In 1968, the Cadillac Sedan de Ville faced one of its toughest critics: Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, which normally didn’t rate luxury cars at all. They came away impressed in some important areas, but they found the Cadillac “something of a disappointment” considering its lofty price, and they disputed the conventional wisdom that its resale value made it an above-average automotive investment.
Consumer Reports has long gotten a bad rap from auto enthusiasts. The mission of Consumers Union (CU), the parent organization, is to provide a rational, even scientific counterpoint to the endless hype of advertising and marketing spin. Thus, its new car evaluations have usually prioritized functionality, safety, and cost of ownership over power, prestige, and sex appeal, which enthusiasts tend to read as scolding nannyism. In the ’60s and ’70s, CU often harshly judged or simply ignored the sporty specialty models the car magazines loved, and seldom issued detailed ratings for high-end luxury models beyond a few passing critical remarks.
So, why was CU testing a new Cadillac De Ville for the first time in five years? They explained:
Although the high price of a Cadillac puts it out of most people’s reach, CU cannot ignore the car entirely. For one thing, the manufacturer’s boast that the Cadillac is “the standard of the world” demands the scrutiny of a testing organization: If Cadillac is indeed a yardstick against which to measure the performance of other cars. CU’s testers should know about it. For another thing, the luxury of Cadillac ownership extends beyond the realm of sheiks, undertakers and corporation presidents. With 200,000 sales a year, Cadillac ranks 11th among U.S. makes, not only way ahead of its price peers, Lincoln and Imperial, but also ahead of the lower-priced Chrysler. Finally, there is a question of economics. If you have the initial capital, is a Cadillac a superior “investment”— will it depreciate less than other cars?
I’ve noticed over the years that Cadillac depreciation has become the stuff of legends, spawning the popular belief that its high resale value would offset the higher initial price of a Cadillac relative to upper-middle-class models like the Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight or Buick Electra 225. CU pointed out that this was only true in a very limited sense:
Cadillacs do not justify themselves economically as superior cars in the trade-in market unless you trade them in every year [my emphasis]; then, overlooking the extra initial outlay and its interest-earning potential, you might pay no more for each new car than for a make ordinarily priced at $2500 less than a Cadillac. But if you bought a new car every two or three years, you would have to lay out considerably more cash each time than you would for even a medium-priced car. In short, dollar depreciation is larger than average for a Cadillac more than one year old. [My emphasis.]
I think the relatively low initial depreciation was due to high demand for new Cadillacs driving up the prices of late-model used ones. After a year, the value of a used Cadillac as a percentage of its initial price quickly fell more in line with other high-end cars. The following table shows some comparative Kelly Blue Book wholesale (trade-in) values for Cadillac, Buick, and Oldsmobile four-door hardtops. (List prices include air conditioning and AM radio.)
| Model | List Price | Trade-In Value, After 1 Year | % Retained Value | Total Dollar Depreciation | Trade-In Value, After 2 Years | % Retained Value | Total Dollar Depreciation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1968 Cadillac Sedan de Ville 4HT | $6,463 | $4,200 | 65.0% | $2,263 | $3,250 | 50.3% | $3,213 |
| 1968 Buick Electra 225 Custom 4HT | $5,139 | $3,025 | 58.9% | $2,114 | $2,350 | 45.7% | $2,789 |
| 1968 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight 4HT | $4,944 | $2,860 | 57.8% | $2,084 | $2,350 | 47.5% | $2,594 |
| 1968 Lincoln Continental 4SD | $6,634 | $3,700 | 55.8% | $2,934 | $2,900 | 43.7% | $3,734 |
| 1968 Imperial Crown 4HT | $6,774 | $3,550 | 52.4% | $3,224 | $2,500 | 36.9% | $4,274 |
After two years, the De Ville would still be worth more than an Electra 225 or Ninety-Eight, but it actually depreciated considerably more in dollars than either (albeit a good deal less than a Lincoln or Imperial). To put it another way, the two-year depreciation on a 1968 Sedan de Ville was close to the average transaction price of all new cars sold in the U.S. at the time! As CU remarked, “Buyers of Cadillacs must face the unyielding fact that they are very expensive cars,” and that included depreciation as well as everything else. So much for the legend.
In keeping with their usual practice, CU bought a new Sedan de Ville from a regular dealer, rather than asking for one from a manufacturer test fleet. The sticker price, with automatic climate control, power seat, and other extras, came to $7,016, although they negotiated a final price of $6,100 (a relative worth of about $62,500 in 2025 dollars), “indicating that Cadillacs, too, can be discounted to customers.” Still, $6,100 was still quite a lot of money in 1968, and given the price, CU was disappointed. “Although in some respects it did outperform cars for which you’d pay from $2500 to $3500 less,” they said, “nothing about the car required us to raise our test standards higher than those by which we judge other cars.”
So, what did they like about it?
As expected, passenger accommodations were more luxurious than those of medium-priced full-sized sedans. Seating comfort up front was judged solidly good. Even the center of the front bench provided a fairly decent place to sit; a low transmission hump on the floor ahead minimized the usual loss of leg room there, and the middle seat itself was well cushioned. In back, fore-and-aft roominess exceeded the average for full-sized cars and gave ample knee room. But because the center of the rear seat was not so hospitably cushioned, rear seat comfort was downrated one notch, to fair-to-good. Ease of access to the front and rear compartments was judged satisfactory.
(These pages are from microfilm, so the B&W photos were pretty hopeless, but the pictures at the bottom are explained by the caption: “The Cadillac’s left-front brake tended to lock in CU’s brake tests, making the tire skid. No serious problem—but hard on the tire (see right).”)
CU found that the De Ville rode quite well when lightly laden:
Above all else we expected a Cadillac to ride quietly and well. The car tested generally fulfilled that hope. It came through the lightly loaded (three occupants) ride test with a rating of very good. A car could have ranked slightly higher than that and still have remained inside the CU test parameters. But the Cadillac’s ride was the best we have ever experienced in a lightly loaded car. While passengers would have been aware of small motions, the sensation would rarely have been one of discomfort. Large undulations in the road surface produced a slow floating motion. Only certain large bumps on our test circuit disturbed the poise of the car, and then only for an instant. Even over the most irregular road surfaces, our Cadillac test car did not transmit any bothersome motion to the driver or to passengers.
They were not so pleased with how their Cadillac behaved when fully laden. One of the usual arguments for buying a full-size car over an intermediate or compact sedan was greater interior space, but if you used all that space, the limitations of the soft suspension quickly became apparent:
When the Cadillac was loaded to the manufacturer’s claimed carrying capacity (six people plus 200 pounds of luggage, the riding qualities deteriorated. The car did not rest on its rear suspension bumpers, as so many other cars have done when fully loaded, but during the ride test the Cadillac bottomed at the rear in snappy fashion. The more severe portions of the test circuit then caused noticeable distress. Over the largest test bump, such underbody parts as the front crossmember, the muffler and the fuel tank hit the road surface hard enough to cause scrapes. All in all, the ride at full load was judged only fair. In that respect, we found the Cadillac to be actually inferior to the 1968 Ford Galaxie 500 and Dodge Dart sedans.
Cadillac offered automatic level control across the line in 1968, for $78.95 extra. I’m assuming the CU test car didn’t have it; it might have helped.
As long as the suspension wasn’t bottoming, the interior was impressively quiet:
Throughout the ride test, the Cadillac remained quiet. With the windows rolled up, we could detect little noise from wind, road surface or the mechanical components of the car. The combination of comfortable seating, well-controlled ride and low noise level makes the Cadillac an excellent car for long trips, so long as the car is not fully loaded.
They also found the automatic climate control (a $515.75 option specified by 95.9 percent of buyers in 1968) effective and easy to use, although it “sometimes went haywire.”
It won’t surprise anyone to hear that they found Cadillac’s high-speed handling mediocre, succumbing to heavy understeer and “considerable moaning, scrubbing, and rolling-under of tires.” Their testers found the De Ville could also get its tail out if they didn’t maintain a consistent throttle position through a hard turn.
Their testers had mixed feelings about the variable-ratio power steering. It was quick enough to make for easier maneuvering in town, but they found the lack of road feel made it “difficult to estimate just how far the steering wheel would have to be turned in order to control the car accurately in a high-speed turn.”
1968 was the first year for the new 472 cid (7,734 cc) Cadillac V-8, which provided excellent all-around performance. “It accelerated this 2½-ton machine as fast as any of our [1968] test sedans, and it provided more potent passing ability than most cars,” they said. CU recorded 0 to 60 mph in 10 seconds flat, and the quarter mile in 17.5 seconds at 84 mph. (Keep in mind this was Consumer Reports, not Hi-Performance Cars or Hot Rod!) They were also pleased with the powertrain’s manners, noting, “The quiet, unobtrusive way in which the Cadillac unleashed its power was the most impressive part of its performance.”
The downside, predictably, was very heavy thirst. “The constant-speed results were not so bad, but in traffic the mileage dropped sharply,” CU warned. “We would expect gas mileage in normal use to be about 7 to 15 miles per gallon.”
CU’s biggest performance objection to the Cadillac was the limitations of its brakes. Front discs were newly optional on the full-size cars in 1968, for an extra $105.25, but the CU car had the standard drums. “We rated them only fair overall,” they wrote. “On the plus side, fade resistance was very good and recovery from fade was quick. On the negative side, brake-pedal effort was too low, and … it was difficult to make a moderately hard stop without skidding the wheels.” They questioned why front discs aren’t standard. (Both Lincoln and Imperial offered standard front disc brakes by this time.)
This was also the first year of the new federal safety standards, and CU found the Cadillac’s cabin generally well-designed to minimize injury. However, they were annoyed that “the front-fender tips, grille nose and rear-fender tips are pointed hostilely at pedestrians.”
Their car — which, mentioned earlier, was a typical showroom example, not a press car — had better-than-average assembly quality, but that still fell several steps short of “outstanding”:
The Cadillac was not delivered in defect-free condition, though it was in better shape than most other cars in this year’s tests. Most of the Cadillac’s 21 defects were relatively minor: poor trim fits, water leaks and mechanical maladjustments. But the car did have one nasty problem. Every now and then it simply refused to start. No cause had been found at this writing, though we suspect the trouble was unrelated to the exhaust-emission-control system. Also, the air-conditioner’s automatic-temperature control system sometimes went haywire. Other little details of workmanship bespoke carelessness unbecoming to any new car, let alone one purporting to set a quality standard.
When this review was published, it was too soon for CU to weigh in on the repair record of the 1968 models, but the following year’s summary rated the 1968 C-body Cadillac better than average. Its reliability wasn’t exceptional in most areas, but there were no glaring weaknesses, which brought up its weighted average. However, elsewhere in the text of this article, CU warned that for parts or body repairs not covered by warranty, a Cadillac tended to be costlier to fix than other marques, even though it didn’t require any special or unusual maintenance.
They concluded:
Summing up, the Cadillac offers a smooth, quiet ride, good accommodations, effortless performance and adequate handling—but barely adequate power drum brakes. That combination of qualities does not seem to merit the extra price over and above that of other full-sized automobiles. Nor can you expect resale value high enough to offset the high initial purchase price. There remains the matter of prestige value. That each man must judge for himself.
This echoed CU’s sentiments about medium-priced cars like full-size Buicks or Oldsmobiles: The CU automotive testers didn’t necessarily DISLIKE such models or think they were bad cars, but CU regularly concluded that the more expensive cars didn’t offer enough benefits to justify their higher prices, except in subjective areas like styling and badge cachet, which CU didn’t presume to judge.
Of course, many Americans of this era had no difficulty weighing the prestige of the Cadillac nameplate, As CU noted at the outset, sales were robust: a record 230,003 for the model year, 164,472 of those the De Ville, including 72,662 Sedan de Ville four-door hardtops.
Related Reading
1968 Cadillac de Ville Convertible: Casting A Long Shadow (by Ed Stembridge)
1968 And 1969 Cadillac Coupe De Ville: Were These The Tipping Point For Cadillac Quality And Style? (by me)
Curbside Classic: 1968 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special Brougham – Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This (by Jason Shafer)
The Caribe Aqua car featured above is obviously an early production ’68. No front seat headrests, which I believe became mandatory starting January 1st, 1968.
It was a year later than that: FMVSS 202 became effective January 1, 1969, so head restraints weren’t required until midway through the 1969 model year. (They were standard on all 1969 Cadillacs.)
My late build ’68 Wildcat does not have headrests.
“69.
I think it was front shoulder restraints that were required on 1/1/68, and headrests were 1/1/69.
Yep, and I mixed those two up!
Considering that their favorite car, for more than one model year, was the joyless automotive penalty box Rambler American, their limited praise of this Cadillac is not at all surprising.
I don’t remember that being the case. But I do recall CU’s preference in the early 1970s for the Dodge Dart and Plymouth Valiant sedans as good choices for a small family that only needed one car.
I think it was more the early/mid 60’s that CU preferred Ramblers, but by the late 60’s, that preference shifted towards Mopar’s A-bodies.
The magazine liked the Mopar A-bodies best after 1962. The 1963 and later models were improved (with much better build quality), and they regularly scored first among compacts.
Interestingly, the Mopar intermediates also scored first in their segment after their debut in 1965.
In the full-size segment, the magazine generally rated the Ford first from 1965-70. Before that, they preferred the Chevrolet.
CU was very disgruntled with the late ’60s Chevrolet, in large part because it had a truly terrible repair record in their survey data.
Our 1967 Chevy Bel Air had build quality issues and it proved to be unreliable. I wonder if it was built in Tarrytown, NY, one of the GM plants with the most dismal record at the time.
If the starting problem was hot restarts, that was a common issue with giant engine high compression GM cars of that era. Dad’s Olds Toronado and two Buick Electra owners I knew had the issue. Extra large Delco starter was heat soaked by proximity to exhaust. Copper does not conduct as well when hot, and Michigan engineers fretted about cold starting. An oversize diesel engine battery cable solved it for us.
I never did like the rather skinny C Pillars on this generation of Cadillacs. I attempted to correct that on my photo, which I think gives the car an improved roof to body proportion as well as a more overall flowing and unified loolk.
Nice. I agree that it’s an improvement.
Rocker molding added. C Pillar trim added. Body side molding removed. Sort of like a sleek Fleedwood.
+1. It suffers the same problem as the recently-featured 68 Caprice formal-roof coupe (and Cadillac same) in that the profile proportions simply don’t work. I’d rather have a six window Cadillac saloon than this four, but this four-door instead of the formal roof two-doors from either marque. Or perhaps Bill’s very nicely considered re-proportioning.
Enthusiasts tend to rag on CU reviews but I find them quite fair and a badly-needed reality check against the often emotion-driven reviews in other sources.
Good to see some more detailed info on the resale values. And I’m a bit surprised at the deal CU got on their car; I thought that was hard to do on a Caddy back then due to the strong demand. That kind of discount must have made it possible to resale or trade in for even money after one year.
CU made a point of avoiding conflicts of interest, inherent with any periodical reviewing cars of makes they advertise.
At this late a date, the “Standard of the World” still made customers pay extra for front disc brakes..
Skimping on braking power continues: German car brands tend to have more disc brake area than others. I don’t know if this is a German consumer or bureaucratic preference.
I do enjoy CU, from their reviews to their YouTube channel. I do have to question their data collection though. Having received the surveys as a subscriber, I have an inclination to fill out sections either where I have experienced a superior product or an inferior one.
Basically, the same idea – you tell everyone about how bad something is, tell some people about how much you love it, and ignore the middle.
I do like how they buy cars off the lot, no “factory specials” and talk more about normal people use cars. It is a good source of info but should not be the only one.
What an achingly beautiful car; it nearly makes my heart sing. Though to be honest, I prefer the ’67.
I wouldn’t expect Consumer Reports to appreciate a carriage-trade maker. These are brands which appeal to emotions, instead of logic. Nobody *needs* a Cadillac.
Think the “65-7’s”, were likely built better.
Our next door neighbor loved Cadillac, but as a retired engineer, never bought new. He would buy a 2-yr old, low mileage and would shop for weeks until he found the right one.
I guess his process worked: his wife drove the car to work and never had any issues. She would drive it the proscribed (by him) miles, then the process would start all over. She’d giggle that Caddy shopping and rose pruning were his primary retirement activities.
This was a wise choice on his part — let the original owner take the depreciation hit and then carefully select the best 2-year-old Caddy to purchase.
How is any new car an “investment”? lol
I always say “capital, expenditure”.
One really had to be a Mopar fan to excuse the stunning depreciation on the Imperial.
Too many years of odd styling and inconsistent quality control most likely hampered public perception of the Imperial. Plus, people still referred to them as Chrysler Imperials, even if the Imperial was technically a separate brand during this era. The Chrysler brand did not have the status of Cadillac or even Lincoln.
Regardless of any of the review’s ‘complaints’, I’d love to own one of these. Love this color too.
” a record 230,003 for the model year”. Good ole days indeed, for Cadillac (and US cars in general).
Is that a telescopic – but not tilt – wheel? Don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.
The thing is, CR’s judgement was as subjective as any.
To them, the price of the SdV “does not seem to merit the extra price over and above that of other full-sized automobiles”, but in the article they clearly demonstrated that there would be several buyer demographics able to find justification for buying a Cadillac without even looking at prestige. It had:
– a more luxurious interior than those of the medium-priced cars,
– the best ride ever tested by them when not at full load,
– the best straight line performance they had recorded in a sedan.
It may not have been enough for CR, but with different priorities one could reasonably assume that a Cadillac would be worth the extra money over a medium-priced car.
Consumer Reports gets a lot of flack, but they gather data better than any other rating organisation. When I was running a garage, I would use CR’s ratings to order parts to keep in stock. When they uncovered the THM 200 debacle, I went out and bought as many THM 350 cores as I could get.
Guys can become very emotionally attached to the vehicles and when CR rates their baby poorly, they get all upset. They go get their trucks repaired and then never tell their friends. Of course, the car companies know this. In my case, I know that I drive a car with mediocre reliability and budget accordingly.
We had a family friend who always drove two year old Cadillacs. He reasoned that said car was no more expensive than a new Chevy and he had a good point.
Consumers Reports was good at conveying objective data, and that is very useful to have available. However they never could convey how important the styling, or emotional response that a certain car elicited from the public was. That is totally subjective and it varied for every buyer. I have an issue from early ’70’s, a compilation of reports on American cars. I was not surprised that they “hated’ 100% of the cars that I loved. Those were the impractical luxury and personal luxury, as well as sporty Pony cars. However looking at these cars from Forty years in the future, they still didn’t seem that bad. In fact, they looked better than when they were new. At least for me.
This is interesting because in the 1950s, CU rated Cadillac as a Best Buy in the luxury class, year after year. This was based on the car’s very good overall performance, high quality, freedom from repair, and very low depreciation. Cadillac resale value was the highest, thus making Cadillac ownership “not as costly as its list price would suggest.”
1950s Cadillacs did most things well, but it is a “middle-of-the-road” design. Competing cars were better in some respects, but Cadillac had a good general excellence: “It rides well, but not as well as Packard [thru ’56] or Imperial; it handles well, but not as well as Lincoln or Imperial; and it does not take off with Buick’s smoothness. But no other car does all things as well as Cadillac.” In CU’s view, competing cars had certain other disadvantages which prevented them from being #1.
So CU goes from really liking Cadillac to sort of “damning with faint praise”. I wonder why the change?
What changed? The low price cars got so much better there was less difference between them and a Cadillac. Think of a ’53 Chevy and a ’53 Cadillac. There was a world of difference in their performance in every way. The Cadillac was vastly faster, rode vastly better, had much better brakes, had a much bigger and better interior, etc..
Now compare this with a nicely optioned ’68 Caprice. Not very much difference at all. The additional price wasn’t with it, objectively speaking (which is what CU does).
And this is why affluent buyers were starting to snap up Mercedes, because a Caddy was so obviously just a more expensive Chevy. This is the story of Cadillac in a nutshell.
This also explains why the medium price makes were squeezed out with the first cracks appearing during the 1957-58 recession. Edsel never got out of the starting gate. DeSoto, Mercury, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac went extinct; Dodge supplanted Plymouth as the Mopar low-priced brand. Buick survived only because of its popularity in China.
So now the larger car makers offer a lower price line and a luxury line, for example Toyota and Lexus.
Paul: Ah, yes–that makes sense.
Being “the Best Buy’ in the luxury class does not mean that it is a good buy vs a low or medium priced car.
I believe this and the ’68 Fury were the last cars with the stacked headlights.
The 1968 AMC Ambassador had stacked headlights, too.
Lovely automobile, but geez, look at those tiny front doors! Did the folks in Flint lay out and implement the overall design and someone say “oops -we forgot to consider front doors!” too late. Very unbalanced to the eye.
The legendary Russell Brockbank had a cartoon in R&T long, long ago, with two of his veddy veddy British chums in the foreground, while off in the distance were some men in white lab coats pushing cars of a cliff. The caption: “I see Consumer Reports is testing cars again!”
I doubt many who bought these new cared about financial ROI. Implying “I have arrived” is another perception of ROI.
It is, but as CU said, the idea that Cadillac’s extraordinary resale value compensated for its price premium over a mid-price brand was and remains a popular rationalization, to the extent that I’ve continued to see people repeating it on this website in the past 12 months.
CU’s two biggest complaints (weak brakes and the suspension having difficulty with a full load) could both be mitigated with a check of an option box (front disks and auto-leveling suspension), which they didn’t make clear in their conclusion. They actually make the big Cadillac seem like a good, if expensive, choice.