This somewhat unlikely pairing of coupes really sums up what was happening in the 1980s. No need to really explain, but let’s just say that as the boomers became Yuppies, their taste increasingly leaned more to Bavarian wurst rather than Detroit hamburgers. Even if they were meaty ones.
This Eldo has the 4.5 L V8, so let’s call it a quarter-pounder to the 4.1 liter’s basic but undercooked hamburger (does anyone buy those at McDonald’s anymore?)
No obvious markings on the wrapper of this E30 to tell us what’s under the hood, but I’m guessing it’s not the rather anemic little four, a Viennese sausage if there ever was one. More likely a 325e or even a genuine Bratwurst 325i. Can you believe we’ve never done a CC on the BMW E30? There’s a lot of other cars on that list. And how many times have we seen the Eldorado hereabouts? Hamburgers are obviously still popular, even if they’re not being made anymore.
I’d say New York Strip and a fine sauerbraten. The Eldo isn’t hamburger and it isn’t Filet Minion but I’d dang sure take the one picture over a 1983-1985 model with the 4.1 V8. The BMW is a little bit better than sausage.
After-all Von Bismark himself said: “Laws and sausages are two things one should not see being made.”
I’d dang sure take the one picture over a 1983-1985 model with the 4.1 V8.
I wouldn’t! V8s can be replaced; this sheetmetal can’t. This is an Arch Deluxe at best.
The first moment I looked at that first pic of the Eldorado, I thought it was an Olds Omega with Eldo trim bits applied.
Daniel, I’ll confess that at first glance that I, too, thought that was an Olds. Seem to recall seeing many an Olds in that same color.
That was the problem that plagued GM in the 1980’s. From a distance it was hard to tell an Eldorado from a Cutlass Calais. Or a Seville from a Somerset.
No doubt someone at Pontiac figured the way to stand out from the others was to tack on plenty of extra body cladding. Though the 1987-90 Bonneville was clearly the smartest-looking of the H-body cars with a minimum of extra plastic save for the SSE. Three different family members owned those, really nice car for the time in SE trim or higher.
As for the E30, it clearly is a later model, maybe 1989-91 based on the color-keyed bumpers. So the eta engine was long gone. Could be a 325i or a 318is, which was entry-level but equipped with a 16-valve four-cylinder and sport suspension like the 325is. It went for under $20k new but remains a desirable car to this day.
Daniel sort of beat me to it. From the year 2014 and parked in front of the 3 Series, the Eldo looks like another N body! No wonder Cadillac’s traditional buyers were dismayed.
BMWs and yuppies were relatively rare in the Midwest in the ’80s. Our yuppies probably were driving N body Grand Ams as singles, and Mopar mini’s after they did what yuppies do.
Broughamified eyes here likely saw the BMW as sort of an economy car with a crazy price, lacking the sheet metal and embellishments upscale buyers were used to. But, I’m sure the younger and well heeled were busy parsing out what was available after deciding to ignore cars like that Eldo.
I said Omega, but a Calais would be closer, of course. Doesn’t make a big difference. Risky when you take an existing design and essentially water it down this much, as with the Eldo. Especially, in the luxury market. The ’79 to ’85 was such an original design. A more progressive version, aimed at the 3 Series was obviously needed… immediately.
Ironic they developed this Eldo around the same time as Coke introduced “New Coke”.
Meanwhile, the 3 Series was showing the way.
Ha, I had a bit of dinner, came back online, and am just now reading thru these previous posts AFTER I made my post at the end of the thread (which was an impulse upon seeing the General Motors abortion in the driveway). Look how many of us had similar thoughts.
Obviously, these were dark times at GM and Cadillac in particular.
Own an E30 sometime – it’s a prime example that the concept of “less is more” does have a lot of validity. The one I owned had power windows, power sunroof, stereo, A/C and the trip computer – period. Manual seats. Stark black interior. A wonderfully ergonomic instrument panel.
And absolutely wonderful handling and driving characteristics. That’s why you see so many of them on the road in daily use today. The best car BMW ever made. The anti-brougham. A wonderful reason not to bother owning a sports car.
And they’ve been going downhill ever since.
In 1985, I was 26, a fresh grad from law school, and in the midwest. Although my first new car was a VW GTI, I spent a lot of mental effort trying to figure a way to stretch my pennies so that I could get a BMW. They may not have been common, but I was in a large city and they were common enough. I never once wondered if I could make it work with a Cadillac or Lincoln.
I’ll take the Wurst but depending on the situation, Spam can be appealing.
Seriously, what was with the E30’s styling, or rather the lack thereof? At least GM put in an effort even if it was too similar to their other ones.
But the Bimmer’s ’70s-holdover nose treatment and bland, bland, bland 3-box shape are an embarrassment to a company that had once produced, and should’ve evolved the 3 from, the very pretty 2002 Touring.
That being said, I like the owner additions on these – the Cad’s aftermarket rims keep it from brougham overload and show the adage “the wheels make the car”, while the BMW’s white letters (if only on the rear) work amazingly well and give it the late ’70s/early ’80s period flair Munich failed to.
I like the owner additions on these – the Cad’s aftermarket rims keep it from brougham overload and show the adage “the wheels make the car”
I don’t necessarily agree with that adage, but I think it does apply here: those are some cheap-ass Pep Boys or American Racing wheels from circa 2001, the kind of thing that would look much more at home on a late 90s Corolla with matching Pep Boys chrome wheel opening moldings and Pep Boys bazooka diameter exhaust tip, plus a 20,000 jiggawatt subwoofer in the trunk.
And RWL tires work amazingly well… on the BMW? The E30 BMW (or half of it, at least)?! I guess taste is subjective or whatever, but this comment has to be a very subtle joke.
Honestly, big black sidewalls are one reason I never understood the fascination of boring Euro boxes. “Oh it’s a BMW, it’s far too sophisticated to be seen with such ostentation on it’s tires!(probably because the original yuppie owner had that covered)”
Perhaps I’d prefer a name brand to cheapo “road huggers” but I don’t really think they look bad on it at all. E30s had 1960s Detroit lines anyway, right down to round quad headlights, so they look fairly natural on it to me.
Do you really think anyone ever thought “this car is too sophisticated for whitewalls” ? That would be like saying “I don’t get Cadillacs because the Texas oil magnates who own them think they’re too sophisticated for black plastic grilles”. Nobody thinks like that!
I like whitewalls, white-letters, various colored stripe tires, all white rubber from the early days of motoring, etc. – but they look stupid on most cars manufactured from the 1980s onwards. This actually doesn’t look HORRIBLE, but it looks worse than just a regular black sidewall. GM spent the 80s trying to force 70s styling cues onto cars that they looked horribly out of place on and this picture is a great illustration of that. The RWD cars they were still selling at that time, like the G-bodies and Caprice, could still pull off classic Broughmanticism because they had originated in the decade prior. That look lent itself well to their basic shape and proportions. Trying to translate it to the FWD cars was a complete disaster – and the best looking GM vehicles from back then were always the ones that were allowed to more fully embrace the contemporary aesthetic. I’ve always thought the J-body cars were really good looking (despite whatever other flaws they had) and the larger FWD models looked infinitely better when were available with more stripped down, modern trim.
This car below, for example… this is what ALL of them should have looked like! Imagine if you couldn’t get one of these with fake wires, whitewalls, vinyl tops, pillow seats, etc.? I think these cars, and others like it, would have been remembered much more fondly in that case.
Deadly serious – although, viewing large, you’re right about the Caddy’s wheels that I had at first thought were from a ’90s Caddy xTx.
The RWL tires on the E30 at least create visual interest where there had been none. As a two-door notchback sedan – what were they thinking! – it shares form factors with the extreme low-series base models of the mainstream Japanese econocars circa 1980, too boxy to be stylish, too lacking in versatility to be anti-style.
VW had already demonstrated that five doors leading to one space was the way of the future, BMW should’ve been on that bandwagon even if they stuck with RWD for performance (or budget) reasons.
The whole point of cars like the E30 was taking a minimalist approach to styling in order to underline how attractive and tidy the basic shape of the body was. That was kind of the German’s “thing” back then, and remained so for awhile after. Even today, while there are extremely flashy Audis, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes available, their bread and butter sedans are still often very subtle and unadorned.
Visual interest isn’t always good. Personally, even though I think it’s a ridiculously cool car, I always thought the E30 M3 came off as a little gaudy (despite the lack of RWLs).
BMW was widely criticized even at the time for being way too conservative with their styling. They spent a bunch of money on the E28 and E30, which looked an awful lot like their immediate predecessors — which hadn’t been any too cutting edge either. The E32 made it seem like someone in Munich had finally rented a wind tunnel, but then the E34 and E36 had critics complaining again that all BMW seemed to be able to do was keep rehashing and tidying up the same basic corporate look.
After about 20 years of that, BMW hired Chris Bangle, which is sort of a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” (I do understand why they wanted to shake things up, but that doesn’t change the fact that I find the E60 5-Series painfully ugly and the E65 and E90 sedans not much better.)
Personally, I think Bangle’s talents would’ve been better served at one of the Korean companies where he could’ve established the design language of a nascent marque rather than being given the impossible task of “make it look fresh, new and modern while using all these styling cues from the ’62 model”.
I’d actually compare the E30’s styling to that of Audi today. Very understated, yet it still looks solid enough that you know it’s a luxury car.
+1. Subtlety can be very effective.
I have to agree with Daniel & Dave (writing that just gave me an Olympic decathlon fiasco flashback) – the picture of the Eldo with the BMW was painful to look at. Aside from the obvious resemblance to lower-division GM cars, a Cadillac appearing shorter, narrower, and lower than a BMW 3-series is simply wrong. Smaller than a SMALL BMW! The Cadillac looks toy-like in comparison. A deadly sin, if there ever was one.
Today’s CTS and other small Cadillacs succeed in looking substantial and distinctive, regardless of their actual size in comparison to the 3-series and other competitors.
Yes, well stated. A++
+2
“Can you believe we’ve never done a CC on the BMW E30?”
Uh, yes we (Tom Klockau) did do one, and it’s right here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classic-1985-bmw-318i-teutonic-respite-at-the-tail-end-of-the-great-brougham-epoch/
P.S. I’ll take the wurst.
Oops; I guess I meant to say I never had.
I never liked the fwd cadillacs. You always got the feeling you were driving on borrowed time until the next sensor or gasket failure and you were paying out the nose for a repair. They were a great car when they ran good, but a cadillac with a failed gasket is a $2000 paper weight needing a $1200 repair. And yes northstar engines are great until one of 4 cam sensors go out, or a $500 injector fails and you need 12 hours of labor to pull the moor and fix it. When I look at buying a car I try to take into consideration what the repair bills will be when or if it breaks.
That Eldo looks hideous compared to the BMW. It suffers from what most GM fwd coupes did during this time — the odd wheel-to-body location proportions, more so in the luxury coupes. The Eldo looks like the car’s body has shifted forward on it’s wheelbase, especially when viewed next to a car with proper balance.
IIRC, Paul or a commenter mentioned this in the GMDS #1 article.
Pretty sure that’s a 91 318is.
I concur it’s one of the newer models due to the painted bumpers but the rims are the early bottle cap style from pre-88.
And yeah, the RWL’s have got to go!
Well, this says alot. First, I have been a Cadillac obsessed freak since I was like 5yo. i was even named and called Cadillac thru 5-12th grades, some kids didn’t even know my real name I think.
Secondly, as mentioned in a previous post, I worked for Oldsmobile (a Dealer) for over 10 years, and yes, during the era that the subject car was introduced.
But…… guess what…. (yes I’ve already had a couple cocktails) after all, it IS the night before Thanksgiving with family and all.
Anyhow, at VERY quick initial 1st glance of opening the homepage to update myself on the new happenings of Curbside… and seeing the pic, I saw an Olds Calais and a Bimmer in a driveway! (it was a split second, but what matters is, it happened) If not for the vertical Eldo fins, my initial impression most likely would have lasted even longer. Seriously, without the fins and a bit more rake on the rear window and its a Calais. Sad… very sad times. Thankfully, they are behind us now. (no thanks to Roger S.)
Trust me, I know my cars, but it does go to show you what was REALLY happening back then.
Anyhow, THAT is one Eldorado (and I use the term VERY loosely) I would never drive, let alone own anyhow.
Go ahead, laugh, cry or rip on me, but I did admit what I saw… and yeah, I did see it. At least Cadillac pulled thru those dark times and is still with us.
OK now, Everyone have a great Thanksgiving with family! Mark!
I thought it was a Cutlass Calais, too. The aftermarket rims really make the rest of the car look smaller.
I still think the Trofeo was cool.
To an extent, and in it’s own right for the times…. yes, I would agree.
But, I’d still and always take a 1984 Toronado Caliente’ loaded to the hilt with it’s excessive chrome, opera lamps, leather and lamb’s wool sherling seats and 307 V8 (actually made by Olds) any day over it.
Attached, one beautiful car, as previously mentioned. No opera lamps on this particular one (elector-luminescent or otherwise) but…
I sold these, ordered these, and drove these cars. still and always……….. My 1st choice over any of ’em. I’ll always miss these days.
Oh yeah, those were nice. In fact, the 1979-85 Toronado is my favorite of that generation of E-body.
But I like the later E-bodies too–with the possible exception of the 1986-87 Eldo with no rear fins and the 4.1.
Sometimes, ya just gotta have a burger.
Given the choice of these exact two, I’m going with the Eldo. Thank goodness PN says it has the 4.5 instead of the 4100. The color and rims are what does it for me.
The Bimmer might be a contender, if in a different color, though. Dark metallic blue, perhaps?
DaveB noted that in the early ’80s, BMW still had the aura of “the economy car w. the crazy price.” Back then many folk thought it nuts to spend Cadillac money on “onea’ dem furrin’ jobs.” Now, the shoe’s kinda on the other foot. 😉
Give me that wurst and a nice cold hefferveisen.
The picture speaks for itself. You all know which car came first. Things don’t always get better just because time & technology march on.
When I worked for Olds, the Calais was actually a pretty nice car for the times.. but yeah, AS an Olds Calais. Not as an Eldorado, a Riviera or anything else.
Can you ‘really’ call that overpriced, glorified Calais, a Cadillac Eldorado just because the plastic emblem ‘says’ it’s an Eldo? Well, Roger Smith thought you could, and would… but obviously, not many did.
Even as a life-long Cadillac and Brougham fan… I could not, and still… cannot. When I worked in the biz then, we called these cars ‘squat-piles’.
Do you at least understand why these cars came about?
Funny how the Caddie looks smaller than the BMW – was it actually or is that a trick of perspective? Regardless, anything badged “Cadillac” shouldn’t look like that Eldorado. The E30, on the other hand, is the epitome of teutonic styling – subtle but nice details and perfect proportions. IMHO, that Eldorado represents all that used to be wrong with Cadillac, and the E30 represents all that used to be right with BMW. Nowadays, Cadillacs look like Cadillacs; whereas with notable exceptions (3/4 series!) BMWs don’t look like BMWs should…
This reminds me of one of those times in the workplace, when you know in your gut, an idea is not a good one. I’m sure many GM designers felt this way, but were hesitant to speak up. You can either fall in line with everyone else, and endorse an idea. Or risk your personal reputation, or career, by coming out and saying you think this is a bad idea. As I’ve stated elsewhere, GM really painted themselves in a corner when they started applying that X-Car Omega/Skylark look to the new 1982 mid-sized A Bodies as well. You could see that it was now part of a larger styling/design trend affecting all car lines at GM. They were now committed to applying this look elsewhere. I am always fascinated at the way these decisions come about. Whether a dissenting designer would be supported and encouraged to speak up and say, “These designs are not working”. Or whether there was great pressure, from management, to follow through across all GM lines with this mini 1975 Seville look.
As much as any specific individual car line, this collective design approach was perhaps one of the deadliest sins at GM. They didn’t need to apply that Omega/Skylark X-car look to every car line afterwards. It certainly didn’t knock anyone’s socks off on these models.
GM must have had it’s tin foil hat on very tight when these cars were incepted. It’s one thing to downsize their bread and butter car lines to maximize space efficiency in a small footprint in the event of utterly unaffordable(in not completely unavailable) fuel, but in expensive personal luxury coupes? They must have expected the dystopian future they created in their collective minds to be akin to Flinstones: All of the luxuries of today, but in a powerless future! …The whole corporation could have been featured in an episode of Preppers had it existed at the time!
Now following that mindset and adding some tinsel to bread and butter low rent cars is one thing (Chrysler K-cars), but GM created several completely different, yet basically similar platforms between 1980 and 1986 for the dark future that never happened. That was one hell of a gamble and no matter how you slice it, and if you think about it, not a very smart one. I mean even if oil did dry up when they expected it to, that would mean they’d have a lineup of J-X-N-L-A-E-H-bodies all occupying basically similar footprints and drivetrains for confused and desperate customers to sort between. And Roger Smith era GM thought divisional autonomy was inefficient! HA!
Anyone that doesn’t know the story, you owe it to yourself to find out about the dire predictions for the 80’s that were forecasted in the late 70’s, by 1985 you had to meet the 27.5 CAFE standard for passenger cars, GM was STRONGLY encouraged by the GOV to take the lead in meeting these standards, now besides the Japanese and the Germans, there was another factor that GM feared even more, the government, now today 27.5 my might seem like kiddie games, but in the 80’s there was no magic bullet SFIDI 8 speed hybrid whatchamacallit., the main way to gain MPG, was to lose mass, plain and simple.
The 3 oil embargos in 1973, 74 and 1979 seriously altered the way American purchased cars from that point on, 1979, as I’ve pointed out before, was the last year the full size Chevrolet was the best selling car in the Chevrolet line up, large displacement engines were shunned, manufacturers scrambled to get smaller displacement engines into most of their big cars.
Most economists were predicting $3 to $4/gallon gas by 1985-1987, if oil embargos IV, V and VI weren’t occurring at that time. Most magazines were predicting the death of the full size car and the V8 engine by the mid 80’s.
The E-body cars are much wider than the N-body cars, so there is a difference there and up close there are many more difference, GM was selling 74K Eldorados and 100K Rivieras a year alone, it was a viable market that it imagined would STILL warrant a replacement even if things went Tango Uniform. What GM was also hedging is that no one would have as many fuel efficient cars available as GM would have had when gas prices increased.
I know the story, I’ve read it several times right here and every time I reread it the more ludicrous these cars seem. They bet their entire fortune on complete and utter disaster to ensure their own prosperity, and had zero ZERO plan B in event that the predictions and forecasts might just be wrong as they sometimes are.
Whatever subtle differences there are between the E and N body (or A and H or what have you), it really doesn’t matter. There’s barely a 20″ difference in overall length and 6″ in overall width that separate the compact J and full size H body. Yet there’s a half dozen different platforms between them for some reason. There was so much investment in this downsizing stratagy that seemingly not one thought was given to how well the cars would actually be received, or weather or not the popular 70s segments would still be relevant into the late 80s, particularly in a completely different package, expensive fuel or not.
Another point to consider. For at least a generation and through two styling heads, GM had consistently set automotive style, and everyone else followed. Sure, there was the occasional fluke like the 39 Continental or the 53 Studebaker, but those flukes would be followed by cars that returned things to the natural order.
The 80s were different. GM led but the rest of the industry started going other directions. Chrysler kept following until Lutz showed up, but not after. GM has spent time since following trends started by others, but its occasional shots at design leadership have fizzled (like with Olds and the last 98).
GMs 80s look got old fast but they used it up and down the whole lineup and for too long. Boomers in particular never really warmed to that design language. It was kind of like the way the inverted bathtub look fell so quickly out of favour in the 50s.
Gee, maybe they should have hired you and your magic crystal ball to tell them the future.
Have you ever driven an N-body and and E-body, or an A and H? There are significant differences in the way they drive and feel. The senior series downsized C,H E and K cars are MUCH more substantial than the A and N or J cars. Yeah, there were a bunch of platforms, there were a bunch of platforms before, Remember that the majority of these cars were designed when GM was still holding more than 40% of the market.
Did they err on the side of smallness? Yes, but they were counting on small size being an advantage. Efficiency was everything, even if a car “looked” inefficient it could have been considered a negative.
Right on. They aren’t just “subtle differences” between the GM platforms of this era. Other than road presence, I don’t know what physical size has to do with anything here.
GM also still kept some of their big RWD cars around in this era. If you wanted a Brougham or Cutlass Supreme Classic, it was available.
Still, the new FWD generally stuff outsold the older stuff and got better reviews in the press.
Gee, maybe they should have hired you and your magic crystal ball to tell them the future.
The way GM staked their reputation and resources on this across the board downsizing strategy you’d think they did have a fortune teller assuring them it would work.
ajla – There were noticeable differences from behind the wheel, and some of them were even very good cars when experienced from that location. That said, it must have been very tough to get a consumer base increasingly interested in imports behind those wheels when they were attached to a $30k Oldsmobile that looked just like a $10k Pontiac when squinting.
I know the story, I’ve read it several times right here and every time I reread it the more ludicrous these cars seem. They bet their entire fortune on complete and utter disaster to ensure their own prosperity, and had zero ZERO plan B in event that the predictions and forecasts might just be wrong as they sometimes are.
Dead on, Matt – CAFE is a great excuse for why GM’s first wave of downsized FWD models tanked out of the gate*… but a few years into the decade they were right back to selling 200k+ Caprices a year and it was clear that the future would not be the Mad Max scenario predicted in the wake of the energy crises. Furthermore, Ford and Chrysler somehow managed to build cars that handled the smaller dimensions and government regulations much better while they had their backs to the wall on the verge of bankruptcy – as did every single mainstream European/Japanese manufacturer, most of whom didn’t have any similar regulations they were forced to meet on their home turf. No one can say with a straight face that what was then the world’s largest auto manufacturer couldn’t have come up with SOMETHING better throughout this entire decade because of how they thought regs and fuel prices would play out in the late 70s.
*=Which isn’t even really true. The Citation sold ridiculously well in it’s first, elongated model year and only bombed later on when it’s mechanical shortcomings became apparent. What GM should have learned from this experience was that they were on the right track with the styling/packaging, but it needed to work better. Instead, they apparently took it’s failure to mean that they needed to go backwards and get much more conventional looking. The Citation/FWD X cars were much more modern vehicles, stylistically, than the A-bodies that effectively replaced them. The same thing happened with the RWD cars – they were still contemporary in ’77-’79 and they went backwards with the 1980-onwards formal roof versions. When the FWD “fullsize” replacements came along in ’85/’86 they also sold better than the dinosaurs they replaced initially – yet those old 70s styling tropes were still clung to well into the 1990s and they, too, became synonymous with old people and stuffiness.
Um, besides the E-body, which was dismal and the main subject were talking about here, which other cars tanked? Certainly not the C-body, or the H or the N’s, and nevermind the ultra successful A-body(millions and millions and millions), Ciera, 6000, Century and Celebrity ring a bell? Hell, the Celebrity was still the best selling car in America in 1986, when the Taurus made its debut.
Besides a hatch version in the Citation and Phoenix, the X-cars were pretty conventional and they aped the looks of the very successful mid size GM cars, looking like baby-Malibu, LeMans, Cutlass and Regal. The conventional looking X-cars were the better selling models, after the mass market Citation, the formal roofed Buick Skylark was the 2nd best seller. In fact is was the only X-car to maintain steady sales all the way through 1985. I don’t know if you recall. mainstream hatchbacks were ALL GONE by the end of the 80’s, Camry, Accord, 626, LeBaron, Lancer, Citation, Corsica, and more, all of these cars HAD a hatch variant in their model ranges in the 80’s and most of them were gone by the end of the decade.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but besides getting lucky with the minivan and the K-cars, what other Chrysler of this era was a rousing hit?
WTF is a Caravelle or 400, 600, Lancer, Lazer, Daytona, etc etc..did any of those cars make it out of the 80’s, maybe the Daytona. You can seriously tell me with a straight face that the 2ft wide landau topped formal grill K-car transvestite 1983 New Yorker “handled the smaller dimensions and government regulations much better”
PLEASE.
I didn’t even know Lee Iaccoca had an account here…..
CARMINE – Everything is relative. All of those Chrysler models were a sales improvement over where they were at coming into the decade and Chrysler kept building better and more appealing cars well into the 90s. GM still had lots of cars you could stick a “best selling” tag on, right up to their bankruptcy even, but the truth is they lost a larger percentage of market share during the 80s than they did during any other time in their history. Selling 100k cars is great, but only if you weren’t selling 400k of the equivalent model a few years earlier. Many of those best selling cars turned people off from ever buying a GM product again and unsurprisingly, they were – for the most part – all critical failures, then and now.
Also, since it’s all about sales numbers, here’s model year production for GM passenger cars in 1976 and 1996. 20 years mostly made up of the 1980s. Please explain this to me…
BUICK
1976: 737,467
1996: 427,316
CADILLAC
1976: 309,139
1996: 174,406
CHEVROLET
1976: 1,920,000
1996: 491,665
OLDSMOBILE
1976: 874,618
1995: 480,998 (because I can’t find a full-year figure for ’96)
PONTIAC
1976: 748,842
1996: 479,973
The E30. The last REAL BMW. I had an E30 325is, followed it with an E36 M3 four door sedan. After which BMW’s went from “the ultimate driving machine” to “leased Lexus with handling”.
I will admit to the same first thought that several of you have had – Hmmm, Calais and a Bimmer. I have also admitted to my youthful BMW lust. However, I must say that this may be the best looking Eldo of that generation I have seen. Color? Wheels? Fat tires? Not sure, but I’m kind of liking it. (And I have NOT started the cocktails yet 🙂 ) I’m sure a fellow could buy it much more reasonably than a BMW, too.
Very nice comparison Paul! Of both cars and parallel, yet radically different consumer tastes in the ’80s. To me the Cadillac says old money, while the Bimmer says (of course) Yuppie. I feel like those who would’ve bought one of these Eldorados was probably a Cadillac loyalist, or at very least a GM loyalist. Despite the rather puny size compared with its predecessors, I’m sure the Eldorado still appealed to this crowd because “it’s a Cadillac Eldorado”. The name was worth more than the exterior appearance of the car. These Eldorados were of course still very nice inside, and much more technology inside to show off.
The problem with GM at the time was they didn’t use their divisions properly. They could have made larger more powerful Cadillacs that would compete head to head with S-Class Mercedes, Jags, etc. and that wouldn’t be confused with low-line Chevrolets, but they refused to invest in any technology or design. They could have turned Oldsmobile or Pontiac into a BMW beater, but they decided to keep designing cheap OHV motors, lame gearboxes, and 3/4 scale versions of 70’s “personal luxury” styling. The remaining divisions could have then been used for “traditional American luxury” based on fake wood, fake chrome, and 1950s technology downsized to hit CAFE numbers. In other words the E30/Caddy picture used here might have been both GM products if GM managers had been a little creative.
“Um, besides the E-body, which was dismal and the main subject were talking about here, which other cars tanked? Certainly not the C-body, or the H or the N’s, and nevermind the ultra successful A-body(millions and millions and millions), Ciera, 6000, Century and Celebrity ring a bell? Hell, the Celebrity was still the best selling car in America in 1986, when the Taurus made its debut.”
Well, fact is, GM lost market share, period. So, can’t say that C, H, and N cars were “hits”. The Celeb went from #1 in 1986 to dropped in 1991, and only the N body Grand Am sold well. GM lost their ‘economies of scale’ with most other boxy cars dying on the wine. Also, the ‘Cor-etta’ was pushed to put GM back to having “#1 car’. That really went well, not!
Again, fact is, Taurus, Accord, and Camry took the bread and butter market. GM was dragging out the W body 4 doors, thinking that ‘disco coupes’ would still dominate. The A bodies went on too long, being ‘Senior Citizen discount’ fodder. Hardly anything to bring new blood into showrooms.
Lucky for them, they had good trucks, and if not for full sized SUV’s, GM would have went BK in 1992.