Downsized, but still pretty impressive. All photos sourced from Bring a Trailer.
My first Dream Car, a 1977 Coupe de Ville.
The ’57 had served me well. I was approaching my college graduation. Finally, after seven years of part time attendance. I thought that I would mark this special occasion, as well as reward myself, by getting my Dream Car. I decided to sell the ’57 Cadillac and start looking for something really special.
There was a consignment used car lot in Santa Clara, and that’s where I took the car. As it turned out, the manager of the lot laid eyes on my ’57 and decided that he wanted it. He didn’t want to buy it outright, exactly. He told me to find something on the lot that I liked, and we could work out a deal.
Originally there was one car that caught my eye, a bright red, Alfa Romeo GTS coupe. It was an interesting car and looked to be in good shape. But an Alfa? Stories of problematic Italian cars were common. Pass.
I was actually hoping that a cash buyer would appear, it would give me a wider choice. It turned out that the manager was holding onto a ’77 Coupe de Ville that had just come in. I had been very excited by the ’77s which had just come out three years ago. This downsized model was exactly the direction that I had hoped Cadillac would follow.
Cadillac was still clinging to the sheer look.
The car was the right size on the outside, especially compared to the much bigger 74-76 models. It was spacious and comfortable and the handling was also very good. The 425 engine was not as powerful as the 472 in my old ’70, but it was fairly responsive. In addition, gas mileage was much improved. I remember that it would average 16 mpg. on long highway trips.
Seven liters could still do the job.
My car was triple yellow, Naples yellow body, yellow half landau top, and yellow leather upholstery. The combination probably sounds kind of weird, but it actually struck me as fresh looking. Kind of like a slice of lemon cake.
This design is still unmistakably a Cadillac.
The car had just over 50,000 miles. It still looked like new, and since the current models still looked largely the same, I got to enjoy the prestige of driving what appeared to be a new Cadillac. This was during my embrace of the”Dress for Success” ethos and I was feeling pretty good about myself and my future. I loved everything about this car and I took immense pride and pleasure in owning it.
A faded touch of class.
This is not a Pep Boys wheel cover!
There were some nice details; the hood ornament led the way. The tail lights lenses were adorned with a vintage winged insignia. The wire spoke wheels were nicely done. These were quality pieces. I think that the disfavor wire wheel caps are viewed with is because of the cheap spaghetti strainer wire baskets that were available from discount suppliers. The whole set was stolen one night while I was at the movies. The wheel covers were replaced by my insurance company at a cost of over 500.00!
My last Coupe de Ville had been a ’70 model. The ’77 was one of the biggest of current American cars, but it lacked the feeling of massiveness of the earlier car. The ’70 while larger, had a more intimate feeling in the cabin, while the interior of the ’77 was brighter with larger windows. The ’70 was a pure classic Cadillac, with knife like front fender blades, and towering fin like rear quarter panels and tail lamps.
As I mentioned, I had graduated from college, so this car came at a very significant period in my life. Before the late ’70s layoffs at GM, I had applied for the Supervisors training program. It was two years later that I got a call from the company asking if I was still interested in the program. I had a pretty good job working for the County, and my future with them looked good, but GM paid a lot more.
So I left, just for the money. It was while I working for GM that I met my future wife. Where else but at a disco? It was the 1980’s after all!
GM’s Fremont assembly plant, from I 880, in 1972.
The training program was three months of classroom instruction, then three months on the floor, learning to manage a section of the assembly line. I had worked on the line for a couple of years previously. My Dad would go on to retire after 30 years with the company. Many of my relatives, including my older brother, and uncles also worked there. We were a UAW family.
I found the training program somewhat interesting, especially since I was familiar with the production line. This was my first white shirt and tie job, I was the first white collar worker in my family. (That didn’t last!) The word was that successful graduates of the program would be sent to Kansas City Missouri, where a new plant had been built. This would have been a good opportunity for me, the cost of living was lower than in the Bay Area. But Kansas City?
Even though there was nothing really tying me down to the Bay Area, I still didn’t want to go. So I called up one of my buddies that was still working for the County, and asked if they were still looking for people. He said that they were. I called up my old boss’s office and made an appointment. During our meeting, I asked him if there was an opening, and if so, could I come back? He asked me. “Are you tired of building cars?” I told him that I was. He said to show up on Monday.
The next morning I showed at GM, went to the personnel office and informed them that I was resigning. They suggested that I meet with the plant manager first. I had met him briefly during training. He was the number one man at the plant. It was a job with a lot of responsibility and it paid really well. He had once invited all the trainees to his house in the Fremont foothills for cocktails. It was quite the house!
He was pretty fair with me, and asked why I was leaving. I told him that I wanted to work in a field that was more in line with my education. I didn’t mention anything about moving to Kansas City. He told me that as a college grad, there would be a lot of opportunities available to me in the future with GM. I supposed that there would be, GM was still a powerhouse at this time. I told him that I had made up my mind, and I positively slammed that door shut. If I was burning bridges I didn’t care. I was a young guy with a lot of years ahead of me to find my path in life.
I never wanted to be a company man. My life and plans always came first, I had always been a conscientious employee who did the job, but that was as far as my loyalty extended. I stayed with the County for another year or so, then moved onto a better job with the State. I will add that the management of my department were always supportive of their young employees who were in the process of improving their education or career paths. I was looking forward to my new job, but I knew that I’d be required to relocate to the Los Angeles area.
Portrait of the author as a young man. Sorry about the poor photo quality.
The car served well through this time and I thought that it made me look as up and coming as any Yuppie in a BMW. Cadillac still held a lot of magic for me as a marque. There would still be one more dream Cadillac in my future.
I had added a hitch and hooked up a U-Haul trailer to tow my stuff down to So Cal to start my new working life. After I completed my training period I returned home to marry my girlfriend.
My new wife took over driving the Cadillac and became quite adept at handling it. We lived in an old part of Whittier and the house had a long narrow driveway that sloped downward onto busy Beverly Boulevard.
We would often drive the Cadillac up to Northern California as well as to the Central Valley, on hurried weekend visits. I was still new on the job and was worried that I might have car problems and be late reporting back to work. This led me to begin thinking of buying our first new car.
I was still thinking about Cadillacs. I checked out a couple of the new downsized El Dorados. They were beautiful, but a year or two old Eldo was priced beyond my reach. I was now a married man with a family and it was time to become more realistic and practical.
I had owned the ’77 long enough to pay off the four year loan, and after a few months of saving up some more money for a down payment, it was time to buy my (our) first new car.
Nice car – imagine where Cadillac would be today if GM had just made some small updates to this basic design rather than saddle their bread and butter models with the V8-6-4, HT4100, Olds diesel disasters, and awkward FWD based downsizing during the 1980s. Instead, just make FI and an OD automatic standard on the 425, keep the basic look but clean up the aero and lighten it with some aluminum panels (as they did to some degree), and perhaps in time convert it to unit body, perhaps offer a Cadillac exclusive aluminum FI version of a Chevy 350 small block, and install an independent rear suspension while keeping the basic style, size, and rear drive – and if this wasn’t enough to hit CAFE standards, just eat the gas guzzler tax rather than gut the performance, wreck the styling, and destroy the reputation for reliability and quality. Throw in a Opel based Seville to capture the BMW/Mercedes buyer and deal with any future gas crises to thereby avoid the Cimarron disaster, and its easy to think that Cadillac would have weathered the 1980s and 90s in far better shape.
Seems like it was a good car for that phase of life for you. In high school, which for me was the late 90s, a buddy of mine had a hand-me-down Seville in triple yellow. His father was an aerospace engineer, and the Caddy was no doubt a status symbol when he bought it new. By the 90s, though, especially in that color combo, it looked really old fashioned and pimptastic.
It wasn’t all that long ago that you’d see these on the road frequently, but the basic design was around for over a decade, so it could have been a ’90 that you were seeing. I think the design still holds up, probably better now than it did in the early ’90s. I like the color scheme, but Lemon Cream Pie is one of my favorites; I’d be hungry every time I went anywhere. 🙂
I’ve been waiting for this one, Jose. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Before the car, congratulations to the younger you for having a handle on your priorities and what you wanted out of a career and where you wanted to live. That’s something it seems so many never quite hammer down. I have a pretty good sense of contentment with my career choices at this point.
Next, that delicious slice of lemon cake. The ’77 – ’79 Coupe DeVille is some kind of high water mark for style in my mind. These always looked great, decades after they were new cars. I especially liked the Naples Yellow finish, and remember seeing one like your car around 1990 and remarking to myself just how sharp it looked for car that was already more than a decade old.
Great writing and account – looking forward to the next one.
I’d love to know how many of these were sold with full vinyl roof or none at all. I can’t remember seeing any at the time. Sadly, I’ve never driven or ridden in a downsized RWD Cadillac, but our ’77 Electra was very nice until the springs sagged. I do wish they’d de-chromed the dash as they did for the ’84-5 Eldo/Seville.
I’m really enjoying your stories, both on their own as well as how our two lives intersected and also diverged. A few months after I graduated from college I put my paycheck savings, from working a few blocks off I-880 (still CA 17 then), at Peterbilt, only a few miles north of the GM plant, into a used Alfa to replace my own GM car (Vega). And I ended up proactively guiding my career so I could stay in the Bay Area, though the growth of the Southern California automotive design and engineering in SoCal, first Japanese, then domestic and even European, came a few years later; that would have been a strong temptation if I were just a bit younger.
These were nice more limber Now siting on an across the board GM full sized Frame which make across the with parts right up to 96 These cars look so much better with no vinyl roof and in 2 tone paint Makes them look longer / sleeker And the 425 works well with the less weight & better MPGs
What a good read for this bitterly cold minus 33 Degree morning Jose. That’s quite the car, particularly the interior. These still caught my eye as a prestige car when I was a youngster.
Thinking more about this minus 33 whether I am dealing with at the moment, I think you had the right idea to put lifestyle first over career and money. Some days I regret doing that but most times I don’t.
I look forward to more stories.
Not the best designed Cadillac. What makes it bad for me is the sloping roof. It looks strange to the angular car, probably would have been better off with a more angular (formal?) roof.
Like the yellow though! And looking forward to more COALs!
They put a more upright backlight on it in ’80 to make the car appear larger (and ape the Seville). IMO, it was not a success, as the balance of the masses was off and the smaller landau looked silly. Sales fell a lot for the later ones (sedan, too).
At the time, this greenhouse reminded me a lot of the similar greenhouse on the same vintage GM X-body coupes, as equipped with the vinyl roof.
I can see the appeal of these. I saw the new ’77s at the LA Auto Show and was pretty attracted to the Olds 98 and 88. If I’d had the money…
I’m having a tough time imaging you behind the wheel of a Coupe de Ville.
I found a similar one a few years back, but with a burgundy interior….Some interesting colour combinations back then.
Interior.
The other one.
I had some up-close experience with these – a 77 Fleetwood at a place where I worked and a 78 Sedan deVille an aunt and uncle bought new (in triple oxblood). Both were solid cars, and the Fleetwood (which I drove with some frequency) was both nimble and fast. I was a little sorry that I missed out on my aunt’s 78 in later years – I had not learned that she sold it until later. She kept that car at least into the 1990s.
I was always a little torn on these. I loved the powertrains, but thought the 1980+ styling was more “Cadillac-ish”. I will confess, though, that I never liked that dash design – which hung around forever.
This is one of those cars that was really good as a new/late model car and also as an older car. Cadillac did a good job with these.
I drove a ’77 or ’78 Sedan de Ville a few times when it was several years old, and it was a real pleasure to drive. Nice torque from the 425, nice handling, quiet, and buttery smooth.
Great story and love the car. My parents first of two Cadillac’s was a light green 1975 sedan DeVille. They got it around at the end of 1976. A few months later, friends of theirs purchased a brand new 1978 Coupe DeVille in a tan/sand color with matching top and cloth seats. I recall a week where they and my parents took a vacation and they left the brand new Coupe in the garage next to my parents bigger 1975. At 11 years of age, I had a hey day sitting in those two cars and imagining driving them down the road. By the end of 1980, my parents picked up a lightly used 1979 Sedan DeVille in burgundy. I sure loved those years.
Anyhow, that yellow still looks great to me even today. Back in the early 90’s, I was then working at a dealership with Cadillac’s and I traded in a yellow (cameo ivory) 1984 Seville slant back with dark brown cloth. I purchased that car and drove it with great pride.
I applaud the fact that you lived your dream and were able to enjoy a car that you really wanted.
That’s a lot of yellow. I love the lemon cake reference.
Thanks for all the kind comments. That was a special car during a special time in my life. I met and married my Wife, started my long term job, and just started my life as a responsible adult. Even so, I still had a few more motorcycles, which I hope to write about. The cars that followed were a bit more practical, and those cars overlap with my renewed activities with “hobby cars.” There is more to come. I’m a Bay Area native, and despite being tempted to move away over the years, I’ve finally put those thoughts to rest. I will be happy to remain here.
This was a very classy car, and I’m fond of the triple light yellow as well. I also like how the taillights of the ’77 reprised the look of the 1969 models.
Ah, so that Primrose color is Naples Yellow. I have seen a lot of late 70s to late 80s cars i that color, often triple yellow like yours and it seem ed a very Cadillac color. The downsized 77-84 Cadillacs seemed like the right move, keeping the shape and dignitas while making the cars more wieldy than than the bloated mid 70s. They were also way more “Cadillac” than the horrible FWD cars that replaced them.
I never understood why they dropped the 368/425 in passenger cars in 82 but kept it in the Commercial Chassis? Shouldn’t they have been able to if it was certified for the CC?
In hindsight, it was an idiotic mistake not to have it at least as an option, but gas prices were still near 1979’s all time high (in real $, including this century I believe). More importantly, conventional wisdom expected them to go still higher after Reagan decontrolled prices early in ’81 (they didn’t, but there was another recession), plus GM was stupidly desperate to avoid CAFE and guzzler penalties. The slow, half-baked HT4100 and diesel cost them far more, the reputation of Cadillac.
I don’t know if the troublesome (but defeatable) 368 cylinder deactivation was needed to pass emissions standards in ’81–perhaps that’s why it also went out half-baked. That was an immediately and widely known problem that couldn’t continue for another year. They had one big fiasco after another. It would be interesting to know the details of GM’s decision-making processes that caused so many things to go haywire after the first successful round of downsizing in MY ’77-9. We can’t blame it all on the conversion to FWD.
Manufacturing capacity, space, and tooling may have been issues, too, that we seldom consider. Engines for the remaining years of the low volume RWD CC/75 were probably all made in MY 81 so the HT4100 could be made. In the long run, they’d have been better off taking the hit of using Chevy, Olds, and/or Buick engines for the whole line in ’82, since few Brougham buyers really cared later in the decade, they were just happy to avoid the 4100. Perhaps they didn’t expect enough of those others to be available.
Something I didn’t learn until last year was that Cadillac originally wanted the small car its dealers demanded to use the Citation X platform, but its initial sales in 1979-80 were so high, GM didn’t expect enough production capacity to be available. By the fall of ’81, when the rushed Cimarron and other J cars came out, the X’s reputation and sales were sinking, so there should have been capacity. Forty years of dimwit auto journalists’ digs at the Cimarron might have been avoided if it had been introduced with the Citation’s V6 instead of the J’s wretched 1.8 Four.
My beloved uncle from Philly had the same car, his was a 1979 model, white color outside and red leather inside with wood trim dash. It was originally from LA, my aunt’s sister gave the car to them as a gift in 1986. It was intended to replace uncle aging 1973 Chevelle. It served them well but later in life the car had repeated transmission issues, and someone broke in and stoled the radio.
I drove it few times, my impression was it was much larger than my then 1983 Caprice Classic 4-door. It was not that powerful, uncle Cadillac had an Oldsmobile engine, so it was not much different from my Chevrolet V8 in term of power.. its ride was an excellent if it is not too soft and floating. The hood was way too long.
My first time drove his Caddy was a story to tell. In 1991 Christmas, they went to vacation, and let me the car. I returned to visit mom, who lived with them while I was in school. On the Christmas eve, I started the car, but the hand brake light said the hand brake activated. So I searched for release handle and button, no luck. I knew I could not drive with the hand brake on. So i got inside and called a local Cadillac dealer. When I explained my problem to the receptionist, she sent to Service Department. Who would answer call In Christmas Eve? So I hanged up and called again to ask for a salesman, I explained my problem again to the guy answering my phone. He answered my question with a sense of pride that just put the car in gear and keep driving, the hand brake will automatically released. He said this a feature on Cadillac since 1950s. I forgot the name of feature, i later learned that the feature used the transmission fluid pressure via a valve to release the hand brake.
With his advice, i was able to drive the Cadillac and did some last minute Christmas shopping.
My ’74 Fleetwood’s auto brake release gave up the ghost soon after I got it in ’81, but there was a little lever sticking out from high on the pedal shaft that you could kick up to release the brake. I assume the downsized ones retained that emergency emergency brake release.