(first posted 8/31/2015) In many ways, the second generation Seville looked good on paper. The continued availability of a diesel engine seemed wise, given the popularity of Mercedes’ oilers and the recent oil crises. An entirely new, modern, front-wheel-drive platform also brought Cadillac into the 1980s, and there were newer, more modern gas engines offered shortly after launch. But even if these engines hadn’t been unreliable, the second-generation still would have failed at what was supposed to be its mission. Blame the bustleback.
The first-generation Seville was a paradigm shift for General Motors’ luxury brand. Arriving two years before the downsized DeVille/Fleetwood and four years before the smaller Eldorado, the Seville shared showroom space with giant land yachts and yet was priced higher than the entire range (bar the Fleetwood Series 75 limousine). Higher price no longer equated to greater size: the Seville was based on a version of the compact X-Body platform used by the humble Chevrolet Nova. However, it was extensively revised and featured a completely unique interior and crisp, distinctive exterior styling that was GM’s first use of the [soon to be over-used] “Sheer Look”.
The aim of the game had been to lure in buyers who were moving to the European import brands. Cadillac was still a powerful player in the luxury car market, but GM had acknowledged the growing popularity of cars from BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Unfortunately, what GM found was that the inaugural Seville was failing to lure in import buyers: by some accounts, only 15% of Seville buyers had traded in a foreign luxury car, and buyers were barely younger than those of the DeVille.
Still, the first Seville had shown that an internationally-sized Cadillac would sell if it looked the part. Compromises had been made in its development – using an Oldsmobile V8 engine and the X-Body platform as a base, for example – but the modest success of the Seville had surely shown that the basic concept was there, it just needed further refinements to appeal to import buyers.
If anybody realized that, it wasn’t communicated up the chain. One of the most crucial missteps in the development of the second Seville was letting Bill Mitchell have his way.
A talented designer, Mitchell had become the head of styling for GM upon Harley Earl’s retirement in 1958. He had been inspired by European automotive design, and was responsible for the gorgeous first-generation Buick Riviera and Cadillac Eldorado. Although he retired in 1977, one of his last acts was to ensure the second-generation Seville would wear a less desirable styling affectation from some European luxury cars of old: a bustleback.
An homage to old Daimlers and Hooper-bodied Rolls-Royces, the second-generation, Wayne Kady-designed Seville was a jarring neoclassical design in a showroom full of handsome, well-proportioned and modern-looking Cadillacs. Wire wheel covers and vinyl tops, those gaudy additions so popular with Cadillac’s core clientele, served to make Seville 2 even more fussy and tacky to behold. It did have its fans, and in the right colors and from the right angles it could look handsome, but the design was an absolutely baffling choice for Cadillac’s purported import fighter. The kind of people buying BMWs and Benzes – the kind of buyers Cadillac was trying to attract – would scarcely have considered this car.
Underneath styling that harkened back several decades was a platform that looked forward. Seville 2 had moved to the E-Body platform used by the 1979 Cadillac Eldorado, Buick Riviera and Oldsmobile Toronado, although it was designated K-Body for the Seville. Front-wheel-drive, four-wheel disc brakes and all-independent suspension with automatic self-levelling were the highlights of the E/K-Body cars. For the first time, the Seville could be optioned with a special touring suspension that offered nicely composed handling, but it wasn’t a popular option.
The interior was richly appointed, with plenty of brightwork and great big slabs of woodgrain trim. It was very much a Cadillac interior, much like the first Seville’s cabin had resembled the downsized ’77 DeVille’s. Where the new Seville had improved was in space utilization and packaging, as the cabin was much more spacious. The second-generation car was not only roomier, it was also appreciably lighter with a weight saving of almost 300 pounds despite almost identical exterior dimensions.
The weight reduction would have been more noticeable were it not for the seriously flawed engines offered. The 368-cu. in. fuel-injected Cadillac V8 was a no-cost option for 1980, putting out 145 hp and 270 ft-lbs (Californians Sevilles used the carryover, fuel-injected 350 Oldsmobile V8 with 160 hp and 265 ft-lbs). However, the 368 V8 would disappear after just one year and never be replaced by an engine its equal.
The rest of the engine range was comprised of the Oldsmobile 350 diesel – actually the standard engine at first – as well as, from mid-1980, the Buick 4.1 V6 with 125 hp and 205 ft-lbs. The diesel engine (as seen in the featured Seville) had been available in the first generation and had very well-known reliability failings, but stuck around until 1985. Where the 368 was rated at 14 mpg in city driving, the diesel was noticeably more economical with a claimed 21 mpg. However, it was painfully slow: while 0-60 in the 368 was around 10.5 seconds, the diesel barely broke the 20 second mark. Diesel Sevilles also had poorer fuel economy and braking than a Mercedes 300SD, although they were considerably cheaper. Official power and torque output for the oiler was 105 hp and 205 ft-lbs.
For 1981, the Cadillac 368 was replaced by a version of the engine with the V8-6-4 cylinder deactivation technology. Developed by the Eaton Corporation, an electronic module controlled the engine’s fuel injectors and opened and closed the valves on two or four cylinders in part-throttle driving. The aim of the game was improved fuel economy, but the technology simply wasn’t there yet. Embarrassingly, Cadillac retired the V8-6-4 engine after just two years; it lasted only a single year in the Seville, Eldorado and DeVille lineups.
The following engine would be little better in terms of reliability, and noticeably worse in terms of performance. The HT-4100 (or “High Technology”) was similar in concept to the horribly unreliable Chevrolet Vega engine a decade earlier, mating iron cylinder heads to an aluminum block. It was more fuel-efficient than the other gas engines employed in the Seville – a four-speed automatic had also become standard fitment, which helped – but it was utterly mediocre in power output: 125 hp and 190 ft-lbs, almost identical to the Buick 4.1 V6. A whopping 210 pounds lighter than the old 368 V8, the HT-4100 was also down a similarly whopping 70 pound-feet of torque.
To add insult to injury, the new engine quickly established a reputation for flakiness, with legions of HT-4100 engines suffering from cracked heads and warped blocks. Unlike the hastily-scrapped V-8-6-4, the HT-4100 stuck around for several years but was eventually improved. The early 1980s was a dark time for GM powertrains as the corporation hurriedly tried to adapt to new fuel economy standards, and weak, unreliable engines like the HT-4100 were a black mark on GM’s reputation. At least the troubled engines of the 1990s (Northstar; 3400 V6) were powerful!
On the road, the Seville was as plush and floaty as any Cadillac. That was a problem: luxury imports had firmer and more composed ride and handling, while the Seville handled like a DeVille. It seemed a peculiar choice, considering the new, modern platform developed for the car. Sure, there was the optional touring suspension, but it was scarcely advertised and rarely ordered. There was also no visibly sporty trim level à la the Eldorado Touring Coupe, although one wonders how convincing a sport-trimmed bustleback Seville would have been.
Like other Cadillacs, the Seville was well-equipped with myriad impressive features. Automatic headlights (or “Twilight Sentinel” in Cadillac speak) were standard, and the Seville was also available with memory seats, electronic climate control, side window defoggers, illuminated entry, and cornering lamps. An upscale Elegante trim was also available with plusher interior trim and a range of two-tone exterior color schemes.
The first half of the 1980s had proved to be embarrassing misstep after humiliating failure. Three unreliable engines. A half-baked Cimarron. It was a horrid start for the decade, and initially the more expensive Seville’s sales slumped by 25% for 1980. The first year of the 1980s wasn’t a great year for the automotive industry, but for Cadillac the following year was even worse as Seville sales fell another 31%, and then another 35% for 1982. Then something funny happened: sales recovered. No, the Seville hadn’t gotten any better, a four-speed automatic and a handful of new geegaws aside, but for some reason Cadillac buyers didn’t mind. For 1984 and 1985, sales figures sat around the 36k mark, lineball with 1980’s numbers.
Of course, those Cadillac buyers were not the ones the Seville had been originally conceived to attract. The median age of Seville buyers had reached 60, a whopping 25 years older than the median import buyer and the same median age as the DeVille. Cadillac had a demographic crisis on its hands as owners were becoming older, less-educated and less wealthy than ever before. 28% of Seville buyers were retired, almost double the industry average and almost quintuple the average for import buyers. While Cadillac volume had increased during the 1970s, they had targeted more blue-collar buyers with lower incomes, the kind of buyer who would be far more likely to cut back on luxury spending during an economic downturn. Adjusted for inflation, the median income of Cadillac buyers had fallen around 25%. These statistics were troubling.
Clearly, Cadillac had made the second Seville just another sedan targeted at the same ageing buyers they had come to rely on. Only the Cimarron was reaching younger buyers, and one can only imagine how Cadillac’s fortunes in the 1980s could have changed if they had invested one iota of effort in differentiating the smallest Caddy from its J-Body counterparts. With the second generation, Cadillac had steered the Seville far, far away from its intended mission. A cushy ride disguised a modern platform. Unreliable engines infuriated buyers. And, the final blow: polarizing looks chased away any would-be import conquests.
The subsequent Seville shrunk to more international dimensions and ditched the controversial bustleback. Unfortunately, it was once again handicapped by styling. Although Cadillac made a more concerted effort to appeal to import buyers (eventually), the wire wheel and vinyl top brigade within GM’s ranks ensured the third generation’s positioning remained confused.
There are some who are fond of the second Seville’s distinctive bustleback styling, and who admire its plush ride and sumptuous interior. As a Seville, though, the second generation was a miscalculation at best and an utter failure at worst. It helped steer the Cadillac division towards irrelevancy and further compounded the marque’s woes during the most disastrous decade of its existence, and one it is still recovering from today. Among the younger generation and particularly in the coastal states, Cadillac is still struggling to shake a reputation for being a manufacturer of “old man cars.” Cadillac could have made assertive moves in the 1980s to appeal to younger, more affluent buyers and helped establish the more cohesive and desirable image then that it is slowly achieving now. Unfortunately, it took baby steps and kneecapped itself with each one.
The second Seville didn’t advance the game for Cadillac, let alone for luxury cars. It didn’t follow its own mission brief. All in all, it was the most misguided of all six generations of Seville/STS.
Related Reading:
My Seville/STS Series
This, if equipped with a good motor, could have been (and should have been) a reasonably (for the 80s) sporty 4-door coupe a la the Lagonda. All the styling department needed to do was slant the nose “aero” style, and bring the roofline just a tad lower. Of course, it would have had to be RWD too, no chance with 80s GM. Can you imagine this thing, with those changes, as well as buckets up front, a floor console, and a sculpted rear bench for two? Keep the bustleback feature, it’s the nose and the relatively tall roofline that sink it. Every time I see one of these in traffic, I’m struck by the fact that they’re just too boxy. That, not the bustleback tail, was these cars’ greatest styling flaw.
I have an 83 silver and black Seville with alloys and no vinyl roof. These cars only look great with the right combination of wheels and colors. They are ugly otherwise. This 83 belonged to the late Robert Schuller from Hour of Power and the Crystal Cathedral so it has some historical interest. It’s slow, it floats and it’s beautiful. Destined to be a classic. Never a “me too” car collector.
American cars were unique style second to none. The ride was a comfortable and fun. US car makers made their biggest mistake. They started to build European cars on American platforms. To this day Cadillac is.building a car to compete against all the strengths of Mercedes Audi and BMW. Build a Cadillac a Cadillac and watch customers come. back. Dodge has realized that no one is better at being Dodge than them.
It’s just plain “FUGLY”
+1
This car shows the difference that a lack of leadership can make. The Eldorado it was based on was one of GM’s most successful efforts at downsizing. Nobody seemed to mind that it was somewhat boxy, that it was a few feet shorter than the car it replaced, or that it gave up a huge Cadillac V8 for the small Oldsmobile V8 that had powered the previous Seville. The chassis was so good that Cadillac was able to produce an Eldorado Touring Coupe which received the sorts of reviews that Cadillac has been chasing ever since.
The previous Seville was a sharply styled and luxuriously equipped Nova. Here was a perfect opportunity to make a Seville that wasn’t just a Veblen good. All the pieces were in place, even if CAFE was about to overwhelm Cadillac Powertrain’s capabilities. So what did Cadillac do with the sales momentum of the ballasted X-body Seville and the fine second-generation E/K platform? They built a neo-classic that had zero crossover appeal to import-intenders, driving enthusiasts, or people of conservative tastes. I don’t want to bad-mouth the car. I knew some very nice now-deceased people who bought them new. But it was a car of limited appeal when it could have been a car that made people faced with buying expensive and slow early W126 Mercedes take note.
Or, frankly, another generation of the Seville as a tarted up Chevy might have been just fine. It at least would have been better than this, and I think there were still a number of Where GM messed up on this was definitely the baroque styling. Old Bill Mitchell was definitely losing it by this time…and I wonder how much of the fact that the gen. 2 Seville’s approval was due to his positive track record up to that point.
The Nova was replaced by the Citation, which did not have as luxurious a chassis as the E-body used on the 1979 Eldorado. With years of development, the FWD X-body begat the 6000STE and Buick Century, but they really weren’t as refined as even the first ’79 Eldos. Besides, chances are that the Citation would have been robodied to the tastes of the same guy who gave us this Seville. Engine options would have been pretty dire too.
I was just thinking last week that I could finally see myself buying a new Cadillac if I had the money. With the CT4-V and CT5-V they have finally built a better BMW, something BMW can’t themselves seem to do anymore. Power, smoothness, perfectly weighted steering, a composed chassis, slick manual transmissions, and mediocre interiors (well, they got almost everything right). Equally important, I’m finally able to get a negative image from decades of snooty but behind-the-times Cadillacs out of my mind. Young people I know actually aspire to own one of these. Still, sports sedans aren’t really where the market is going. Cadillac knows this. They need to get their upcoming electric crossovers right the first time.
I remember in 1979 reading about the upcoming gen2 Seville and being quite excited about it. I loved FWD at the time (my uncle had a Citroën DS) and thought the Seville would be the first American car (except maybe the Cord) to take full advantage of the layout. GM’s previous FWD efforts – the Toronado and Eldorado that premiered in 1966 and 67 respectively, had good bad-weather traction and a flat floor, but wasted the space-efficiency advantages on a long-hooded, short-cropped coupe. The smaller 1979 versions (which now included the Riviera as well) were a big step in the right direction, but still coupe-only. Finally, GM was about to build a world-class, practical, yet luxurious world-class sedan. Or so I thought. Car and Driver published spy photo of a camouflaged ’80 Seville that was undisguised except for a box built around the bustleback that extended the decklid and sheetmetal rearward, giving it a conventional appearance. That camouflaged Seville wound up looking much better than the actual Seville. They should have built it that way. Would have had more cargo space too.
Also, the 1975 Seville wasn’t GM’s first use of the “sheer look”. This was! https://digital.hagley.org/2012_06_15_Frigidaire_The_Sheer_Look#page/1/mode/2up . There isn’t a thing in that 16 page catalog I’d kick out of my home. More here: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/tv-ads-and-videos/cc-vintage-video-gm-did-build-an-imperial-the-frigidaire-imperial-line-for-1957/
I get the feeling that the E-Body’s longitude-FWD layout (in which the transmission sat beside the engine and was linked to it by chain) and semi-unitized body were more expensive than the traditional longitude-RWD/BOF X-Body-based layout of the original Seville, to start.
It’s also worth noting that the original Seville was designated a K-Body, which GM said was due to the substantial reengineering that it received versus its X-Body donor platform, and the K-Body-for-Cadillac designation continued through the third generation (when the E and K body became transverse-FWD) and to the slick, angular fourth-generation Seville, which was again an offshoot of the contemporary E-Body. The Deville used it through 1999.
In general, GM has had some ambiguity behind these designations. For instance by the 90s, the differences between the C-, G-, K- and H-Body platforms were unclear, and its widely believed that they were all the same basic thing.
This is the ugliest car Cadillac ever made. It looks like two different cars welded together. That hideous rear end does not look right with that sheer front end. The car looked like a normal boring Cadillac that someone took a blow torch to. The first generation Seville is still an attractive design – this Seville – hell, no.
Continental tried to do a similar look and wisely changed the front end after a year to a sloped design that better incorporated a less severe bustle back than the Seville. The Imperial wimped out completely and ended up with a bustle line dropping from the C pillar, but with a standard trunk rear design. However, the Imperial had a cartoonish front end.
This look, those engines, that brand – this car is a rolling embarrassment for Cadillac.
I like the bustleback.
I like the strong American-style front and lights.
I like the angular “sheer” windows and roofline.
I don’t like wire wheels or vinyl roofs on them.
I would like one solid black with black “BBS” style rims on it. Just 16″; not too big.
Medium-black tinted windows.
Gray interior.
A healthy (modern) Chevy V8. Nothing too fancy.
Gangster!
Wow, we’ve said a lot about this over the years. Several thoughts from me. Mostly positive. We need some positive…
There seems to have been confusion in the management ranks about just what the Seville was intended to be. Was it about style and exclusivity? If so, big hit here; this was certainly stylish. Or was it about attracting the dreaded import-intender? Hmm, might be a harder sell there. We’re told this appealed to the older Cadillac buyer. Why didn’t somebody take Bill Mitchell aside and say, “We love it, Bill, but it’s not quite the right thing for a Seville. Let’s scale it up and make it the new De Ville.” Or did they really think Cadillac could start a new design trend that would have Mercedes and BMW rushing back their drawing boards? Hubris, anyone?
Also, notice how the side windows and roofline are so similar to the fourth-gen Seville. If this had had a conventional trunk line instead of the bustle, it would have been quite an attractive car. It would have led nicely into the fourth-gen too, and we might have been spared the third-gen.
Also, price-positioning. I never quite grasped the concept behind the original Seville being so expensive. Were subsequent Sevilles sold at such a premium price, or did they settle down to a logical position below the bigger Caddies?
The point behind the original Seville’s price is that they didn’t want it to be seen as a junior model.
IIRC they were always above the DeVille but by the early ’90s the Fleetwood and Brougham models surpassed the base velour-trimmed, column-shifted fourth gen if not the STS the main marketing push featured by that point.
The original Seville was at least partly a response to older Cadillac buyers requesting something easier to drive and park than the leviathans Cadillac offered from 1959 on. The high price was about gaining acceptance for a Cadillac based on a Nova. Someone was picking up what Thorstein Veblen was putting down. Even now that the bones of the Nova are no more mysterious to anyone who cares than the shape of a sphere, there are still people who don’t want to admit that they desired a pet rock.
Back in the 1970s when Buick management felt the controversial boat-tailed Riviera missed the mark, they extensively redesigned the rear of the car and replaced the boat-tail with a more conventional, but (as Frank Bray noted) bustle-backed rear end. It’s too bad that Cadillac didn’t come out with a redesigned rear end for the 2nd gen Seville, at least for its last couple of years of production. I guess GM was having financial problems then in the 80s and couldn’t afford it. But, still.
The rear third of this car has reminded me of Garfield’s expression in the last panel of this cartoon since it ran in the Denver Post one day in 1985.
Its best look is the gold one from the brochure above: single color, no curved chrome side molding, simple wheels. I’m surprised no one made a squared-off cover for the trunk lid.
The wire wheel covers were garish and common enough on the RWD Cadillacs, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Bustleback without the even uglier FWD ones, and few Eldorados.
Both S & E ’84-85 models had de-chromed dashes, a big improvement.
I’m trying, but failing: what do you imagine a squared-off trunk lid cover might have looked like, in terms of its lines?
When my grandmother was looking for a car to replace her ’71 Calais, she was very explicit about not wanting “one of these new Cadillacs with the smashed-in back”.
My grandmother had a name for these Sevilles that would violate our rules of decorum here.