In May 1971, Motor Trend was deliberately provocative with an article comparing the best-selling product from General Motors’ prestige division with the prestige product from the company’s best selling division. It was an audacious challenge of the Luxury Segment status quo, calling into question the supremacy of America’s favorite luxury car. Little did MT know how prescient they would be.
First a bit of context is in order, since it has been so long since Cadillac has been viewed as a leading, desirable luxury brand. However, at the dawn of the 1970s, the world was a different place and Cadillac absolutely, unequivocally dominated the American luxury car market, gobbling up the vast majority of sales and certainly being top of mind for most Americans as the nation’s leading luxury car.
The closest modern equivalent I can think of is Tesla and that brand’s unmatched dominance of the EV market. Sure, there are more EV competitors than ever, but Tesla still gets plenty of attention. You can argue that Tesla has enjoyed genuine product superiority in ways that Cadillac never did even at the brand’s prime, but from an image standpoint, both brands command (or used to command in Caddy’s case) immense reputational value.
However, even the Tesla comparison fails to capture the power of the Cadillac brand at its peak. While Tesla Is dominant in California (~50% of Tesla’s U.S. sales in that one state) and strong in affluent, trendy urban markets across the country, the EV luxury brand has not been broadly embraced coast-to-coast. In contrast, Cadillac was known as THE luxury “statement” car from the skyscraper canyons of Manhattan to the sleepiest hamlet in Mississippi. Wherever you went in America in the early 1970s, there was no avoiding the fact that Cadillac was still viewed as the country’s preeminent luxury conveyance, the car for “rich people” whether they were actually wealthy or not.
Of course that didn’t mean that everyone loved Cadillac at the time. The brand was polarizing, to say the least (again like Tesla). By virtue of being big and brash, Cadillac was also portrayed as the epitome of wasteful gluttony. VW spoofed Cadillac in advertising, to the delight of the countercultural target audience. Many buff books were also not necessarily fans. Cadillac was antithetical to everything Road & Track represented. Car and Driver lampooned Cadillac cars—and Cadillac owners. But Motor Trend, that bastion of industry cheerleaders?
Yet it was none other than Motor Trend that brazenly broke the taboo on the Cadillac mystique. Of course many people already knew that Cadillac had plenty in common with Chevrolet, and for years Chevrolet had been aping Cadillac design. But to call it out directly, with the price spread and all? That was like ripping the curtain back on the Wizard of Oz and exposing the almighty image as something created via smoke and mirrors, with a rather pedestrian man (GM bean counter perhaps?) doing the manipulation.
For starters, to put the headline in context, that $3,500 in 1971 represents an inflation adjusted $27,745 today. That was quite a bit of coin! Plus, the Chevrolet was moving closer than ever to Cadillac in terms of styling and features. So the Cadillac had better build quality than Chevrolet (though not necessarily better than VW’s) and posher trim, but as Motor Trend would note, that seemed like a steep price to pay for superficial trappings.
Adjusting for inflation, the $5,550 Caprice would be $43,996 in today’s dollars, while the $9,081 DeVille would ring in at $71,987, an enormous mark-up. Cadillac also charged a healthy premium for options coming straight from the GM parts bin. The margin-rich vinyl roof cost 30% more on the Cadillac, while cruise control was 32% higher than Chevrolet’s price. Even the tinted glass was 14% more expensive on the Caddy. Rich gravy is great when you can get it!
No surprise that the lighter Caprice turned-in faster 0-60 times than the Sedan DeVille. Otherwise they were comparable in terms of braking and general performance (the Chevy being a bit firmer, likely due to the test car carrying the optional heavy duty suspension). Neither car offered the sort of responsiveness or practical space utilization that was rapidly coming into fashion for the U.S. market in the early 1970s.
Most importantly, Mercedes-Benz was beginning to challenge Cadillac’s image supremacy in the U.S. By 1971 even Elvis had ditched Cadillac for a sedan from Stuttgart. But rather than understanding how the high end of the U.S. luxury market was evolving and then developing credible responses to the changing tastes of luxury customers, GM did the opposite and allowed its flagship brand to come ever closer to its volume offerings. Great for short-term profits, horrible for long-term brand health.
It’s been decades now since Cadillac has even known what it stands for or what it wants to be. About 20 years after the Germans (and later the Japanese) had thoroughly reshaped the American luxury market, Cadillac tried frantically to copy BMW cars, wasting billions of dollars in failed attempts to convince people to pick a pseudo-German luxury sport sedan from Detroit rather than a real one from Germany. All the while, the high-end market was shifting away from sports sedan performance and toward comfort-oriented luxury SUVs, an area where the Cadillac brand could have had a definitive lead. If Cadillac’s sports sedan development monies had instead gone to creating world-class SUVs to rival/beat the likes of Range Rover, BMW X5, Mercedes GL, Audi Q7 et al, the brand might find itself in a far different and better place today. But instead Cadillac once again copped out and rebranded a Chevy as its flagship product.
Sadly, the only approach that has really worked for Cadillac in recent decades was the one so clearly in view in 1971: building a premium Chevrolet and charging an obscene fortune for it. Not for a significantly better vehicle, mind you, just for the bragging rights of paying “the most,” which appeals to people wanting to trumpet that they have money to burn on frivolous trappings. For example, let’s look at Tahoe and Escalade that arrived in 2021, which adhere strictly to the 50-year-old formula: better trim and a posher interior for the Cadillac, only now GM doesn’t even bother with meaningful exterior styling differentiation for its top-of-the-line offerings. So the more things change the more they stay the same, and the reign of Chevrollac carries on, even though the once great Cadillac brand reputation is dead and gone.
Note: a rerun of an older post.
Additional reading:
Curbside Classic: 1972 Cadillac Coupe DeVille – The First Curbside Classic, Ten Years Later by Paul Niedermeyer
Curbside Classic: 1972 Chevrolet Caprice – Cadillac Carbon Copy? by Tom Klockau
Dad bought a 1971 Cadillac Sedan deVille. It proved to be down-market., a Big Chevy in a way that his 1966 was not so much. The one that displayed Cadillac over Chevrolet was his 1963 Cadillac.
It was not performance that set the 1964 apart. A Chevrolet with an optional 327 could run with it, even a smidgen faster. It was craftsmanship, quality of materials, a conservative design that did not shout out because it didn’t have to.
Over the years the glitz grew in Chevrolets and Cadillac had to try to keep pace even as GM bean counters cheapened the quality of the product to maintain its profit margin. At the same time, I did notice that Lincoln didn’t do so much the same vis-a-vis the Brougham champion, Ford.
You can add to the Chevrolet Tahoe every option that is in the Cadillac including the 6.2 liter engine & power running boards and still pocket $15-20 grand. It’s an insult to intelligence.
A Cadillac had had a larger radiator, alternator and AC system. Also a couple hundred pounds of that extra weight was sound deadening. The doors made a different sound when you closed them and the power windows went up faster. The extra length in the front end put the transmission further from the firewall leaving a smaller hump inside. There were a lot of other differences but the point is you got something for your money.
The most blatant styling copy was the 1963 Impala from the 1961 Cadillac. The front grille and the lower side skeg.
In the 70s Cadillac appealed more to the nouveau riche. Old money gravitated to Mercedes and later BMW.
Old Money, particularly the horsey set, will still buy big SUVs from GM (often after one trouble prone dalliance with a Range Rover). But it’ll invariably be a Chevy or GMC, the Escalade is too associated with car services.
I live on the north shore of Boston not far from said horsey set and you are right on. Full Size SUVs from GMC or Chevy. Rivian’s have lately done well there as well. And there are the Range Rovers but as you said, a temporary fascination.
Once you experience the large tires and greater ground clearance of an SUV or truck in the snow, the appeal of the full size car has suffered.
The Escalade is also associated with the NBA and rap community.
I really appreciate this article. As I said in my article about my dad’s last Cadillac (cream puff or lemon) he had a mentality (maybe others echoed it as well) that you had arrived when you could afford a Cadillac. Clearly it was spending money stupidly. My 75 Caprice was a better car than his 76 Cadillac hands down.
And, other than a telescope wheel and cornering lamps (and a few other silly things like the thermometer on the mirror) a Caprice could be nicely loaded up.
For a while, I thought that achieving a Cadillac would show that “I’d made it.” Now I enjoy my 78 fleetwood for the reason that it’s a classic- not a pretentious thing.
Great article. I can remember my dad being teased- even laughed at- by younger drivers of VW’s and MG’s.
Touching on the modern Cadillac brand, it is obvious they have lost their way. The only model that makes any money is the Escalade, which is what a Cadillac should be: luxurious, softly sprung for ride quality and adequately powerful. The rest are trying to compete with BMW, which is not what Cadillac buyers want. Lexus has taken a lot of these customers with their ever so soft ES350.
It is sad to see the end of, not just the full-sized luxury sedan, but sedans and conventional automobiles in general. The only full-sized luxury sedans (excluding that are left are BMW 7-series, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, and the Genesis G90. I’ve always thought of the Lexus ES as being more of a mid-sized car, originally smaller and cheaper than the top-of-the line LS and cheaper than the mid-sized GS, but it has grown in size so I guess you can now consider it full-sized. In concept the Lexus ES has evolved into something akin to the now discontinued cars such as the Cadillac XTS or the Lincoln MKS and the last Lincoln Continental.
Your comparison of the current Lexus ES to the Cadillacs of days gone by is apt. The Camry-based Lexus is not unlike the Chevy-based Cadillac in concept.
In spite of the comments and opinions, Cadillac still sold very well, even with higher gas prices. The smaller Cadillac, the new 1976 Seville was a big sales success, made tones of money for GM. This went on until Cadillac super shrunk their new models, then the buyers revolted.
I began my fascination with automobiles in an auspicious year: 1969. GM had allowed Chevrolet to catch up with and pass Cadillac, not so much by improving the former but by devaluing the latter. The curb appeal of the “Standard of the World” had been shed, season by season, beginning with the vertical headlights, then the jewel-like taillights, and ultimately the V on the crest. Meanwhile the Chevrolet’s jib got a crisper cut, every year from 1967 to 1971. The Cadillac started to be thought of as a silly person’s car, whereas the Chevy offered looks, luxury, and value.
Of course between these two vehicles, Pontiac, Buick and Oldsmobile provided incremental trade offs between value and luxury brand name bragging rights.
Today, you can have the same debate over Honda vs. Acura and Toyota vs. Lexus.
In 1971, there was not a bad-looking B-body. Plenty big, but they wore their heft gracefully.
Unfortunately, it seems the Japanese mind fails to grasp the Western concept of ‘badge (snob) engineering.
Hence the names are interchangeable in other parts of the world and one got the ludicrous situation where the Acura RL and Honda Legend were sold for the same price in Russia…Acura soon retired hurt. I think that’s where they really failed to create a separate identity or POINT to Acura – Lexus fared a bit better with their Vanden Plas Toyotas.
I remember in over here how Chrysler eventually gave up the blatant badge-engineering and four brands became different trim grades of Hillman Hunter. OK, the Humber did continue as well.
At least there remained some attempt at differentiation in Detroit, whereas our cars were essentially identical.
I’ve always wondered for how long can VAG get away with it? I suppose they are expert at pretending a German car is a Spanish or Czech one and that’s different…
I think one can get away with it when older people remember when a marque really was something special. Like Cadillac, Lancia, Jaguar, etc…
But eventually those people end up very dead and so does the marque.
What was the reason for using a “4dor, Caddy” vs the “2dor Chevy”?
Probably just the press car pool. Those were the ones available at the time MT needed them.
The end of an era and a sad thing it was .
-Nate
My dad had a ’69 Sedan De Ville, in the (IMHO) awful avacado green that was for some reason popular back then. A friend of mine’s parents didn’t have the money my parents did, so they bought a fairly loaded ’70 Caprice. I rode in it many times and eventually drove it a couple of times, and almost instantly, I couldn’t understand the point of the Cadillac. I thought, and still do, that it was uglier than the Chevy. The Chevy rode fine, just not as “boaty” as the Caddy. The interior was slightly nicer, but after seeing the price difference, I just couldn’t see the point of buying a Caddy versus the Chevy, or the Buick or Olds. If I was buying a “family Sedan” back then, the Ford cars wouldn’t even have been considered. Same goes today for the Escalade, an overpriced (I feel the Tahoe is way overpriced anyway) Tahoe or Yukon is a crazy purchase. But it’s not my money, so spend away!
Meh. Rather have a C-body. Spec out a New Yorker with a 440 TNT (370HP-unlike these emasculated engines, still a high compression, dual-exhaust engine…essentially, the muscle car 440 without the open air cleaner), disc brakes with optional Sure-Brake ABS, HD cooling, tow package (HD suspension, trans cooler, HD alternator, 3.23 Sure Grip).
Sure-Brake wasn’t available on the New Yorker, only the Imperial. The Chevrolet 454 also had dual exhausts in 1971, although the 440 TNT engine’s higher compression ratio did give it 20 more net hp and 10 lb-ft more torque.