a decade or so and there might have been strategic was to assist them during this transition.
Sure, let folks buy all the big vehicles they want if they’re willing to pay $8/gallon gas. 🙂
I remember a column in the New York Times, about 25 years ago, suggesting that gasoline taxes increase by 10 cents a year to gradually change citizens’ purchasing habits. As it is now, cheap gasoline is a sacred right.
I strongly disagree, but I’m not going get into that here.
I look forward to your CAFE analysis piece. Seriously, get busy!
If you had added a Cimarron as the fourth car in the first group of 3 photos, my conclusion would have been the same. Smaller is better and even more graceful. Sorry to the purists.
I drive a 1978 Cadillac regularly and I have also driven a previous generation car, a 1973 DeVille, owned by my uncle. The downsized car drives much better. It doesn’t bound up and down on bumps, and the structure of the car is much more rigid. The 1973 car feels like it is poorly bolted together by comparison.
A Cadillac is supposed to be a big, comfortable car for cursing down Interstate or transporting Granny to the hair dresser. I don’t know what GM was thinking when it introduced the FWD cars in 1987. Although the cars were well engineered and drove well, buyers didn’t warm up to them.
At the moment Cadillac is trying to compete with the German brands. It’s not working out or them. The only product that sells is the Escalade, which ironically harkens back to Cadillac’s glory years.
> A Cadillac is supposed to be a big, comfortable car for cursing down Interstate
I think you meant *cruising* down the Interstate, although if your Caddy had a V8-6-4 or HT4100 or Oldsmobile diesel you’d probably be cursing down the Interstate too…
Another great article with many points to ponder. I am actually a fan of the ’77 (especially in coupe form), but after reading the “sullen teenager” part, it may be at least a week before I can see the ’77 to ’79s in the same light as before. LOL
I do agree that the angled B-pillar was indelicate. As for the styling of the ’85, I’m always surprised when I read how the measurements of these downsized GM cars of the ’80s stack up against much more attractive contemporaries.
Now this was a highly entertaining and informative Saturday afternoon read! Those FWD Caddies from the eighties….geeeezzz. Even Wartburgs and Trabants were better proportioned. Unbelievable, in that segment of the car market.
The stylists steered the ship up until the 70s. After that product planning drove things, and they were just doing whatever they could to please senior management while also conducting consumer clinics etc. Ass kissing and management buzzword meetings. Nobody with a pair of balls to really make a decision. What you end up with is the Emperors new clothes.
The ’77 wasn’t bad but boring as hell. The ’85 is best left forgotten. The ’76 Seville was really the direction it should have taken. Yes don’t base it on a Nova, IRS, etc. Big tires gave it some presence. My 2 cents thanks Aaron
I had a ’77 for 3 years – got it for 2K quid on Ebay.
That V shaped B pillar always annoyed me – to my eye it looked like one of those dodgy cars you used to read about where the front half of one has been welded to the back half of another.
10 mpg [Imperial] around town, 18 on the motorway, if you were very gentle.
The dashboard struck me as being of very cheap and nasty materials and layout – I had a W126 S klasse Merc at the same time and it was night and day.
Anyway I had my fun with it, it was more reliable than any car I’ve ever had of that age. Sold it for what I paid.
I like the down-sized 1977 model year full-sized Cadillacs. Yes, they were squarer and starchier than their predecessors, but they are still quite handsome. I sort of suspect that some of the squareness and starch was intentional, to emphasize that the cars were smaller and more fuel efficient than their predecessors. I can see some styling influence from the 1975 1/2 Seville (and even the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow which inspired the Seville). I’m sure Cadillac was hoping that people would recognize the resemblance to the Seville and that the Seville sales success would rub off on the down-sized 1977 model year full-sized models.
Yes, the B-pillar on Fleetwood Brougham was awkward. Certainly more awkward than the B-pillar on the Sedan deVille. OTOH, the 1985 FWD C-Body Cadillacs had particularly unfortunate proportions.
Disagree on the 77’s. Agree on the 85’s.
There is a DeVille styling clay that looks very close to the ’77 model except for fender skirts. The wheel openings are lipped, but a few inches lower than the production model, though much higher than on the ’76. It definitely makes for a more formal look. My uncle owned an ’86 DeVille sedan- light sapphire blue metallic with a matching vinyl roof. It didn’t look like a pipe smoking old man’s car. But it was to be his last car, bookended by a teal blue ’53 Roadmaster, an Earl masterpiece. Bill Porter talks about the ’85 C bodies- specifically the Electra, which he he designed. They were trying to get away from the standup radiator shell and other neoclassical symbols Porter felt were worn out. Thus the Electra grille- just a simple horizontal ribbon. The DeVille got the same delicate treatment. Porter said the lower body “power bulge” made it a credible Electra. Cadillac would eventually have to give the deVille a more imposing dome hood to make it a credible Cadillac.
One car not mentioned is the 1992 Seville, which shows how well styling that remains distinctly Cadillac could be in similarly downsized dimensions. I can’t help but wonder how that styling would have been received as a Deville 10 years earlier. By 92 it was too late and on too premium of a model.
I agree with every criticism of the 77, there tends to be a speak no evils attitude regarding the downsized B and C bodies here but I truly think only the Chevys and Buick LeSabre coupes are actually nicer looking cars than their predecessors. Cadillac I never even minded the styling of in gargantuan 71-76 form to begin with, those were let down in quality and materials more than anything and the 77s didn’t really fix that either. The 77s just seemed to shrink the key points of the 76 into the new dimensions and rid it of every last morsel of round from the core 71 design for the true sheer look that, I’m sorry, only ever looked comfortable on the car that started it, the 75 Seville(which is another wrinkle in Mitchell’s untailorable dwarf theory).
All in all though, sociopolitical ramifications aside I do think Cadillac’s should be big. Every luxury brand has(or had) a defining trait and every one that strays from it tends to suffer, whatever happened to Jaguar and Cadillac’s downsizing misadventures are what happen when the good business of chasing volume ultimately destroys the business if unchecked. I think the fact that the 85 is about the size of a W124 is moot when as far as I’m concerned the Deville should have been a W126 S class equal at the time.
I owned a 1976 Sedan de Ville. Best ride. Lots of body flex.
1989 Brougham. Weak Oldsmobile engine. Tight body but stiffer ride.
1989 Coupe de Ville. The 4100 engine had a “liquid” smoothness but it did not ride like a premium car. The stiff struts in the front and the soft independent suspension in the rear interacted to give the feeling of going off the road during turns.
The front half wanted to track properly while the back half wanted to let the car lean and steer from the back end.
The slightly softer lines of the ’86 Oldsmobile Delta 88 and Buick LeSabre are better than the lines on the ’85 Cadillac. I came to really like the two door versions of the Buick.
But even though the ’85 Cadillac styling was too ‘strict’ I still prefer this styling over its ‘Art & Science’ styling. It’s like Cadillac used the Have Blue ‘hopeless diamond’ F117 prototype as inspiration. Too many angles that don’t go together.
One thing I’ve never understood about the ’77-’79 Fleetwoods is the tapering B-Pillar. As far as I know they used the Sedan de Ville body, and the while the SdV B-Pillar was angled backwards, it was constant dimension. So did they whip up a special B-PIllar and upper rear door frame and rear window for the Fleetwood, or is there some other trickery going on here?
In any case, in 1980 they gave up all pretense of Bill Mitchell’s original Sixty Special and just went with a straight drip rail and conventional B-Pillar.
Here’s a profile view of a ’77 Sedan de Ville for comparison. Note that it seems to have less exposed metal in its upper door frames as well.
On the surface of it, that does appear to be some rather expensive tooling changes, (pillar structure, window frame) for a visually questionable result. It’s one of those things that just makes me shake my head. So many other things they could have done…..
A great article, Aaron. I’m glad to see someone else question these redesigns. And I agree about Mitchell’s comment; it speaks more of his limitations as a designer than about his talent.
I think Gm’s big failure with the downsized ’77s was to make the cars so rectangular, so squarish. Sure the squarish shape emphasizes the idea of efficiency, which was the driving concept behind the design – but there is only so much you can do with an unadorned box. GM styling was long accustomed to working with thick body sections and deep curves; take away that parameter from their tool set and the designers seemed to be at a loss for how to meaningfully differentiate the five brands.
They kept to the same basic proportions, but a lot more could have been done. Overhang front and rear could have been chopped – but at the risk of making it look like an Oldsmobile or worse, I guess. They overdid the squareness, the flat sides, the boxy roof; for a car that big, the ‘77s passenger compartment looked visually squeezed; not what you want for a prestige car. And that wonky B-pillar doesn’t help; it just looks wrong. Overall, they’d have done better to use a longer wheelbase; surely interior roominess is the essence of prestige that counts, rather than useless overhang?
The ’85 reminds me of Issigonis’ Austin/Morris 1800; practical, but no looker; almost styling be hanged. Packaging über alles, one might say.
The 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic does look pretty good, I think. It’s taken me a long, long time to come around on those because I can count on one hand the number of times in the past 35 years that I’ve seen one of those Chevy B-bodies NOT wearing a light bar (which is to say it’s a shape that has always made me twitch, especially when it appeared in the rear view mirror!). But, I think the Chevrolet successfully applied the “Sheer Look” of the 1976 Seville on a larger scale: There was a tautness to the shape and a fluidity to the surfaces that had just a daub of Fiat 130 Coupé Pininfarina rather than looking like it was styled with a T-square. The Caprice coupe also looked better than a Coupe de Ville, which strikes me as a bit shameful.
I always assumed that at least part of the reason that Cadillac continued the RWD C-bodies for so long after their prime had a lot to do with the commercial car market. Limousine and hearse builders had a much easier time stretching RWD BOF cars than the FWD models, and the buyers were there. So as long as they were continuing to offer the commercial chassis, extending the life of the “civilian” model cost Cadillac just about nothing, even though it wasn’t selling all that well towards the end of the run.
To some extent, but they still sold 40,260 of them in 1989, 33,741 in 1990, and 27,231 in 1991. That’s about twice the volume of the ’70s Fleetwood Brougham, and way more than would be absorbed by commercial car builders.
Lots of subtle inflections in this story.
For me, I felt Cadillac did a very good job with the ’77 De Ville. If fact, GM did a great job with all the B & C models in 1977. So good, that Ford followed suit with the Panther platform in ’79.
No doubt that MB, BMW, & Audi were coming on strong in the premium luxury field at this time, but Cadillac held its ground in this size class. Still aspirational, still desirable, still prized to have in one’s driveway.
Things went south with the Diesel, TH 4100, and the ’85 De Ville which have been extensively covered on this website.
Give credit where credit is due.
Unfortunately, GM and Cadillac lost their way in the 80’s.
Those little FWD cars were funny looking, and GM just LOVED that vertical back window on a bunch of their cars in that era. They also were too narrow to make a good funeral coach, the rear strut towers were too close together so an enhanced width casket was a tight fit. The proportions were wrong too, made an awkward funeral coach and lousy limousine. I will admit that the FWD cars drove out nicely, they weren’t as loose and sloppy as the big boy RWD models.