This may well be Curbside Classic’s most reviled car. Debuting at a crucial time for General Motors and for domestic manufacturers in general, the Seville bombed. Sales fell 50% after this body style was introduced for 1986, and coming on the heels of several other questionable products, it immediately brought Cadillac’s future into question. Yet, this example seems to have found a loving home. It’s in excellent original condition, so clearly someone out there is a 3rd generation Seville fan. That brings up an interesting question: What is there to love about this car? So let’s cast aside our prejudices momentarily and try to uncover the bright spots on an awfully dark chapter of Cadillac history.
The 1980s represented an odd time for Cadillac. Sales were high, averaging 269,000 units annually, but the future looked bleak and some experts doubted the brand could remain viable. Conventional wisdom said that Cadillac needed to adapt to younger customers’ preferences in order to survive. Coming in the middle of such a pivotal decade, the Seville was a make-or-break car for Cadillac. It broke, badly.
Originally introduced for 1976, Seville was Cadillac’s answer to the curious phenomenon of Americans spending lots of money for compact European luxury cars. Whether this first generation Seville succeeded or not is debatable. Two years into its production run, Cadillac’s General Manager claimed that a third of Seville buyers would otherwise have purchased an import. But ultimately the Seville was too traditional to win over import buyers long-term. Furthermore, with the original Seville based on Chevy’s Nova, GM management regrettably learned that a profitable Cadillac could be pieced together from off-the-shelf corporate components. That perception would come back and haunt the company before long.
The 2nd generation Seville took a different trajectory in 1980, with bustleback styling that mimicked a design trend so old it couldn’t even be called retro. Whomever GM targeted with this design, it certainly wasn’t folks who were shopping for European premium brands, despite this ad that tried vainly to do just that. With imports comprising nearly a third of the US luxury car market when the bustleback Seville was introduced, disregarding import buyers was a glaring oversight.
Seville (known as GM’s K-body), along with the Eldorado, Buick Riviera and Olds Toronado (E-body) was scheduled for a dose of downsizing in the mid-1980s. At one time this made sense, because most industry experts had assumed that big cars were quickly becoming unwanted relics. Instead, big cars came back in vogue rather unexpectedly… particularly for traditional luxury cars.
But downsizing was not the Seville’s main marketplace obstacle. As we will see, this car didn’t exactly chase the its supposedly intended target, the import competition (for which its size was appropriate). Furthermore, a few internal GM developments compounded that miscue.
A 1984 corporate restructuring took away autonomy from GM divisions – all engineering, design and manufacturing responsibilities were placed under new bureaucratic “supergroups.” With Cadillac’s responsibilities subsumed by a “Buick-Oldsmobile-Cadillac” group, the Cadillac division itself wound up as basically a marketing office. Envisioned as a remedy for redundant bureaucracy, this restructuring instead led to passionless facsimiles of the same concept throughout GM divisions. Seville was a car that needed to be distinctive; instead it became a cookie-cutter mold.
As if an insipid product weren’t bad enough, GM bungled the car’s launch. With much ballyhoo, GM announced that its E/K-body cars would be built a new, high-tech assembly plant in Hamtramck, Michigan. This was no ordinary factory, but a $600 million, 3.3 million sq. ft. cutting-edge facility using the latest in technology and robotics. Unfortunately (though not surprisingly), delays meant that Seville production didn’t get fully ramped up until wintertime, well after the traditional new-car season.
Given that bit of background information, let’s examine the car itself.
Seville was physically smaller than its predecessor – checking in at 16.6” shorter than the bustleback, somewhat narrower, and 400 lbs. lighter. But it wasn’t size that doomed the Seville, but rather styling details. We’re all aware that styling can augment or diminish a car’s actual dimensions; in Seville’s case the boxy, GM-generic design actually made the car look smaller. Coupled with luxury car buyers’ renewed preference for larger, and imposing-looking vehicles, this was disastrous.
It’s hard to imagine just how much styling affected the car’s evidently petite appearance, so let’s compare it to some other members of the Class of ’86. That year saw a bumper crop of new sedans, such as Mercedes-Benz’s W124 and Ford’s Taurus. Our featured Seville was about the same size as both of those cars, though it appears substantially smaller. This design issue has been dealt with in depth in our Deadly Sins article, but a stubby trunk, awkward C-pillar and poorly placed rear wheel well each share a good bit of the blame.
Magnifying this problem was what the Seville did resemble – namely a half dozen cheaper cars in General Motors’ stable, such as this Oldsmobile Calais. A Calais cost one-third as much, but without knowing the brands, who could possibly tell? If ever there was a visual manifestation of GM’s ill-conceived restructuring, this is it.
Interestingly, in 1988 Car and Driver tested a Seville in France, and the car received positive feedback on its appearance. It appears that if not associated with hordes of similar-looking GM-mobiles (unknown in Europe at the time), this didn’t come across as a terrible-looking car.
This is Seville’s best angle — the 1986 Seville brochure never showed the car from the rear or side.
So, the Seville was poorly styled… but there’s more. Just what was this car supposed to be? A challenger to the Europeans who were eating Cadillac’s lunch in the mid-1980s, or yet another example of a traditional luxury car? It’s unclear if anyone at GM asked that question – or if they did ask, they certainly didn’t pick one answer and run with it. While appropriately sized to be a Eurocompetitor, this was an overtly traditional luxury car, with all the broughamy trimmings common in 1980s Cadillacs. That was a poor combination; the blend of a modest size and fantastic broughaminess answered a question that no one ever asked.
Already burdened with an unimpressive design and an unfocused personality, Seville was saddled with another obstacle: cheapness. Yes, the most expensive car in Cadillac’s line was too cheap to be taken seriously. 1987 Cadillacs carried base prices between $21,316 and $26,326 (for the Seville), meaning that even well-optioned examples stayed in the $20,000 range – or around the selling price of a typical Mercedes 190E. Another angle is that the Seville was priced closer to a Buick LeSabre than a 300E. The entire Cadillac range could probably have been classified as “near luxury” rather than luxury, if not for historical inertia.
Cadillac dealers didn’t help the brand’s image much. Many Cadillacs were festooned with add-ons such as this oversized grille and partial fabric roof that only accentuated Cadillac’s increasingly tacky nature. Though cheap-looking, this stuff generated huge profits for dealers, and therefore multiplied like a virus. In some parts of the US, it was unusual to see Cadillacs without this kind of paraphernalia.
Aftermarket firms such as Maryland-based E&G Classics (the originators of our featured car’s roof and grille) sold their products to dealers, who in turn charged customers hundreds, or even thousands of dollars for such accessories. GM should have put a stop to such nonsense… these decorative packages likely damaged Cadillac’s reputation as much as anything else – reinforcing the notion that Cadillac was quickly descending into obsolescence. After all, did anyone born after 1940 actually like this stuff?
Source of production figures: Standard Catalog of Cadillac, 1903-2000
Glancing at 1980s Cadillac division sales, things look superficially good. Selling more than a quarter-million cars annually during the decade, Cadillac’s production output generally rose throughout the period. But trouble lurked in the form of an aging customer base. “Traditional” DeVilles, Fleetwoods and Broughams comprised 60% of Cadillac production in 1980, and 80% by ’89. By mid-decade, the average age of B- and C-body customers was 60, and the rest of the model lineup wasn’t much younger (50 and 54 for Eldorado and Seville, respectively). While older folks bought a lot of cars in the 1980s, relying exclusively on the Greatest Generation was an obvious demographic trap. But it was a trap that Cadillac lazily fell into – intoxicated by easy sales.
Buoyed by a strong economy, the US luxury car market boomed in the 1980s, but Cadillac was increasingly shut out of the party. Though Cadillac sales increased numerically, its share of the US luxury car market plummeted – from 28% to 22% by decade’s end. Meanwhile, import brands’ proportion of the luxury market soared from 31% to over 38%. Industry experts became sour about Cadillac’s future. The brand’s offerings continued to ignore the European threat, and Cadillac’s main response to that threat – the J-car Cimarron – seemed like a bad joke.
Business-related articles about Cadillac from the 1980s mentioned how the division needed to attract younger customers without alienating its older, loyal customer base. In retrospect, the way out of this dilemma appears obvious. With the Seville being updated for 1986, why not make it appeal to baby boomers (then in their 30s)… customers who were scooping up Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs instead? With the DeVille and Brougham lines fulfilling the traditional end of the market, Cadillac could use Seville and Eldorado to explore some new concepts, and Cadillac’s model range was certainly big enough to accommodate various tastes. If only that had really happened.
Now we can circle back to the love that this particular car has apparently received. And that begs the question: What did GM get right with this car? Of course, we can’t get too exuberant here, because each of these positives is more than counterbalanced by negatives, but nonetheless:
The Size Was Right. It’s easy to consider the Seville a victim of excessive downsizing for the simple fact that this car was smaller than the ’85 models, and sales immediately tanked. Yet the size of this car was wholly in line with imported premium sedans. If only the design was as decent as the dimensions, Seville might have stood a chance.
Equipped Correctly, This was a Good-Driving Car. Seville’s suspension was tauter and more “European” in feel than most Cadillacs. Obviously, that’s not a very high bar to conquer, but in terms of handling, Sevilles (with MacPherson struts up front and automatic load levelling air struts in back) lacked the blatantly barge-like feel of other Cadillacs. Interestingly, the option list contained a $130 Touring Suspension, which made a substantial improvement over the base setup– reviews of early touring-equipped Sevilles were quite favorable. The touring suspension showed that GM had the wherewithal to create a car appealing to that critical demographic of 30-50-year old import buyers, but again, the end product wound up being muddled and unfocused. That touring suspension should have been standard.
It had a V-8. American luxury cars should have V-8s, and the Seville delivered. Well, sort of. While a V-8 was indeed standard, Cadillac’s transverse-mounted 4.1L “HT 4100” engine was troublesome, prone to head gasket failures, and was also anemic. Delivering just 130 hp, the 4100 pulled the FWD Seville to 60 mph in a soporific 12 seconds. By comparison, V-6 equipped Buicks and Oldsmobiles were quicker.
Build Quality Was Good: Once the Seville’s new assembly plant was fully operational, build quality was above average for GM products. GM faced a bumpy ride getting the highly automated plant up to speed, but ultimately these cars were solidly built.
So there were some glimmers of hope in the Seville, though one needs to squint through a haze of doom to see them. It’s possible to see how a customer interested in a moderate-size traditional luxury car… a customer not interested in power, handling, or refinement… might purchase a car like this, and keep it for a long time. But there weren’t many such people, as sales figures attest.
Source of production figures: Standard Catalog of Cadillac, 1903-2000
While production of the 2nd generation (bustleback) Seville averaged 33,000 units annually – and approached 40,000 in its final two years – consumer interest in the 3rd generation cars nosedived. Only 19,098 rolled off the production line for its introductory year, and by the summer of 1986, GM was already offering a $1,500 rebate on Seville. Despite those rebates and low-for-the-era 2.9% financing, sales fell even further for 1987 (to 18,578) when our featured car was made.
Our featured car itself is a standard Seville, not the costlier Elegante model that added two-tone paint, upgraded interior trim, additional power seat adjustments, cushier carpeting and so on. This car did come with some significant options, such as leather seats, wire wheel covers, and a Delco/Bose “Symphony Sound System” that carried a retail price of $905. Seville also offered an optional cellular telephone for $2,850 (!), though the original owner of this car chose not to splurge for that.
The highlight of Seville’s interior was the genuine walnut trim used on the dash, steering wheel and console (Elegantes also had wood on the doors). This was tastefully done, and one of the best applications of wood interior trim of its era. With the exception of standard bucket seats, which seem oddly out of place, this was a strictly traditional American luxury interior – digital instruments with few readouts, a fiddly 18-button driver command center, and so on. If potential Mercedes or BMW shoppers got close enough to a Seville to peer inside, they would probably turn away before even opening the door.
To yield more room, GM created exceptionally thin seat backs on these cars. While that undoubtedly did free up some rear seat room, the seats look flimsy and uncomfortable, which certainly wasn’t a selling point.
The rear area benefited from those thin front seats. Two adults could fit back there comfortably – three in a pinch – and dimensionally this was on par with other cars of its day (though Seville did provide less legroom than other Cadillacs).
By the time our featured car was produced for the 1987 model year, its faults were well known. And in what some may call tragic GM fashion, many of those faults were addressed in later years – which of course wound up being too late to do much good.
This car’s introductory year went poorly enough that GM rushed an “emergency restyling” of both the Eldorado and Seville to make them somewhat more palatable for consumers. These styling refinements, appearing for 1988, were more noticeable on Eldorado, which received rear fender extensions, though the ’88 Seville also featured a bolder grille and “power dome” hood. Cadillac also addressed Seville’s lack of power by boring out the engine to 4.5L, providing some overdue muscle. (Remember how Cadillac gained back some engineering authority? They did good things with it.)
Further improvements came later in 1988 when Cadillac introduced the Seville STS. A bonafide sports sedan, STS came equipped with a touring suspension, antilock brakes, other performance enhancements, a unique four-seat interior, as well as visual differentiation in the form of unique wheels and monochrome trim. This is the Seville that should have come out for 1986. It could accelerate to 60 mph in under 10 seconds, could take curves without feeling like it’s capsizing, and benefited from the design modifications that were ridiculous to have excluded from the beginning. Finally, at $35,000 it was in the price range where Cadillac’s flagship should have been all along.
A mild 1990 restyle gave Cadillac enough confidence to finally show the Seville’s rear
The STS wasn’t radically different from our featured ’87, and it didn’t contain anything that GM wasn’t capable of producing two years earlier. If GM had put just a little more effort into this car’s development – if Cadillac had retained its autonomy and earnestly chased a younger demographic – then Seville could have provided both a sales and an image boost to its manufacturer. Instead, it wound up being a textbook example of corporate mismanagement.
One estimate placed GM’s financial loss due to the C/K-body debacle at $500 million annually – certainly mindboggling, but greater losses came from unquantifiable measurements. Cadillac’s brand image suffered immeasurably, and at a critical point when the luxury car market was growing and evolving.
The love that this car has received illustrates that even a product as reviled as the 3rd generation Seville can have some bright spots. In the Seville’s case, with some more forethought, GM could have turned this into a much-loved car. In any event, I hope this example continues to enjoy the love it has found over the past several decades.
Photographed in Falls Church, Virginia in September 2018.
Related Reading:
1986-91 Cadillac Seville: GM’s Deadly Sin #21 Paul Niedermeyer
1986-91 Cadillac Seville: The Sales In Spain Fall Mostly With The Plain William Stopford
1988-91 Cadillac Seville STS: Cadillac Shows They Get It… Kind Of William Stopford
Eric, another fabulously well-researched piece on my favourite “loser car”. Thank you, too, for trying to find the positives. This wasn’t fundamentally a bad car but it sure was a badly, badly missed opportunity for Caddy. And as you’ve astutely identified, it fundamentally comes down to styling. It’s astonishing Irv Rybicki could style a car the same size as a W124 that looks so much smaller. It’s disappointing the interior was so upright and blocky – it already looked relatively dated in ’86 and by ’91 it was just embarrassing. And as I said in my article, all Sevilles should have been more like the STS and Cadillac should have left the vinyl roof/wire wheels/etc to the DeVille (or, preferably, nixed it all)
The ’86 may have been a sales flop but I’d argue the ’80-85 was the bigger Deadly Sin, managing to completely miss the point of the Seville and take it in a pointless, dead-end design direction that alienated new buyers. The ’86 may have been oddly proportioned but at least it had clean details and a sensible size.
All that aside, I like the ’80-85 and I like the ’86-91 even more, though even I find the third-gen challenging from some angles. I’d love to have one day because, well, how many other people are going to want to hold onto these? Except this devoted owner, of course.
Funny you should ask that, because just last week I was photographing a Scirocco curbside, and look what happened to drive by. I guess there’s at least two of them left in Northern Virginia!
It’s a tough choice between the 2nd & 3rd generation Seville to rank which one is the deadlier sin. I’m in the (vast) minority since I actually like the bustleback, but from a Deadly Sin perspective, you’re absolutely right, that it was a dead-end design, just at the very moment when pursuing the concept of a compact, European-inspired luxury car was the most important.
And I actually wouldn’t mind owning one of these 3rd generation cars as an affordable CC… especially one with the 4500 engine.
The Seville pictured is a handsome car. What did the trick styling-wise, was moving the front shield thing more flush with the headlights, makiing the car look more cohesive.
My dad had one of these with the 4.5. It was a great commuter car!
It was also his last Cadillac. To him, Cadillac had lost its way with anonymously styled cars that lacked the style and presence they had in the 50s and 60s. Who knows how much better this could’ve looked with a faster backlite tucked into a few extra inches of length.
Although it was a total piece of junk, he was haunted by the dreams his boat-like ‘75 SDV – to him, the last “real” Cadillac. Even his 78, which had much better build quality than the ill-fated 75, had fallen from grace in his opinion. In fact, of his 4 Cads, that ‘90 was, by far, the best…and would’ve made an outstanding Cutlass.
This is always been a car I don’t fully know what to make of. It’s very much a car I love to hate, but I also do love it a little.
As you mention with though, when not comparing it to the plethora of look-alike cars from GM from the era, the styling of this car is actually rather alluring. I also agree that this is one of GM’s best executed interiors of the era.
The thinness of the front bucket seats is what most stands out to me from your photos too. Those do look painfully uncomfortable and unsupportive.
Ultimately, I think the best conclusions I can make of this Seville was that it was a car that spread itself too thinly. Product planners were trying to make it wear too many hats at once, while at the same time having their budget and creative freedom limited. It was a recipe for disaster.
It truly was a blunder of epic proportion to let this flagship of the brand come out with such resemblance to regular, pedestrian GM cars of the time. That, in and of itself, tells you how little true ‘strategy’ went into the design and marketing at GM at the time.
Today, they have certainly established their own styling language again, so that even though I don’t care at all about Cadillacs, I always know one when I see one. The problem for them now is that I don’t want one. I am 49 years old and in my prime earning years and I should want a Cadillac. In reality, I would be very unlikely to shop for one if in the market for a $60k sedan. I would first turn to Audi, Volvo, maybe BMW. Cadillac never really made that leap down to the wider, younger audience. They are certainly better than they were, but not in the league that they need to be.
One other note about the C/K body cars–my father had a 1987 Toronado with the FE3 suspension and a 3.8L V6 and it was a pretty good handling car as well as a GREAT highway cruiser. I still remember how silky and turbine-like that engine and transmission were. It would knock down 28+mpg on the highway too.
I like the looks of this car. Yes, it follows the standard GM styling motif, but then Cadillac always has. I think it was better executed than the rest of the GM line as well. The HT4100 notwithstanding, these were pretty good cars. The deadly sin, IMHO, was that GM either needed to make the car much more distinctive, or build in much more content. Or both.
The beauty of the GM system was the ability to have exclusive, distinctive divisions that used ‘some’ parts commonality that wasn’t easily seen (usually the roof and side glass).
Then good ‘ole bean counter Roger Smith was handed the reins and, suddenly, thanks to Smith’s centralized system, you had Cadillacs that looked way too much like other lesser divisions’ cars and were being spit out in much higher sales volumes. Who wants to spend more money for a Cadillac that looks like an Oldsmobile, there are as many on the streets as a Chevy, and with the same build quality? No wonder Cadillac went down the tubes.
GM should have put a stop to such nonsense… these decorative packages likely damaged Cadillac’s reputation as much as anything else
The simple answer to this is they can’t. The way the dealership system works is the dealers buy the cars, then resell them to consumers. Thus, the dealers actually own the cars they sell and can do whatever they want with them (including selling them for whatever price they can get), and the the manufacturers are effectively powerless to do anything about it.
A terrific example of this is the recent Ford GT where Ford tried to stipulate that a buyer could not resell the vehicle within a certain timeframe. Unless it’s a part of the purchase agreement between the dealership and buyer, that’s simply not legally enforceable by Ford.
If a dealership wants to glue rubber fins onto the cars they sell, they can do it (and certainly will if they think it will sell more cars) and the manufacturer can’t do a thing about it.
Right – Ford supposedly tried to design the roof of the Lincoln LS in a way that made it darn near impossible to slap a “carriage roof” on it but dealers quickly figured out a way.
Florida was famous for those models, bargain basement Grand Marquis GS with a full carriage roof and a silly gold “President Edition” badge slapped on the C-pillar.
I can’t believe in this day and age, I still see the occasional recent Camry and Accord with a carriage roof! Gack!
With the 4.5 OR the 4.9 V8 that came after the HT4100 and finally fixed its sins these cars were mechanically fine.
MINUS the extra crap like the vinyl roof or silly grille or continental kit I don’t think the styling is that bad for the era. (There never should have been factory wire hubcaps but then the rattles and problems with GM factory locking hubcaps could almost be a deadly sin in and of themselves.)
A terrific find and analysis Eric. The original GM A bodies from 1982 defined this formal shape, and everything thereafter using this styling template was derivative IMO.
To me, the Buick Century (for example) looked genuinely original, and was significantly more attractive than this downsized Seville. This is more an insult to buyers. The push button door handles look so out of place. An attempt to lure buyers with traditional luxury touches.
It could even be argued that before the 1982 A-bodies, it was the X-body Omega/Skylark and the refreshed B-bodies in 1980 that defined the formal shape that would dominate most of GM’s offerings for the rest of the decade.
You are correct. I saw the A Bodies as the closest to the eventual three box shape GM used going forward. The Pontiac 6000, besides the Century, had a more original, elegant and better proportioned exterior than this Seville.
I had 2 1991’s with the 4.9 engines and found them fine. Most people have long forgotten about them and they can be found for low prices. The interiors are well equipped and comfortable. Everything that you can touch is leather or wood. I enjoyed them.
You are correct. I saw the A Bodies as the closest to the eventual three box shape GM used going forward. The Pontiac 6000, besides the Century, had a more original, elegant and better proportioned exterior than this Seville.
My dad had a ’91 (final year for this style) STS with the 4.9 liter V8. It moved well and I think handled well. It was a monster in the snow.
He got a great deal on it as a used car at the massive Massey Cadillac in Orlando. He retired to Iowa a few years later and it started having intermittent electrical failures and woes. I think it was finally sent to the junkyard in 2001.
It was also his last Cadillac, or at least hasn’t had one since…
We are all of us constricted to thinking of history from where we are located within it. Our permanencies and certainties will not alter much through time, we think. Most likely we need to think that, so we can order the world into something manageable. But we are wrong. Simply reading something in the press from 40 or 50 years since will tell us that.
Cadillac looked to see a market as upright and square as the back window on this Seville, and about as forward-looking as the rest of it. So there was arguably good logic in selling strongly to that, to the Greatest Gen still only in their early ’60’s, and a (perhaps unexamined) assumption that that market would persist into the offspring of those. They did not seem to think at all beyond their time.
Worse, they succumbed to a cynicism equal to their myopia, taking the famed HL Mencken quote as if a truism rather than a bon mot: and they did (in a sense) go broke in that under-estimation. Potential buyers undoubtedly saw that this was not an exclusive Cadillac product. That it looks awful to many other eyes is almost unimportant.
Though it must be said that the basis for their error, that shape, has also to have played a part. It is childishly mis-proportioned at the back, looking like a musclebound cartoon character’s flat-backed head, and in truth, with about as much thought in it. It is a rare example where the rear styling of a car helps seal its doom, that role more usually belonging to some ill-favoured face. In isolation, the front half of the Seville is innocuous, even with a whisper of the old elegance to the nose.
Above the idea that they did not in any way look forward, or look out of their time, this car says sharply that they did not look out of their country either (though arguably that is just a variation on not looking outside their time). To an outsider, the car speaks loudly of insularity.
Toyota makes very good cars that are a bit boring, conservative, largely unadventurous. Yet they have been leading sales in many places for 30 and 40 years, and are a byword for reliability. Keep in mind that dear Cadillac was on top of the world just 30 (or 20) years before this car, but was already in decline for lack of adaptation or foresight. Toyota now are doing anything but that.
Complacency, insularity, cynicism, awful design. I too hope somebody continues to love this car, if only for its preservation as a symbol of how to be stuck in time, and what not to do.
Excellent article, Eric.
Thanks Justy.
The comparison with Toyota is an interesting one. Lexus debuted during the 3rd generation Seville’s lifespan. Both the Seville and the early Lexuses were, as you put it, “a bit boring, conservative, largely unadventurous.” Yet that’s where the similarities end. Lexus became wildly successful, while the Seville is consigned to articles like this one that is effectively a post-mortem.
I guess the point is that to succeed in the luxury market, a car does not need to be cutting-edge or audacious. The devil is in the details… details that Toyota got right and GM got wrong when marketing luxury cars at this time.
The ’75 looked like a Chevy Nova–I never understood the appeal.
The ’80 had that bustle-back which didn’t look right; was cramped (with little head room), and there was cheesy plastic wood everywhere. Tacky in the extreme.
The 86-91s–nice size, crisp and classic lines, real wood and leather in the interior. Like the Fleetwood discussed last week, an American “jewel box beauty” kind of car which I find particularly appealing (without the tacky add-ons this one has.) The positives listed in this article are real. Truly the last of its kind–what came after this was too severe and plain…lost my interest. I would have switched over to Jaguar.
In the 1990s, I wanted to buy a nice blue one from an older lady–she wouldn’t sell. This is what the interior looked like–pretty nice!
That’s nice! Was that an Elegante? About 1988 or so? I don’t recall that mixed leather and velour surfaces being offered for many years.
My blue ’89 had that same interior.
I was very comfy in there and it was quiet as a bank vault, in part due to the extra thick side glass.
The thing was solid as a tank. Great engine and trans too. I miss it.
It may have not been a great Cadillac, but it was a good solid car by ’89.
I’d been out of the country for some years and had just returned when these appeared in 1986. I was car shopping (and ended up with an Integra but that’s a story for another day) and actually went to a Cadillac dealership to look at the new design. The story in the car magazines was that Cadillac had learned from the Cimarron debacle and had put a lot of effort into a seriously modern design. FWD, sure but with a V8. That was fine as the Olds Toronado of the 60’s had opened the door for FWD luxury. Built with robotic precision, here was a car for the future, they said.
We were appalled at what we saw. The sweepingly wide and long nose was okay although startlingly low… it still had presence. However the back end. The back end! It had zero relationship to the front of the car. Instead of sweeping lines it was all square lines, and not elegant lines but short abrupt economy car lines for a tiny tiny trunk. It was exactly as if the front and rear designers had never met and designing totally different sizes and classes of cars. You knew the days of the Mob driving Caddys were over because you couldn’t even get one body in the trunk of that thing.
My friend looked at that rear end and said, “K-car”. At that moment we both knew that Cadillac was dead….at least to our generation, and so it proved to be.
While the proportions are certainly odd, I do like how some of the details are integrated into the body, something about how the lights both front and rear are fitted so flush works for me.
The interior? Not so much, although the lighter colors are (when clean and neat) more inviting than the darker versions.
Another very well researched/document post and enjoyable to read. Thanks!
Excellently written Eric – a real expose on one of the many ways that GM lost its way.
This crapster is garish & cheesy. Even today, as I look back, I find it unbelievable that Cadillac’s then “target” market would find this dreck attractive. The 4.1 liter “blow-up on command” lawn mower motor just added to the ignominy.
I’m amused to see the comparison to the Oldsmobile Calais, but only because the cheapest Cadillac model for the 60s and early 70s was the Cadillac Calais!
Whatever its good qualities, in that tiny-appearing package, it was just a major disappointment. With its general body architecture so similar to the Olds Calais and brethren, GM shot themselves in the foot allowing Cadillac to field this car.
As much as GM usually played out their platforms to get as much use as possible, it struck me as strange they didn’t simply restyle the existing E/K-bodies for another iteration. The fwd Deville was already having enough problems with market acceptance, then compound it with this misbegotten thing.
For reasons I cannot explain, I always liked the round wheelwells on these.
Spoiler alert. This is a rant.
I don’t get all the hate for this car, once the problematic 4.1 was replaced, anyway.
I understand it was a let down as a Cadillac, but compared to most new cars it is only guilty of being plain, in my opinion. So many here liked the K-cars. How is this worse than a K-car? I know, cost and class of car. But still…
I’d take that Seville’s style over all the ugly insectoid nasty classless turds rolling around the streets now. Looking at you, well, almost every brand except VW. And that Buick Tour-X. And of course the Challenger. I like a few of the new cars. And think most new cars are aggressively ugly, soulless over-teched messes that need cameras just to see out of.
My ’89 was bought for $800 as a work car. It got MPG in the 20s while being very comfortable and roomy. It was quiet, and had a torque-y 4.5L. It had 150,000 on it and was almost perfect. No leaks, no rattles, no drama.
It also had excellent visibility (remember that?) in part because of that upright rear windshield that everyone seems to hate. That window was also easy to reach to clean.
So what if it’s boring? Boring things are better than intentionally ugly things to me. You could actually see out of the windows, in every direction.
So many praises for the ’84 Escort the other day and then so much hate for this Seville?
How can I be alone in thinking that is just nuts? The Escort was a joyless, cheap crapbox that blew head gaskets at 50,000 miles. Wheel bearings at 70,000. It also looked BLAH, and barely had a functioning rear suspension. And I had a “nice” one back then.
I guess I just judge cars on their own merits and not as a brand name or status symbol.
And this downsized, derivative, boring and hated Seville was not even close to being one of the worst cars I’ve owned. Or looked at on the street.
Someone has to defend this thing and I guess it’ll have to be me.
End of rant.
I get what you are saying and you are right if you judge this as just an average car–like something that dodge or olds would sell as a high-end model. The problem was that this was what Cadillac came up with when they were supposedly trying to reinvigorate/reinvent the brand! By that measure, you have to admit that it is a disaster. It is way too bland and derivative to be the top model from the top GM brand. Good car maybe, but a terrible product for what they were trying to accomplish.
Hi Jason,
I agree. It is the perfect example of a Cadillac/GM deadly sin in fact.
It was a rough day at work and baby needed a nap.
My perspective always comes from so often getting cars when they’re older and at bargain prices so I judge them independently. So, obviously any comfy V8-powered car is impressive when priced the same as an Escort or K-car.
Now I can recall thinking how sad the Seville looked next to my Taurus, being smaller, and yet so tacky. And it had that awful fake convertible top.
I still have the set of “gold” keys. Even those were silly.
But time reduced the bad memories and reinforced the good ones I guess.
Even then while I enjoyed how it drove I was a little embarrassed by how it looked. I was happy to have a luxury car for $800.
Thanks for your reply and you made your case well.
Dang! I forgot about the gold keys! I had intended to mention that in the article. Here’s an Internet picture of such keys, since words alone don’t suffice:
An excellent article, Eric! And a very insightful lot of comments too.
It’s as though once Cadillac had built the initial Seville, they didn’t know what to do with it next. How do they follow the first generation? Do they go full-Euro? Full traditional? Could they do both off a single shell? Instead for some reason they headed for uncharted waters with the second-gen, then tried to return to the mainstream currents of the market with this. I can see what they were trying to achieve with this one, but as others have said it lacked the old Cadillac distinction. It’s like they designed the car in a vacuum, not stopping to realise that every buyer would have memories of (if not experience with) Cadillacs 10-20-30 years ago or more, and would be judging the new model in comparison with its forebears. As well as the modern competition.
At a time when a firm hand was needed at the helm, Cadillac, like the rest of GM, seemed to be swept to and fro by every current of the market. In trying to respond to everyone, they wound up making a car for no-one.
Great post, and great comments that followed. The reorganization of GM in ’84 to remove the autonomy of the different brands seems to have essentially reduced them to marketing divisions. It was only going to be a matter of time before some of those brands (Oldsmobile, Pontiac, etc.) disappeared.
As if there weren’t enough reasons to sit on the styling of this turd. The ribs on the bottom the doors are a total rip off of the Mercedes SL. Maybe no one will notice?
Even though the first gen Seville was based on the Nova it had a distinctive style that actually looked like a Cadillac. The interior was not that bad, but the dashboard and instrument panel were a huge letdown. Why the aversion to actual gauges?
Instead of building on the relative success of the first gen, Cadillac decided to build a Bill Mitchell baroque dream. To be honest I like it. But then I also had a boat tail Riviera at one time. (Another Bill Mitchell fever dream!) Any momentum that the Seville had been building evaporated.
The gen three was just too generic and bland. While not a really bad car, it wasn’t even as distinctive as the regular De Ville models. There was nothing special about it’s looks, and looks are what a Cadillac was ALLLLL about! Not only how the car itself looked, but how it made the owner look. Like a successful person envied by the masses. Who would ever envy the driver of that dinky looking Seville?
With the introduction of gen four in 1992, and especially with the adoption of the potent Northstar engine, Cadillac finally had an effective import fighter. Or as it turned out an effective weapon to keep the fold from defecting and maybe picking up some sales from those still climbing the Sloan ladder. I had a ’94 and it was a knockout. Even so, Cadillac still lost it’s way. As much as I have loved them in the past, I don’t think that I would buy another Cadillac, not even a well depreciated older example. They no longer interest me.
It’s not that bad looking especially compared to the butt ugly fwd Deville and 86 Eldorado. The 88 is pretty decent. Had this been the Cimarron it would have done well as an entry level car for Cadillac. I like the grille and a continental kit. That roof is horrible. It’s like the Hitler ‘stach of roofs and I like vinyl tops in general. I love the Fifth Avenue top from the 80s. I like the back. It’s like an 82 Imperial with out the bustle back. I would never buy them. To me it’s too little. To those rich enough to buy Cadillac cars gas is not that big of an expense. So the super compact was a dumb idea especially across the whole line and using crap 4.1 engine was a mistake. In the 80s one was better off in a Town Car, Marquis, Caprice or a Fifth Ave than a Caddy.
This car just makes my head explode, and I have waited a day to decide how I felt about it. What a horrible Cadillac! But then I could also see myself (like the Mann, above) buying a clean old one for peanuts and driving it. It was probably as durable as anything else in the class – I would certainly rather drive one of these than the FWD Continental, for example.
So, I hate the styling, hate the concept, but have to grudgingly admit that the execution of the mechanical bits was pretty decent.
While my memory of these when new has certainly faded a bit, seems I wasn’t so fond of them back then. But, I was quite a bit younger. Have to say that right now I like the looks of that thing. Fairly certain that I’ve never seen one in that color combination. I actually like the style pretty good now. Let me explain. I like most all the Chryslers and Chrysler products of this era. So while I recognize that it certainly veered off from what Cadillacs had always been, I both like it and can appreciate it today.
Oh, and thanks for a great article, Eric.
Thanks! The color is Sunburst Yellow — I’ve seen Devilles in that color before, but never a Seville… I think it complements the car very well.
There was an 88 Seville for sale here in Manitoba similar to this one for $3995 CAD. It sold in a week! It seems that here on the Canadian prairies any car over 20 years is considered to be a “classic” LOL.
Sorry, but I cannot get past the long nose, bizarre grille, extreme tail styling and that roof and rear quarter trim to visualise myself in this.
At all.
It wasn’t necessarily the styling that turned me off as a 15 year old viewing these for the first time but more the too small size and carryover engine. The tacky aftermarket stuff was in vogue at the time so Cadillac can’t really be blamed for that. What they can be blamed for was rushing yet again a product that was half backed into production with a troublesome also rushed to market engine that didn’t make enough power into a set of cars that were too radical from there predecessors.
If the Eldo and Seville for 1986 were given the power dome hood, elongated taillights (for the Eldo) and at least the same port injected 170 Hp 4100 from the Ellante, which also incorporated many of the improvements that went into the 4.5/4.9 engines, these would have been much better received. Alloy wheels would have been standard and a good reasonably firm suspension would come on all models with an optional larger tired touring setup like they did offer in later years as on the STS. Just those changes would have helped quite a bit but the Seville would have needed a more aggressive front end and slightly longer trunk which looked too stubby. If only
I purchased an 87 Seville in 2001 which was in excellent condition. Actually, it was fun to drive and peppy enough for a 55 year old man at the time. I had no problems with the 4100 engine; but, always ensured the radiator was clean and filled with the recommended tablets. I sold it in 2004 due to an electrical problem I could not get resolved.