Photos from the Cohort, by J.C.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about how a certain kind of old beaters are rarely seen anymore. Old-time CC readers know what I’m talking about; rusty old junkers, with peeling paint, rusted-out panels, worn-out tires, and so on. In short, the Uncle Buck special.
A few commenters pointed out that such clunkers still exist, but they’ve just morphed into a different type. A true statement. And as such they tend to fall below the CC radar, as they’re, how shall I say? Less picturesque and charismatic?
Thanks to improvements in manufacture by the early ’80s, these 30+ year-old clunkers have a fairly integral appearance nowadays. But aged they have, like this mid-80s Cadillac de Ville. However, that aging isn’t quite so postcard-like. Crooked, worn out, and distorted plastics will never sway my heart the same way old pitted chrome did. But regardless, these old rides are survivors and deserve a bit of attention. And after the cash-for-clunkers program, I believe not many of these survive today.
As it happens every so often at CC, there’s been a good amount of recent discussion on GM’s poorly received downsized vehicles from the mid-80s. The shrunk C-body de Ville from 1985 is an exception to that story, with the model selling decently throughout its run. And while I wouldn’t call its styling a home run, against the upcoming ’86 Seville and El Dorado, the de Ville looked far more Cadillac-esque.
The ’80s de Ville may have sold fine and looked the part for its intended audience, but styling aside, GM was still a provider of rather iffy products. Nowhere near the doldrums of the early X-bodies, but what you purchased was a matter of luck. Something that’s been attested once and again by commenters (and acquaintances). Most units fell in the average, with a few being extremely faithful, and a similar number being just lemons. Cadillacs were no exception to those ills.
To put that in perspective, you’ll find two extremes of the de Ville equation further down. One filled with love, the other, with regret.
Further reading:
Curbside Classic: 1986 Cadillac Sedan de Ville – Resplandecent In Sunburst Yellow!
Vintage Review And Commentary: 1989 Cadillac Sedan DeVille – Be Careful What You Wish For!
The uncle Buck special today has morphed into the Nissan Altima with missing bumper covers/other random body damage. Faded purple/bubbling/peeling windown tint. Maybe a bit of rust on the rockers and dogleg/rear wheel arch if you live up north. I know, cars dont gloriously rust like they used to but pickup trucks still do.
Always the most aggresively driven car on the road, doing 100mph weaving in and out of traffic, riding your ass with about 3″ to spare. Cant forget the expired tag/expired paper tag. Overall the car/manner its being driven is rolling probable cause.
Here in Texas the Uncle Buck special IS that pickup truck.
The most aggresively driven car on the road, doing 100mph weaving in and out of traffic, riding your ass with about 3″ to spare… and armed.
Nothing in that condition gets non the road legally here, the days of rusty old cars here is over
The oldest cars you will see on the road here in Southeastern Ontario, are consistently from this century.
Five million tonnes of continued annual road salt use in Canada, assures that. In spite of efforts to reduce damage to the environment. Especially lakes and water tables. Salt management is still largely left up to the discretion of smaller municipalities. Provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan using more sand, as salt is less effective in frigid temps. But the fatality rate is pretty high there. Continued salt use, assures millions of cars can move about safely. As cheaply as possible, in winter.
I was shocked to see an early 2000s Nissan Sentra yesterday morning, on Cartier Street in Ottawa. And it was in rough shape. Seeing any ’80s era car daily driven here, even if it’s only summer months, would get my attention. Cars like this Sedan de Ville, largely fully disappeared in the 1990s.
The outlier and cockroach of the road here, appears to be the first gen Toyota Matrix. Still see many in great shape. And to a lesser extent, the Pontiac Vibe.
Toyota and Honda have a great reputation, and following, here. Some of the worst ’70s style rust I’ve ever seen, was on 1990s era Chrysler products.
In the early 2010’s, NY state was using salt on the thruways. I got stuck behind a salt truck in an intense snow storm on 1-87 with the left lane impassible. I could hear the salt pellets banging on the windshield and underbody. I hit a rest stop for coffee just to put distance between me and the truck and found a car wash early the next morning.
Later that year, I could see the salt worm had taken hold.
Oh that sound of getting hit by the salt is an awful one!
When I lived in Virginia in the 80s, North Carolina would do nothing to I-85 when it snowed (2-3 times a year), so it could get tricky at the border, which was in the middle of nowhere. Now they brine and plow most city streets. All the Yankees down here now want to go somewhere and can’t wait a day or two for sun and thaw.
This De Ville must have a leak in the rear air shocks, but I don’t believe that alone would push the front that high. Perhaps they replaced the HT4100 with a modern I4 to go faster, or just to go at all. I never liked the common fake wires on 80s FWD Cadillacs, but I see now they were better than nothing.
“I never liked the common fake wires on 80s FWD Cadillacs, but I see now they were better than nothing.”
Pull off the wheel covers and even a show room new car turns to a clunker.
As a kid, when it was relatively uncommon to see cars without all wheel covers, clean black steel wheels lent the same appearance as cars freshly delivered to dealerships. If it was a late model car still available for sale new, washed and clean-looking cars without wheel covers, would fool me into thinking they might be brand new. As they were transported on railway cars. With their production longevity, a few late ’70s full-sized Chevrolet and Ford products sans wheel covers, tricked me in this regard.
The reason why I’m no supporter of the black-rims trend. The BBS’s on the Miata were black AND cost extra? Nope.
Once the black steel wheels start taking on oxidation and rust they become beater looking, Oddly enough I saw a 2010 Camry yesterday without wheel covers – beater right? Yet the steel wheels looked brand new, as did the tires on them and the car itself was in very good shape. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, unless it was the most well cared for beater in the state!
Maybe it had winter-only tires on new stock wheels. I’ve seen that a few times.
That’s what I was thinking, it just surprised me since the whole thing looked pretty immaculate for a 10+ year old car, even the headlights were crystal clear which is never the case with Camrys of that generation.
I still, though increasingly rarely, see the occasional one of these burbling around. My “beater meter” got a recalibration the other night when I heard the sound of a V8 through rusted out mufflers, and turned, expecting to see something like Uncle Buck’s car. It turned out to be a scruffy Toyota Sequoia!
I’ve been noticing more beater SUVs lately. Especially the early big models like Escalade, Expedition, Navigator, etc. Really rough looking and sounding ones are seemingly popular with the bottom of the barrel car buyer. Makes sense, as they were sold in large numbers, and their terrible gas mileage keeps them from being very practical as personal transportation. They can sell based on low price alone.
What rust? lol
These Cadillacs lose what little luster they had the second you substitute the original equiptment whitewall tires for black sidewall, even with the wheel covers left on they take on a dumpy neglected appearance with that one subtle omission
I agree. Reasonably clean whitewalls on an old car that originally had them is a sure sign they are still loved. Lack of whitewalls doesn’t necessarily mean they are unloved, since there are a lot of people today who don’t understand whitewalls and just put on what is readily available. But they just don’t look right.
XR7Matt: I couldn’t agree more! Earlier this year I picked up a pristine, one owner (now me the 2nd) 1986 Cadillac Seville. When I saw the car on C.L., it didn’t have much of a look, but I inquired anyhow. The pictures they did have were terrible and the responses to my questions were not very good. I totally forgot about it and a few months later I got a text asking if I was still interested. So I went the short distance (12 miles) to look at it. I could see the interior and outside were so nice, but the older gentlemen who owned it had just put brand new blackwall Michelin tires on it, which looked terrible with the wire caps. To make matters worse, it hat 2 curb feelers on the passenger side. As it sat, the car just didn’t show well but I saw past that and interestingly enough, I has a brand new set of WW tires of the same size sitting at home.
So I made the purchase for way less than it should have sold for and drove it home. The first thing I did? Had the WW tires put on and removed those curb feelers! I then detailed it and the car transformed into the glory of when new.
Sounds like a delightful Caddy! Got a photo?
I’ve never really been a fan of small/smaller cars, attempting to look like traditional large/larger cars. Why I never warmed up to the FWD Olds Omega or Buick Skylark sedans, and their mini-Seville looks.
What a terribly boring, frumpy design that is! But oddly appealing today in a nostalgic way.
I saw a similar-looking Omega sedan at a nearby Goodyear Tire Centre this past summer, and its small scale relative to modern cars, was almost comical. As their interior roominess, was one of their biggest virtues.
The rounded corner window frames with aircraft-style door openings, on this era Cadillac Sedan de Ville, always appeared strange to me. GMs attempt to make these look modern and aerodynamic. As the rest of the car is so linear.
Yes. And the decidedly non-flush chrome trim around the windows is radiused at the corners, adding a further degree of visual incongruity to the mix. As do the pushbutton doorhandles. It’s like it doesn’t know which decade it wants to be in. And winds up taking off on a stylistic tangent into a heretofore-undiscovered dimension.
Truly, a Cadillack.
Always appreciate your candor. They aimed to take a safe, conservative route. Mostly satisfying traditional customers, without appearing completely oblivious to changing times. Producing a compromised design, that looked contrived, then and now.
Candor, ha! Daniel, I love playing with words. 🙂 And being an Aussie I very rarely saw any US GM cars after ’68, so my sense of aesthetics is more shaped by local cars (US styling downsized and through a local filter, you might say), along with a good helping of European and Japanese shapes and details. Given my background, this car really looks like nothing else on earth, nothing I have ever seen, nothing anyone outside GM did. Rather than seeing it as something to aspire to, the styling inspires me to aspire to something better.
Cadillack… that is so appropo! lol Is your assessment of this car from your POV today? Or if/when you saw it in 1985? Would Paul’s General Motors Deadly Sins, not have prepared you for this Sedan de Ville? As it does seems a natural development of ’80s GM design to this mid-decade point in time. Especially, beside the concurrent 1985 introduction of the N-Body platform. The Coupe de Ville especially, appearing to preview similar strange and unattractive proportions as the next year 1986 Eldorado, Seville, Toronado and Riviera exhibited.
Daniel, in 1985 I was reading Car and Driver, as well as several local and UK titles. So I saw what was coming out of America, but in the case of GM especially I just could not believe it. What were they thinking?
Aesthetically, it seemed as though GM US just dropped one clanger after another, as though they just did not get what a car was supposed to look like. I can’t believe the entire design staff were suddenly struck blind, but judged by their output it almost seemed like it. Through CC (and, yes, Paul’s Deadly Sins) I have learnt something of the corporate politics and meddling that soured the pot. But that in no way exonerates the result. Top management seemingly didn’t stop and ask themselves “Are people gonna buy this?”
Throughout the seventies there seemed to be a growing stylistic divergence between North America and the rest of the world. Broughams weren’t a thing here except at the top end of the market (Holden Statesman/Caprice, Ford LTD). Formal looked funny, awkward, wrong even. The sheer look didn’t play here; we preferred the European concept of having angled planes to catch the light, with plenty of front-to-rear through lines to give the sense of fleetness and motion. Ford Australia recognised this with the XD Falcon (a scaled-up Euro Granada copy), as did GMH to a lesser extent with the VB Commodore (a strengthened and re-engined Opel) – though that was compromised by awkward A- and C-pillar integration.
Nowadays I am more aware of the social and cultural differences between countries that helps explain some of this. And I have a greater appreciation of what designers may have been trying to achieve – which eluded me at the time. But cars like this Caddy still look drab and gawky.
I liked the “Skylark”. Rear windows rolled down a bit too!
I think a big part of the reaction to the downsizing was that every new body looked identical to their GM counterparts. Look at the B body Chevrolet Caprice and tell me why I should pay more for an identical B body Pontiac, Oldsmobile or Buick. The Cadillac erosion at least looked a little different, but not different enough to command a price premium.
My Mother had a 1986 Cadillac Coupe DeVille Black with red Leather Interior beautiful Cadillac. She put over 250,000 on it keeping up with basic maintenance & that Cadillac Coupe DeVille ran very fine I it were never sold. I loved it
My Mother had a 1986 Cadillac Coupe DeVille Black with red Leather Interior beautiful Cadillac. She put over 250,000 on it keeping up with basic maintenance & that Cadillac Coupe DeVille ran very fine I it were never sold. I loved it . No I’ve never said this before
These cars were not that bad. They have lots of room inside, and they are smaller outside. The styling tries to bridge the very box like prior generation with something that looks more modern. These look best without any kind of vinyl or landau top. You’ll note that the car in the advertisement is a steel top, but customers demanded those awful vinyl tops. A lot of people decried these because they were front wheel drive, there were lots of practical advantages to this design, but there was still a lot of resistance from the buff books. However sales were strong. The problem was with the HT4100 engine which wasn’t remedied until 1988 with the new 4.5 V8.
These are generally not cars that are loved, so few would invest too much in them to keep them up once they get old. The restyled ’89s managed to bring back some of the old Cadillac swagger, but these are also getting thin on the ground.
I felt the 1985 Coupe de Ville’s styling came off worse. Always found its proportions and scale reminiscent of the Fox-bodied Thunderbird. With the Thunderbird, looking more refined and attractive, between the two. Not saying much.
T-Bird.
Both looked /look better in darker colors..
Of those two, that T-bird is so much better looking. Even though I’m a huge Cadillac fan, I never liked the 85 to 88 Coupe’s. Also, I’m not really a Ford guy, but absolutely love this vintage T-birds
It’s rather jarring that a new Caddy looked like a three-year-old T-Bird!
That’s a fantastic observation!
Thinking about it it’s the GM hubris rearing its ugly head again, they should have taken the 80 Tbird as a canary in the coal mine in unsuccessful downsizing of prestige nameplates but they were either so insulated in their own bubble so as to miss the failures of their competitors, or were so confident that they’d pull it off. Both cars hurt their images, but Ford was smart enough to learn a lesson and go a totally new direction with the 83s and revolutionize styling in the domestic market. Cadillac on the other hand only fixed their mistake by tacking on the extra inches and flare it should have had from the start right in time for Lexus to blow away the last remnant of brougham themed luxury.
Ford far better utilized their excellent European resources. A small Cadillac based upon the Opel Senator A2 or Senator B, would have attracted my interest.
Oh, they did. The beast was called Cadillac Catera. And nobody really accepeted it. – Well, nearly nobody …
It was the wrong Opel. Ugly, and generic-looking. Cadillac’s Malibu.
But they didn’t have anything better then. It already was the time of Opel’s decline.
I think where the Tbird got it right was taking the design themes of their European resources and applying them the way they did to a uniquely American product like the Tbird. It hit all the key points but it retained a uniquely American identity. There was no Sierra in the 83 Tbird, just a stylistic theme.
One of the big takeaways I find in Ford’s aero revolution wasn’t an acknowledgment of European design being inherently “better”, but that it got American car design back into a progression like it had been up to the early 70s. European design didn’t fall into the prolonged rut of brougham trimmed sheer look, frozen in time like 1975 would last forever. Some European and Japanese cars went through a brougham phase too in the 70s, but they moved on before the decade was out. When the 83 Tbird came out it looked like far less of a “European” product than it did a “fresh” product.
There’s something just a bit too uncanny valley about badge engineered foreign subsidiary transplants where I don’t think that Opel as a Deville would have done any better than the Catera. Even at Ford, through the ill fated Merkur brand the very cars that inspired the aero wave that worked so successfully on the Tbird and Taurus and were popular in Europe didn’t translate to sales success in the US.
What a pathetic excuse for a Cadillac. The car wreaks of the Roger Bonham Smith era; he being the leader of the pack of jackals that finished off General Motors.
I recall a Motor Trend article from the 1980’s —
It predicted that within 10 yrs, Caddy’s would be black-walled “sports sedans” like BMW, their new competitors.
Bring Back the Whitewalls !