Corey Behrens apparently was visiting the little sea-side hamlet of Bergen aan Zee (pop. 483) when he shot another visitor–or is it a permanent inhabitant?–in the form of a 1978 Cadillac CDV in front of the Pension Stormvogel. I’ve been in court on a jury all day and am a bit tired tonight, so I’m going to let you all do the commentary, and I’ll stick mostly to the pictures.
The first three years of the downsized Cadillacs were the ones to have, if one valued the traditional feel of power and effortlessness, thanks to the still-hefty 425 cubic inch version of the Cadillac V8. The coming engine nightmares were still over the horizon.
Of course, that 7 liter engine–downsized as it was from the 8.1 liters it had sported a few years earlier–still had a healthy appetite too. That’s referenced to by the irreverent display on its backside.
Ten years ago or so, these were still such common sights here in Eugene. No more; the good ones are tucked away in garages, or on vacation on the North Sea.
love the ” Greta who?” sticker. This beats any Tesla on build quality alone….
The farther out I get from 1977-79, the more the styling on these cars strikes me as awkward. I have always been bothered by the three levels of horizontal planes as seen best from a rear 3/4 view – the front fenders step up to the greenhouse, which then steps up again to the deck.
But now I see that the whole thing just doesn’t really come together the way the 1980+ car does, in terms of basic proportions and details. Little things like the nuance-free flat planes above the grille/headlights and again on the horizontal surface of the decklid are oddly in tension with some of the gentle curves seen on the sides of the car.
That is the terrible trade-off for lovers of cars like these – to get the good engine you have to take the kludgy styling, and vise versa.
I agree that deep 3/4 rear view is awkward at the A pillar. I got the same effect from my 2002 Durango with its big truck styling. Personally, I can still see a bit of it in the 1980 Cadillac.
While an awkward angle, both Cadillac and Dodge used the total package to great effect.
For me, the 1978 is the best of the big C bodies; engine, rear details, etc. I liked the 1980 restyle quite a bit when it came out, but 16 year me thought it retrograde at the time, a conservative retrenchment that was the early rumbling of rough roads ahead for Cadillac.
The ’80 facelift works well for the sedans; I particularly like that the first of those three planes (the one on the front fenderline) now extends to the back of the car rather than just ending in the front door. But the coupe looses me at the C pillar where it now looks like a boring 2 door sedan rather than the distinct almost PLC look of the ’77-79 coupe with its opera window and more slanted rear glass.
JPC, thankyou! You’ve hit on something that’s always bothered me about these, and it also afflicts the ’77 Chev Caprice. It’s those “nuance-free flats planes above the grille/headlights”. In both cases, it gives the car a heavy, frowny face that’s also a bit bland. Gone on both in 1980, much for the better.
Checked; this one was imported into the Netherlands in 2010. It found a buyer in 2011, who still owns it. Probably just in spring/summer, because of a ‘free of roadtax’ law for cars over 40 years here.
Pretty sure this Caddy is a year-round resident of the village as I’ve seen it parked there before. I can’t imagine it does a lot of miles these days. It recently cost 75 Euro to put 3/4 tank of diesel in my Skoda, so it must cost a small fortune to go sailing in this land yacht.
In my hometown there’s a flamboyant guy who drives a ’76 Seville and a ’69 De Ville Convertible all year round; on LPG that is, like this white one. 1.37 euro per liter as we speak. Still expensive though.
A little ironic that such a blatantly American car has Nazi sticker on the back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_SS_Panzer_Division_Leibstandarte_SS_Adolf_Hitler
And not a bit funny either.
Exactly the kind of car I’d key to heck. Especially if I were a tourist leaving out on a redeye.
Could the sticker perhaps be (albeit tasteless) an inference that this vehicle is a tank?
I count this sticker with the likes of confederate flags gleefully displayed in Sweden or Australia. Grabbing onto a foreign symbol because “Hey, cool, a neat foreign accessory for my foreign car!” is a dangerous game; it’s easy to convey an unintended message or suggest an ugly association.
By the same token—I was sitting right there in the audience when it happened at a technical conference—it is best if an engineer with a German accent and/or name avoids saying “the final solution” in their lecture. Even though they’re talking about the end of an R&D process, it rings wrong.
Daniel, I think the owner of this Caddy is inferring Greta Thunberg by the looks of the braided rope (hair) dangling out of the trunk, as though she is trapped in that huge ‘un-green’ gas guzzling barge.
Definitely. Which…I mean, yeah, okeh, I’m gonna drive a big ol’ tuna barge and you can’t stop me, I get it. Expressing it that way seems inappropriate to me.
I thought Daniel was talking about the SS sticker, not the Greta sticker.
That’s right, I was.
Must say I haven’t seen Confederate flags anywhere here, but no doubt they’re out there. Sad if so: the average Aussie would know literally nothing about it. We’re not really taught US history in school at all (which, in a different way, is also a bit sad).
I suspect too that this here is likely to be just ignorance, and meant to infer only the tank reference.
Of course, if it isn’t, one can only hope that the car and owner soon fail to proceed.
I’d like to know how many of these were sold with a slick top or full vinyl, non-fake-convertible roof. Maybe 1%, I’d guess from an image search. Not many more were sold without fake wires.
The “Greta Who” sticker also looks less funny when you notice the simulated pigtails sticking from under the trunk lid
The pigtails are the punchline that made me chuckle actually.
How dare you!
I’ll never understand grown men’s obsession with this teenage girl. The number of people who bring her up out of the blue and with such vitriol, she’s just some random activist. I can’t even remember the last time I saw her on the news lol
One of my favorite Cadillacs. The 1981 was kind of a throwback in styling to the mid 60’s but I still wouldn’t mind one. I could live with a V8-6-4 as long as deactivated the cylinder reduction feature, which I’ve read is quite easy. I’ve mentioned that I bought my used ’77 in 1980, it was still a sharp looking car. Loads of fun to drive, but being a 25 year old Cadillac lover, finally a college grad, and looking at a rosy future probably had something to do with it.
I bought my ’74 Fleetwood in ’81 at age 20 for $1500. It was a good car in many ways, but I wished I’d shopped more and found one in better condition; it might have been cheaper in the long run and more reliable. I looked at a Talisman, but the black velour was partly sun-damaged. The impatience of youth.
I TOO bought my first car in 1981 when I was 17 years old. A 1974 Cadillac Eldorado. Man I sure regret selling that one. I TOO paid 1500 dollars for it. Nobody wanted ANY older car that gulped gas. Yep it had the 500 ci engine in it and even a “Sunroof “, which was kind of rare for 1974. The best MPG I got was 12.5 doing 55 mph but that car could move and I even won some races with it ! Later I ended up owning 4 1978 Eldorado Biarritz’s. I can say the the best engine in my opinion was the 425ci / 7 liter. Nearly the same output as the 1975-76 500ci and had close to a 40% improvement in fuel economy. My ‘78 Eldorados got 17-20 on the highway. Pretty good for a “ Non- downsized “ Cadillac. Miss all of ‘em.
Gawd I remember them when they got “downsized” and looking at it now it’s hard to think of it as downsized. My eyes see nothing redeeming in it. Ironically I actually see more in the earlier full dinosaur versions.
The trunk. I see the Greta sticker and pigtails sticking out as juvenile. Kind of a roll my eyes sort of thing if I saw it. But the 1st SS Panzer Division sticker I do find offensive. Very offensive. Yeah, it might be just juvenile, see Greta above, but to specifically recognize a particularly brutal part of the German Nazi army goes beyond poor form.
My apologies if this post is a bit too political, but it’s not my car with that sticker on it.
I have the impression of her that Miss T would actually laugh at the sticker and rope, but the panzer sticker rather puts paid to any humour the other might generate.
The ’78 Coupe de Ville is a great-looking car. This is astonishing because by all reason, it should have been a massive failure from an aesthetic viewpoint. That’s the general consensus of the 1980 Lincoln Mark VI coupe, and of the Thunderbird and Cougar of the same year. When the looks of those FoMoCo cars is criticized, which it often is here on CC and elsewhere, the blame is often put on the designers’ attempts to recreate all of the pre-downsized ’79 design cues on a smaller body, resulting in a car that’s stubby and malproportioned, rather than starting fresh with a new look as Ford would do with the ’83 T-Bird, Mark VII, and Taurus.
The problem with that consensus on the Mark VI coupe’s stylistic deficiency is that somehow Cadillac did exactly the same thing in 1977, regurgitating nearly all of the whale-size 1976 CdV design cues onto a shorter, taller, narrower body, and yet somehow GM made it work. Take a look at a 1976 Coupe de Ville and then this 1978 model side by side. Both have similar front treatments, the thick character lines that lead back from the grille that widen toward the back of the hood, merging into the front fenders and disappearing in the front doors. Both cars have a half-vinyl roof with squarish opera windows with a vertical opera lamp behind them. The body side contours are similar. Those distinctive old-timey pushbutton grab handles greet you upon entry, not pull bars like almost everyone else was using by 1978. Both rear ends are capped off with tall, chrome bladed vertical taillamps that recall Caddy fins from as far back as the late 1950s.
So what did Cadillac do right that Lincoln did so wrong seemingly following the exact same formula? There isn’t a bad line on the car anywhere and it looks good (and unmistakably a Cadillac) from any angle, despite that you can tell it’s a bit shorter and the opera window a bit skinnier and the sides have less tumblehome and the roof is taller and the windshield flatter and more upright. Somehow it all falls together and works. This continues on the inside, where it felt as substantial as it looked, with a solid thunk when doors were closed as you settled in behind the wheel. There, the surroundings felt like a step up from the disappointingly cheesy 71-76 interior. The wood and chrome were still fake, but were more convincing than in the older, bigger car and the door panels used thickly padded soft fabrics where hard plastic was previously found.
Of course GM would soon lose their knack that allowed the ’77 B/C bodies, ’78 A bodies, and ’79 E bodies to capture the essence of their much larger predecessors even as they were drastically shrunken and lightened. The 1985 Coupe de Ville and ’86 Eldorado were even more malproportioned than the 1980 Ford, Mercury, and Lincolns had been. Unlike the 1986 GM E-bodies, the ’85 C bodies (de Ville included) sold moderately well, probably because they were decent cars under the misshapen wrapper, with many strong points if you could get past their looks. They were quiet, smooth, space efficient, well equipped, and easy to see out of. Still, I wonder just what magic GM had that made their late ’70s downsizing efforts so much more visually palatable than the competing Fords and Mopars of a few years later.
The trim edges all over the Lincoln are exceptionally squared off and sharp-edged looking, the window frames seem very thick, and perhaps most of all (assuming wikipedia is right), there’s a massive 7 inches less wheelbase in the coupe. Which are things that can’t account for the whole issue, but they don’t help.
To me, if the huge ’71 and the shrunk ’77 Caddies were photoshopped to look the same size, I couldn’t instantly tell them apart, something I consider a positive because I’ve always thought that all the GM giant roadbuggers of ’71 were very handsome machines, whatever their worth as actual cars.
So I agree with you. This is clever styling, not advanced or anything, but it’s cleverer than it seems.
But personally I’d have to cut off that padded half-roof – I couldn’t bear it on the earlier cars either!