Turning on the television in the hotel room, the movie preview soon ground to a halt and was instantaneously replaced by the smiling face of a somewhat familiar actor. With a synthetic joy coming from his now older appearing self, he began talking about the variety of great and reasonably priced entertainment options one can access in their hotel room.
If this once somewhat popular television actor was now hawking movie channels for hotels, it was painfully obvious this actor’s audience had changed considerably. Such stands to reason; he’s now fifty and his popularity likely peaked twenty-odd years ago.
Seeing that spectacle reminded me of this Caprice I had photographed a day or two prior.
When introduced for 1977, the new downsized B-body was the fresh new actor who took the scene by storm, winning awards and garnering tremendous public favor.
All the various trade magazine gushed over this newcomer. Consumer Guide announced the 1977 Caprice / Impala represented “a new era in passenger cars”. Car & Driver enthused “big cars will never be the same”. Road Test exclaimed “the car for Everyman has taken a turn for the better.”
Chevrolet sold over 660,000 of their new biggies in 1977.
Yet time has a bad habit of elapsing. By July 1982, Car & Driver again reviewed a Caprice, sprinkling phrases such as “elderly”; “driving it…brings back memories…of Dad”; and, “Chevy basically decided to rest on its 1977 laurels” throughout the article. While they generally liked the F-41 Caprice test car, the underlying message was the audience had moved on and GM was missing an opportunity.
Indeed the audience had moved on; around the time that article was published in 1982 the Caprice / Impala captured merely 15% of Chevrolet’s overall sales – behind the Citation and Chevette. What had once been the undisputed top draw of the Chevrolet hierarchy was now the third wheel, relegated to a supporting role of sorts.
If one still believes in the continued dominance and influence of the full-size Chevrolet by 1986, look no further than this chart. Any market dominance and influence was in that swirling motion before going down the drain.
By 1986, the Caprice, or full-sized Chevrolet for simplicity sake, was no longer the box office gold it had once been ten, twenty, and thirty years prior.
It was also for model year 1986 when Ford introduced the Taurus. One could have cross-shopped one of these against our featured Caprice, both of which remain virtually unchanged…for five model years.
The praise Car & Driver heaped upon the 1986 Taurus could be viewed as an indirect dig at the Caprice. Stating the Taurus’s bench seats were firm and supportive, not “sofa soft” while the steering was not of the “over-assisted, lifeless American norm”, it was obvious the magazine was a fan of this newly released golden child.
Life is full of fickleness and ogling of the latest and greatest doo-dad. A good analogy for the Caprice could very well be our referenced actor. The talent remains and there is now more life experience to make a more effective presentation of their character. Yet as our Caprice had had a decade of experience in a role that had changed little, there had also been a decade of new actors to come along and steal the spotlight.
Not to mention the natural evolution of the audience itself.
Just among American cars in that intervening decade, there had been the introduction of the Chrysler K-cars (Plymouth Reliant, Dodge Aries, and all spin-offs), the GM X-cars (Chevrolet Citation and the clan), the Ford Escort, and the front-drive General Motors A-bodies (Chevrolet Celebrity, Buick Century, Pontiac 6000, and Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera). Even Ford had downsized their full-sized cars in that time period. All were new actors to detract one’s attention from the traditional talents of the Chevrolet Caprice and the other GM B-bodies.
There is also the other unpleasantry about life contained herein – there is a certain point for everyone in which the appearance of youthful freshness and vitality begins to erode. Whether or not one’s demeanor and self-presentation has changed or remains constant is immaterial; while unfortunate, certain audiences tend to judge others by their appearance. For these people a face with age-induced wrinkles and a receding jawline generally doesn’t present as well as a younger, fresher face does.
In addition to elapsing rapidly, time is also the great leveler to life’s playing field. Over thirty-five years later, it isn’t overly difficult to discover a 1986 Chevrolet Caprice in the wild, even in unlikely territory, a car most identifiable by its one-year only front. It is, however, nearly impossible to find any of these others.
While these other upstarts all appeared promising at the outset, most (with the notable exception of the GM A-body) were ultimately viewed as possessing a significant flaw of some variety. Much like the actor who departs the scene due to legal issues or behavioral challenges (or both), how many of these cars introduced between 1977 and 1986 have departed the scene entirely? Washed up, as in the Caprice, is often preferable to washed out.
Sure, the role of the Caprice declined over its life cycle given the change in its audience. From being the new, full-size standard of the North American market in the late 1970s, the Caprice’s audience was distilled down to being one of geriatric buyers, law enforcement, and taxi use by the end of its career in 1990. The Caprice had transitioned from being leading-man to character actor. There is no shame in that as the need is perpetual.
The Caprice, like the popular actor whose star has faded, used its many talent to fill many roles during its run from 1977 to 1990. Roles may diminish but talent does not.
It took a long time for another highly talented actor calling itself Impala to emerge from the Chevrolet womb and aim for box-office glory, but this full-sized Impala, found lurking fifty feet away from our featured performer, would ultimately be a day-player.
Rather, this Caprice had a starring role in a major feature. While that movie is now old, and of a faded genre, that does not detract from what it offered to its industry at the time. Plus, unlike some of the upstarts named earlier, the Caprice name itself was not a one-hit, or one generation, wonder.
Found May 30, 2023
Hollywood, California
In my opinion, the single and biggest loss that came when General Motors released its ‘down size’ 1977 ‘full size cars’ was that a four door pillarless hardtop body was no longer offered.
For Chevrolet, 1976 would be the last year that a ‘Sport Sedan’ (4 door hardtop) was offered and this fact would end a short 20 year run for this unique body style having first been offered in 1956.
Full size Chevrolets and other GM makes would never be the same after 1976!
My family knew someone how bought an ’86 Caprice very similar to this one, and her story parallels your theme here. She was in her late 60s at the time and was a university medical researcher. At one point, she was at the top of her field, though by the 1980s much of the innovation in her field had passed her by, and she was semi-retired – kept on “emeritus” status by her employer on account of her past achievements.
A longtime Chevy sedan owner, she bought a base-model V-6 Caprice in 1986 because she liked big sedans and wanted to buy one before they went extinct. She ordered hers with few options – solid bench seat, roll-up windows, etc., because those things were unnecessary for commuting from her apartment to work. As far as I know that was the last car she bought before she quit driving.
Base Caprices of this period have always reminded me of this woman, and it’s been years since I’ve seen an example like this. Outstanding find here!
Also, I find it interesting that the Caprice/Impala’s big sales plunge came in 1979-80. If I were to have guessed, I’d have speculated a more gradual decline, and then a sharp drop-off in ’85-86, but I guess that’s not the case. It makes it even more head-scratching to wonder why GM didn’t update these cars before they attained Living Dinosaur status.
The 1979–1980 period was marked by a second big hike in oil prices following the revolution in Iran, and horrifically high interest rates that made a new car note punishingly expensive, so the decline at that point is not really surprising. On top of that, GM had anticipated that CAFE and rising gas prices were going to obsolete full-size RWD cars and the V-8 engine by about 1985–86, a projection that the 1979–1980 sales tended to support. So, I think they went into the 1980s expecting that these cars would expire without direct replacement. By the time it became clear that falling gas prices and policy relaxation were giving bigger, thirstier models a reprieve, a lot of time had passed, and development lead times (especially during the chaos of the Smith era) meant that no replacement was in the cards until the early ’90s.
Thanks – makes sense.
In the mid- to late-90s I worked with a gentlemen (who was likely around the age I am now) who had a white base model ’86 Caprice. He purchased it from the estate of a lady, so it was undoubtedly her last car, also. Like the featured car, and the one you mention, his had the “4.3 Fuel Injection” badge on the front fender.
Also, I find it interesting that the Caprice/Impala’s big sales plunge came in 1979-80
Actually, it didn’t happen until 1980, as the chart in the post shows. 1978 sales were 613k; 1979 sales were 598k. 1980 sales were 237k; 1981: 219k; 1982: 188k.
The high gas prices didn’t hit until late 1979, and very strong recession and high interest rates didn’t hit until 1980-1981. The whole market plunged from 1979 to 1982, by which time it was down 46% from 1978. Big cars dropped even more.
The mid-’80s Caprice had few friends in the wardrobe department at that. It was always getting stuck with unfashionable duds like vinyl tops, wire wheel covers (the photo car’s hubcaps are from an S-10 and not original) and the photo car’s wide chrome lower moldings. When it wasn’t in uniform, that is.
I wonder whether a Caprice RS with the Celebrity Eurosport/Cavalier RS’ blacked out trim and red-accented black side moldings would’ve spiced up its’ image or just looked like the dad from an episode of a family sitcom where he borrows his teenage son’s clothes.
Disclosure: This piece has been an on-again-off-again affair for a while, thus it’s been a while since I read the 1982 C&D piece. I mention that as they suggested something similar to what you have in regard to trimming the car differently as that might open up a broader audience. Going from memory but it seems like they said to tone down the chrome, make the F41 suspension more commonly known, and a few other similar items. The thought process was it would make the Caprice more evergreen, somewhat like the Volvos of the time.
What’s with those dog dish hubcaps on the featured Caprice? Full wheel covers were standard across the board for all civilian Caprices for 1986. And, hubcaps on low spec taxi and police versions were different than these. Don’t think I’ve ever seen this style.
Definitely not the wheel covers from the base civilian Caprice, but earlier police vehicles had similar hubcaps. I’m not sure if they were ever painted black, but the hubcaps on this featured car look like these late-70s/early-80s police hubcaps.
I thought the same thing. Don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these with doggies.
Dog dishes have been in for some time. I see them commonly on older big American cars.
My ’90 S10 (EL/base) had these hubcaps. They looked nice on the black truck.
Some of this also was the social stigma of their personal car being the same as a taxi or police car. Once these places started gobbling them up and seeing them in duty, consumers just didn’t want them anymore. But before it got “typecast”, it was exactly what many buyers wanted. Car are very much an emotional purchase.
I see a Caprice like this and love it, but I have to understand it didn’t feel this way when the streets were littered with them painted in yellow and it was nearly veery cop car.
I appreciate the styling on these cars (besides perhaps the “SBS” Saggy Butt Syndrome) way more now than when they were all over the place, especially as LAPD cars and local taxis, seemingly in greater numbers than civilian ones in SoCal back in that era but they also kind of blended in like Camrys did/do.
I think the ones you see around nowadays are more survivor original old people cars that were resold as pristine 20y.o. models rather than ones purchased and used (and worn out) like its contemporaries were that you mention. However I don’t see this being cross-shopped against the Taurus, but surely the Crown Victoria/LTD models would have been its biggest (in more ways than one) rivals. I suppose the Taurus represents the “new guard” in styling though which the CV of course emulated eventually as well as did the Caprice.
The dog dish S-10 (?) caps are interesting if a bit incongruous with the lux chrome lower strip but in keeping with a 4.3l equipped car (which itself I don’t recall being a common sight).
I remember the B body Chevrolet being a huge phenomenon in 1977-79, but after 1980 it got relegated to bit-player status. Thinking back, I can only recall one person I knew who bought a new civilian-trim Caprice after 1980, and he was an 80+ year old retired life insurance salesman. In my world the Ford Panther cars and the Chrysler 5th Avenue were seen much more commonly in driveways of older owners who were proud of their traditional cars. I think GM buyers were much more likely to buy what Oldsmobile and Buick were serving up than to “go down” to a Chevy.
I like the look of this one, with that rare combination of chrome trim but no vinyl roof, and whitewalls with dog dish hub caps.
Hero to Zero, that’s the familiar refrain found in the enthusiast automotive magazines. I have subscribed to several auto mags for over forty years, and I have a collection of many past issues. Numerous times I have read a road test that praised a new model, like the 4.6 SN 95 Mustang, and a few years later they refer to numerous deficiencies and weaknesses that were never mentioned in the earlier evaluations.
Of course products don’t exist in a vacuum, there is the pressure from the competition, that is usually evolving in an attempt to outdo the present models.
Of course the market is also constantly changing but there are also long term trends that develop. Like the trend away from sedans to utility type vehicles.
I thought that the downsized ’77s were a huge improvement over the preceding models, though by the late ’80’s they certainly didn’t seem as fresh. I was familiar with the Caprice and the Crown Vic, and by then they did strike me as being too big, and space inefficient. But Chevy and Ford did offer smaller and more efficient alternatives. I don’t think that keeping these and the Panthers in production was a mistake, there was still a limited market for them. These models were going to be replaced eventually.
There’s still a lot of B Body and Panther love out there, and I see lots of well preserved examples still on the road. Something like a Dodge Aires or Taurus? Not so much.
The “Hero to Zero” trend is definitely a real buff book tendency, but the other factor that plays into it is that initial launch tests often involve well-prepared, carefully maintained cars (even if they aren’t ringers in the Royal Pontiac sense) on the proving grounds where they were developed, sometimes with examples of the outgoing generation for comparison — very favorable conditions, in other words. Later tests, with regular production models drawn from the usual press fleet or from dealers, away from the cloistered manufacturer test track, may then reveal deficiencies that either weren’t apparent initially or that the tester was prepared to overlook on an early production test car.
Another factor in the large Chevy sales fall-off may have been that by 1979 Ford had also introduced successfully-downsized large cars, creating a more direct competitor.
Suppose I designed a car that would grab 80% of a huge market five years before that market is lost due to economic circumstances? Sounds like a great win, doesn’t it? That’s what this car did. Then, when that market shriveled to the point where some brands are discontinuing that size, you have this car paid off and everything coming in as profit? At a time when you need money to fund entirely new vehicles, this champion is shoveling cash at you hand over fist. What’s your problem again? It’s out of style? Phooey.
Ford thought it laid an egg with the Panther in 1979 because it sunk bucks into a market with a “me-too” design and that market was going the way of the Dodo bird. Ford was too late to even get that car paid off within a reasonable amount of time.
By 1982 everyone saw these cars as dinosaurs. So, with GM just making bank on each of them, and Ford without any other options as they dropped to NUMBER FOUR in the industry, the Caprice and Crown Victoria ended up frozen in 1977-1979. Pontiac killed off their full sized car, Chrysler failed with their smaller full size, and AMC ditching the Ambassador, it looked accurate.
But something incredible happened. Oil prices stopped rising. The economy looked better. The economic doldrums ended. Folks started buying large cars again? Ford paid off their Panther investment and the Caprice kept on giving GM needed profits. Do you think that either of those manufacturers wanted to gamble on redesigning a new full size car after what they went through? They kind of did.
Yet, instead of a completely new car, both GM and Ford gave their 1977-1979 full sizers new bodies. GM launched a car that looked like a beached whale and Ford thought that buyers wanted a large grille-less TBird sedan. Fortunately for Ford, their redesign had a bit more style flexibility over GMs. While GM stylists claimed their new Caprice would “eat Ford’s lunch” – it didn’t. The GM design lasted until 1996, and the Crown Victoria was produced until 2011.
So – this car was a big winner. While it wasn’t the newest design on the block – it paid for the new designs on the block. GM probably wished every one of their cars could reproduce the success that this generation of Caprice did. For a solid five years – it was auto royalty.
I recall seeing the “all new” 91 MY on display at Wallyworld. There it sat, like a beached whale, with people milling around it, trying to figure out which time zone or postal code it was in.
At least the style of this version had ‘clarity of purpose’. Yes, it rolled with every punch but I think it made for a good looking 2 door coupe.
It’s amazing how much better the Impala SS looked compared to the Caprice.
The last generation Caprice really was hideous. The previous generation looked way better. I would totally drive one today, drop in an LS, would make a really fun ride.
Brilliant conceit, and beautifully written. Completely unrelated to this and before I had read this post this evening, a tangential work conversation had me looking up “Hugh Grant 2023”, and that’s kind of what the featured car reminds me of now. And like Mr. Grant, this featured Caprice seems entertainingly filterless. Great job, Jason.
GM did not need another Eurosport model- Caprice or otherwise. Adding on “red accented black side moldings” fooled no one, especially the import buyer. What might have helped immensely at this point would have been a FWD Chevrolet B body sedan to join the well designed LeSabre and 88.
Nice ode to what was one of GM’s best-ever models. As a young guy at the time, I certainly favored smaller, more modern, often foreign-built cars, but I would not have minded a B-body, minus the old-man options such as a vinyl roof and wire wheel covers and with a higher-end interior with split front seats. They were clean purposeful designs, none more so than the Caprice, and were far more appealing than the domestic competition, which I viewed as tasteless, ugly, and irrelevant.
I would add that there was another group of buyers for the Caprice not mentioned here: corporate fleet buyers, particularly those whose sales and marketing teams drove company cars. Many preferred the spacious B-bodies with their demonstrated record of reliability to the smaller, front wheel drive replacement models GM was flogging hard throughout the 1980s. The Caprice filled that role admirably, with a large trunk for hauling product and samples, plenty of room to take clients to dinner, and still get reasonably good fuel mileage, although not without the loss of some degree of engine performance.
Ironically, the final versions of the Taurus (before its revival in 2009 as a renamed 500) served the same purpose. So many people I knew who were stranded after 9/11 drove a rented Taurus halfway across the country to get home.
It’s tough when you grow in gigantaville. In the 80s when the hair was too long and the music loud and this guy rocked everything from a 59 Impala convertible or a Caddy from the same year and switch to 71 to big GM convertibles in the winter. I dated a girl and her folks bought one new, an 86. The first time we went out in it , all I thought was, ” it’s not hip to be square”. I drove it several times and thought, it’s not that bad. Very comfy, not a missile but big car adequate. We parted ways and that was that. A decade or so later in 1999 a friend that was a junk guy came buy and on the deck was, to me. a very clean yellow beige Brougham copy. I asked ” what’s the matter with the square”? He replied don’t know or care, it’s going to the scrapyard. Well long story short 150.00 bucks pardoned it from death. The car still looks great has been with me now through the journey of life, wife. kid, different jobs, long distance relocation. At 250k now, pump 3 times and go. Sometime you never appreciate things until they fade to black. like the one here that has stood the test of time, likely because it to has had a goof that resists change or is cheap. Whatever the case that girlfriend and her parents car, who have long left my life but left a positive memory helped save an unlikely square from death. A big change from 59, maybe not as exciting but definitely earned her spot next to them and as the little sticker says in the lower rear corner of the back window,” It’s hip to be square”, and in this day and age, it is. Atleast for me.
We had a ‘78 Caprice when I was young—Carmine red with a 305 V8 and 4 barrel. What a beautifully designed car! Dad thought it was an absolute jewel compared to the old ‘75 Impala we had before.
I drove a friend’s Taurus, they got it almost at day one of sales, many times, and for the life of me, I never understood why someone would choose a Taurus/Sable over a Caprice, especially one with the 350/5.7 L engine, like my mother had, unless they were a Ford fanboi. They weren’t, they had bought GM and Ford about equally over the years. That Taurus had a bad habit of eating power steering pumps, but was otherwise pretty decent. I still see a green Taurus SHO in pretty decent shape once in a while, driven by a very old man with his glasses on a chain around his neck. Somehow, it fits.
About 7 years after they bought the first Taurus, they bought another, and wow, was that one a turd. Their last car was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, and it had zero issues. She gave it to her grandson when she had to stop driving.
I have always loved Chevy Capric. This car brings back good memories. Very comfortable & powerful both V6 & V8. This car was the best family car & long distance traveling.