What could these two very different vehicles from 1991 have in common? Enough in common to combine them into a CC Double Feature? More than you might first think, as it turns out.
A Cadillac Coupe DeVille and a Ford Explorer would, at first blush, seem to have virtually nothing in common beyond having four wheels, engines, steel and leather. Their buyer demographics were completely different and they were designed with two completely different missions. But despite all of these differences there were some odd similarities.
Let’s look at the obvious. These two were quite similar in a number of key dimensins:
| 1991 Coupe DeVille | 1991 Explorer | |
|---|---|---|
| Wheelbase | 110.8 inches | 111.9 inches |
| Curb Weight | 3622 lbs | 3804 lbs |
| Length | 202.6 inches | 184.3 inches |
| Width | 73.4 inches | 70.2 inches |
And then there was this: That these cars marked a sort of tipping point where they began competing with one another. And in that competition, one would win and the other would lose. Big. Let’s explore (sorry) this.
The Cadillac of . . . whatever. Everyone over the age of sixty has heard the expression. Which became a bit of a punchline in the movie Get Shorty when a rental clerk explains to the gangster who is getting a minivan instead of the Cadillac he reserved that the Oldsmobile Sillhouette “is the Cadillac of minivans.”
I grew up hearing that expression when it was not a punchline. When my father was thirty-five he got the car he aspired to – a Lincoln Continental Mark III. A shiny new Cadillac (or the occasional Lincoln) were what everyone really wanted in the years after WWII, though most folks’ finances made this impossible.
I had grown up knowing that a Cadillac was something special. I had even owned a worn out 1963 Fleetwood sedan my first year of college and even in that car’s advanced state of age, it reeked of a kind of quality completely foreign to the lesser cars which surrounded me in my middle-class life.
In my own life 1991 marked a serious change in demographics. Virtually the entire Baby Boom generation was into prime car-buying age and that year found me in my early 30’s and about a year into being a married man. I was a young attorney and expected that a family would soon be along.
What kind of car did I seek? My actual driveway was a bit bipolar with a 1988 Honda Accord and a 1966 Plymouth Fury III that was sold that year and replaced by a 1983 Plymouth Colt sedan that I purchased for $700 from my brother in law.
I knew, however, that these cars were a mere waypoint. Some day I would be able to afford what I wanted and it would be . . . . Well, I wasn’t sure exactly what it would be. But I knew two things. First, I watched several friends go out on large car loans to buy something they really desired. And as often as not it was a new 1991 Ford Explorer. What did neither I nor any of my friends desire in the least? A new Cadillac.
I had spent years watching the cheapening of Cadillac and watched Lincoln come up as a legitimate competitor. And then came the tectonic shift of the 1985 Cadillac. Really, that was the best they could do? It was pathetic. There was not a lot of sunshine and lollipops surrounding the traditional American big car in the early 80s, but this? I know I already used the word pathetic, but I am going to use it again. Because it fits the 1985 Cadillac so well.
All during this twenty year slo-mo train wreck at Cadillac there was Ford. Ever since the 1965 LTD I had been watching Ford climb its way up the ladder of success – and in the garages of the successful. Although the cars didn’t always age the way they should have, Ford had begun to play in the big leagues by the mid 80s. Parked outside of my small law office in 1985, the cars of the other four attorneys consisted of three Cadillacs and one Ford (a brand new Aerostar in its highest trim level). Within a couple of years it would be zero Cadillacs, two Fords, one Lincoln and one Honda Accord (now driven by one of the former Cadillac guys).
By 1991 the Cadillac was a little better – they had made it a touch bigger, improved the engine and given it some more imposing styling. But I knew nobody who wanted one. In fact, the only person I ever actually knew who chose a new Cadillac after maybe 1987 was my next door neighbor Curley – a retired insurance agent who would have been just a touch over 90 years old in 1991. He still carried the knowledge gained decades earlier that a Cadillac was the best you could buy. Though he once acknowledged to me in a moment of candor that he had experienced a lot of trouble with this one, which would be his last car.
Into this pair of slow trends – a waxing Ford and a waning Cadillac, came a fastball smacked hard, right up the middle. The batter was Ford and the result was a home run called the Explorer, the first wildly popular SUV.
I will admit it – in 1991 I wanted an Explorer. Although I considered it a little small for my tastes, the Cadillac was too. Anyone within twenty years of my age group had to acknowledge that the Explorer was something special. The Mustang, LTD and Granada had been warm-ups. The Explorer became the new “it” car.
A Motor Trend test from 1991 noted that the Explorer was selling at double the rate of the Cherokee or the Blazer, and had become the first SUV to crack the top ten in popularity. I don’t suppose that any of us who were around at the time really understood what was happening. The Explorer was leading the way to a world where the SUV was the new Cadillac, while the real Cadillac was becoming irrelevant.
At first look, the Cadillac and the Explorer were still playing in two different leagues. The Coupe DeVille’s MSRP was $30,205 while that of the Explorer was $16,511 (all according to the good folks at NADA). But in the real world the differences were not that stark. The Eddie Bauer Explorer (the version everyone wanted) that was Motor Trend’s test vehicle stickered at $21,566.
And then we get to actual transaction prices. The Explorer was such a hot commodity that anyone was lucky to get out of a showroom paying sticker. By the time extra “packages” like rustproofing and paint sealant were added to the Ford (not to mention the “additional dealer profit” line item), who doubts that a Cadillac could have been yours for about the same monthly payment? Not that it really mattered – because who wanted a Coupe DeVille in 1991?
Even their advertising showed the contrast in these cars. The Cadillac is all left-brain, working to sell you on the car and what a smart buy it would be. The Ford?
The soft shot of a family at sunset and the line “Your Explorer Is Ready” shows an advertiser who knows that the sale has already been made in your mind. Go back and look at advertising for the Ford LTD and the Cadillac in 1965 and see what a 180 degree spin in advertising looks like.
This juxtaposition never occurred to me on that June day in 2011 when I shot both of these cars within moments of each other as I walked towards the front door of my local Sam’s Club. I was still a CC baby and was shooting anything that I found even mildly unusual.
I recall shooting the Explorer because even then the original was becoming scarce in my area. My mechanic called them “Exploders” because they seemed to follow in the tradition of so many Fords – vehicles that looked great when new but did not always age as gracefully as their buyers might have hoped. But even beyond some of their mechanical weaknesses, these things were the biggest rustbuckets I had seen in many a year with their magically disappearing rocker panels.
The Coupe DeVille? Because who in the hell still drove Coupe DeVilles? It was, of course, in a handicap space. And was in pretty nice condition. Because Cadillac buyers were (certainly by then) elderly folks who had learned growing up in the Depression that you had to take good care of your stuff.
Cadillac would try to redeem the DeVille a bit with the generation that followed, but it never really got the kind of traction that GM expected. The Explorer continued its amazing growth, followed by a long string of SUVs that went higher and higher upmarket. And these affluent Boomers even occasionally chose a Cadillac. Not a DeVille, of course, but an Escalade.
Now I have no idea if either of these disparate aspirational vehicles is actually a 1991 model. I can’t be far off, so work with me here. But I do know this – if I, at my present age, was plopped back into 1991 and thus had the choice to buy one of these new I would still not choose the Cadillac.
I came up with one final similarity. Cadillac, the man who served as namesake for the car, was an explorer. And in 1991 the Ford Explorer became the Cadillac of SUVs, if not an actual replacement for Cadillac itself as the vehicle of choice for the well-heeled craver of social acceptance.
Further Reading:
1991 Cadillac Fleetwood Coupe (Eric 703)
Seemed hard to believe the explorer was so popular. With it’s head cracking under powered 4.0 it was slow and it was cramped and they rusted badly. A Jeep Cherokee was a way better vehicle.
I would take the Minnie me Cadillac over the explorer. While junk compared to a town car or grand Marquis or even a Caprice it was better than a tippy expolder.
I am not sure you got my point, Warren. Go back to 1991 – Cadillac owners had been the ones experiencing the engine failures in the unappealing cars and Ford was coming off its “Quality Is Job 1” era where they were becoming a permanent No.1 seller ahead of Chevrolet.
If I had to pick an old car for front-line daily duty from between these two today, it would likely be the Cadillac. Not that I would have this choice because I cannot tell you when I last saw a nice looking early Explorer in my area. But in 1991 this would not have been a hard choice at all.
The Cherokee was considerably smaller inside. Not sure the reliability was any better than Fords at the time.
A good friend snagged a strippo Explorer XL (manual, roll up windows!) when they first came out….it served him well for 6 years until he decided he deserved to upgrade and got himself a F-150 Lariat. Never had rust issues but they don’t salt our roads in winter….
A terrific illumination on an automotive changing of the guard. It now makes me wonder about what was the last truly inspirational Cadillac, the one so many aspired to own. I’m scratching my head – early 1970s Coupe DeVille?
The second generation Escalade was aspirational. Perhaps not to the traditional WASP customer base. But when Tony Soprano traded his Tahoe in for the Escalade, Cadillac could not build them fast enough.
The last Cadillac I admired was the ’92 thru ’97 Seville. I bit boxy, but a worthy competitor to the Euro & Asian onslaught.
Since then, I’m not sure what Cadillac stands for; the message is garbled.
3Speed,
I think you may have inadvertently stumbled upon the new theme song for Cadillacs Commercials. I read you reply and I am laughing hysterically.
Some Nights
by
fun.
Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck
Some nights, I call it a draw
Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle
Some nights, I wish they’d just fall off
But I still wake up, I still see your ghost
Oh Lord, I’m still not sure, what I stand for oh oh oh
What do I stand for? Oh what do I stand for?
Most nights, I don’t know anymore
Oh whoa, oh whoa, oh whoa oh oh
Oh whoa, oh whoa, oh whoa oh oh
This is it, boys, this is war, what are we waiting for?
Why don’t we break the rules already?
I was never one to believe the hype,
Save that for the black and white I try twice as hard and I’m half as liked
But here they come again to jack my style
That’s alright, I found a martyr in my bed tonight
Stops my bones from wondering just who I, who I, who I am, oh who am I, mm, mm
Last Cadillac that appealed much to me was the 1979-85 Eldorado, or if I could ignore the rear appearance, the 80-85 Seville. Preferably a 79-81 which still a good engine option.
Looks like you’ve got the 2 door Explorer length–the 4 doors are 184.3 inches long.
Good catch! Thanks, let me fix that.
Quality may have been Job 1 for the Explorer but body integrity was horrible….The pics in the article are a good representation of Explorers here in the midwest/ northeast…Conversely the Cadillacs held up much better
What’s especially galling about the rusted rockers on these (and Aerostars too)
is that in the 60s and 70s Ford galvanized the rockers on their products. Yes,
I know about the rest of the body, but even if the whole vehicle rusted into powder, those rockers would still have been lying on top the pile.
It wasn’t just Ford that galvanized the rockers – Every car I can remember from the early 60s on (or at least every one not built in South Bend Indiana) had solid rockers long after the lower parts of the rear quarters and front fenders had large holes in them. That was the one part of a car I never expected to see rust away. Until these FoMoCo things from the 80s that were supposed to be top quality cars.
It got worse when Ford’s fix for the next generation was to cover them with plastic cladding instead of galvanizing them.
This was an interesting comparison. I clicked on the article thinking “what the heck could these two vehicles possibly have in common?”
I guess the answer is image.
The Explorer was tailored towards the same Boomer parents who fancied themselves too adventurous to wheel around in a minivan. Of course, most of the time, the Explorer was a classic mommymobile, but it suited the zeitgeist of the 90s. Even though it wasn’t visually that different from the Bronco II that preceded it, the Explorer had a cool factor and attractiveness for that time.
Living on the California coastside, I still see banger Gen 1 Explorers frequently. I almost never see Caddies from the early 90s anymore. If I do, they are lifer cars for the elderly, whereas the Explorers look like they’ve lived a hard life of being passed from parents to teens.
that gen Explorer was a terrible product, build on the pickup – which was the reason it handled so poorly and rode so poorly
apparently Ford told dealers to underinflate the tires so that it had an acceptable ride – but the underinflated tires produced heat at high speed after long periods leading to tire failure
“A Motor Trend test from 1991 noted that the Explorer was selling at double the rate of the Cherokee or the Blazer, and had become the first SUV to crack the top ten in popularity. I don’t suppose that any of us who were around at the time really understood what was happening. ”
I was around then, did the comparison and bought a ’91 Cherokee instead of the Explorer. The Explorer, in my estimation, was over-weight and under-powered.
Still plenty of nice first gen Explorers and Rangers here in Curbside Heaven, Oregon. I own one. (’83 Ranger 4×4)
The Explorer touched a nerve where as the Cadillac lost its touch.
The SUV craze was in full swing by then. Also, an interior just as nice as any Cadillac could be found as far down as a Toyota Land Cruiser. Cadillac was taking it from all sides and all slices of the market and still trying to be all things to all people. Such a formula doesn’t work.
As of late, the only luxury brand that I admire is Lincoln which as come back like a lion. Hope FMC doesn’t drop the ball.
I rode in an Explorer a few times, and as a passenger, it felt to me too heavy, with a high center of gravity, and underpowered. I will say, that I did find it very comfy inside. We encountered bumper to bumper traffic on this particular day and it was very easy to just sit back and enjoy the ride.
I rode in the backseat of a similar Explorer from Dallas to Fort Worth. It was the most uncomfortable vehicle that I’ve ever been in. The front seat must have been the sweet spot.
Great comparison. And come to think of it 1991 really was the tipping point, where SUVs became almost an expected choice for professionals such as lawyers, etc. And the Explorer was exactly the vehicle that tipped the scales. In the 1980s, wealthy professionals bought Cherokees for their kids; in the 1990s they bought Explorers for themselves.
Your law office parking lot jogged my memory. At the same time, my mother worked as a secretary at a small law firm. Among the four attorneys, there were two BMWs, a Mercedes and a Toyota Cressida. The only Cadillac in the office belonged to one of the older secretaries, who drove a late-1980s Brougham. The attorneys wouldn’t be caught dead in a Cadillac.
At the time I figured the SUV thing was a fad, and that people would get tired of bouncy truck-type vehicles. Guess I was a bit wrong there.
Eric, in making your determination that “the SUV thing was a fad” you erroneously assumed that people are rational.
I remember biking down to the Ford dealer one Sunday in the summer of ’90
to check them out. My thought at the time was “who’d drive this”?
Oops! Don’t ever hire me to make marketing forecasts!
I share your forecasting skills. I took a lunchtime run with one of the lawyers I worked with (the guy with the Aerostar who was a big Ford guy) when these were just coming into the dealers. There was only one on the lot – it had just come in and had not yet gone through prep to take off all of the plastic stuff. The impressions I remember were 1) My God is this thing expensive and 2) I thought the salesman was full of it when he said that the 4 door was expected to outsell the two door by wide margins. After all, 2 door SUVs like the Bronco II were everywhere, so they must really be popular in and of themselves. Oops. Whether people bought those two doors only because nobody had brought out 4 doors or because the general market for 2 door family vehicles imploded right around then I am not sure – but I was really, really wrong.
I don’t find the fact that the 4dr out sold the 2dr by a wide margin surprising at all. People bought them instead of minivans for hauling kids and that demographic is much larger than the single person who wants an off-road toy. Part of the key to the Explorer’s success was that its ride and handling were not that of the old off-road focused SUVs.
Excellent comparison. Your juxtaposition of 1991 ads is truly a revelation!
Very true — those 1991 ads are certainly revealing. Ford succeeded at selling an aspirational lifestyle.
Amusingly, Explorer did have a version of the type of ad that Cadillac seemingly patented — two couples leaving an expensive restaurant. Yet still, the image this ad put forth managed not to be stodgy:
Advertisements were so wordy back then; they actually descirbed the product in detail. Now they just hit you with one or two quick selling points and hope you’ll be intrigued.
At one time even the Chevy Astro was considered to be a luxury vehicle in its most expensive form (excluding conversions), as portrayed by this GMC Safari at Symphony Hall. Don’t ask me which one b/c I know there are quite a few in the US as well as 1 in England & 3 in Japan. The image alone isn’t enough to decipher the exact one.
There are still a good number of the 2nd-generation Ford Explorers where I live. My Aunt Frieda still has her 2000 Explorer Limited; I believe she bought it new. The design still looks modern even now.
In the early 90’s my career was taking off and I was a young married man. I share some of JPC’s automotive predilections and was driving a 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis LS at the time, way wrong for my demographic, and my friends let me know it.
I admired the generation of Cadillac pictured, it would have been a good effort by Cadillac if it had been introduced in 1980 instead of 1989, and it looks positively from another world now, while the old Explorer still fits in the modern vehicle landscape.
My first interaction with the first gen Explorer was one that belonged to a late 30s salesman in our company, and I rode in it on an extended business trip. I was smitten and recognized it as the aspirational vehicle for my age. It was still out of my price range when I bought a more age appropriate car in 1995, but by 2002 I was ready for a SUV, and owned the Dodge pictured until a year ago. It held up and still looked pretty good in the shots I took for my ad on the list of Craig.
“Now I have no idea if either of these disparate aspirational vehicles is actually a 1991 model. I can’t be far off, so work with me here. ”
The Explorer is definitely a 1991 or a 1992. In 1993, the Explorer’s got reshaped and slightly deeper rocker panel covers.
This juxtaposition encapsulates perfectly the automotive choices I made in the early 1990s. I too was an ambitious, newly married, thinking-of-having kids young man in 1991 and bought an Explorer in March of that year to scratch the aspirational itch. Ours was a well-optioned XL (base) model that very nearly duplicated the equipment in a mid-range XLT except for a few decorative bits. As was noted above, the Explorer rode horribly on the glass-smooth, newly-built local roads (lots of head toss), handled awkwardly in most situations, and was slow and noisy on the highway to boot. We put up with all its faults, because it was cool, and it actually did a good job hauling two babies, all their stuff and two dogs. We were not alone, as many friends in the same situation drove Explorers or Cherokees, and, later Tahoes and Suburbans, often top of the line models with every option.
In the meantime, as finances allowed, we dabbled in European makes for our other car and would never have considered owning a similarly priced Cadillac, which most definitely was not cool. I cannot think of anyone in our family or circle of friends who was under the age of 50 back then who drove a Cadillac, yet Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, Volvo and Saab were all well represented.
In 1991, there were a few million minivans on every street. Minivans are marvelous efficient transportation vehicles, but they have the pizzazz of a brown cardboard box. The Ford Explorer had that adventurous outdoor 4WD look that appeared to be practical, durable and big enough for a family. If you loaded up that four-door Ranger with enough expensive interior pieces, you can use it as a family vehicle that didn’t look like a minivan.
Bingo.
But you got a Ranger under all that? $20,000 for ? – uh, no.
I admired the success of the Explorer during this time, but nothing else.
As for Cadillac in the early 1990’s – drove dozens of them all over the US. They had ZERO appeal to a driver under 50. They filled Budget Rent A Car lots across the US and they were rental cars.
Yes the Explorer was a game changer and the real start of the SUV revolution. It didn’t take long until it became the best selling passenger vehicle in the US, out selling the Taurus, Camry and Accord and coming in 3rd overall right behind the F series and C/K series.
Ugh. I despise both. Both the Explorer and Cadillac represent the cheapest, tackiest idea of luxury to me, and cannot hide that they are tarted-up 1983/1985 designs. Even if the Explorer body was new for 1991, the chassis underneath certainly was not. I “wood” rather have a Jeep Cherokee Briarwood. Yes, it was also an old design at this point (1984), but at least not trying to hide what it really is. And it’s cool in a preppy way, rather than looking like a hodgepodge of AutoZone stick-ons.
The family in “Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey” drove a 1991 Jeep Cherokee Briarwood. At first I thought it was a Wagoneer XJ (made until 1990) b/c of the faux woodgrain panels! Three features revealed what it really was: “Cherokee” in place of “Wagoneer” on the front fenders, the lace-spoke wheels, & the non-Wagoneer front end. The roof rack was sure put to good use.
As a sign of the growing SUV craze, it got replaced in “Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco” with a 1995 GMC Yukon SLT. The luggage on the roof rack grew too! 🙂
Interesting comparison. Even we here in Germany (of course only if you are a car nut) have noticed that the Explorer became so popular in the US. Around this time I was a child and we had a exchange student from Conneticut to guest. Beeing the car guy I am,I asked him about his favourite domestic car. His answer: Ford Explorer, I guess his family owned one. However, I was a bit disappointed with this unexcpected answer, because I was more interested in this old land yachts that I knew from tv. As you might excpect he was not interested in this kind of cars and told me about the dwindling popularity of such cars.That was how I learned about the change in amercan car buyers taste.
Is it me or does the Caddy look ill-proportioned, like one of those Volkswagen vans that has had much of its centre section removed? I remember the Motor Trend comparison test with the Explorer, a Cherokee and a stripped out Range Rover, and I think they concluded that the Explorer was the best choice – the Cherokee had gotten stuck IIRC and the Rangie had to pull it out. Whoever had the Caddy kept it in great shape – kinda rare to see those early Explorers now, as I thought several of them had perished in the Cash for Clunkers scheme a decade ago.