What If? 1985 Cadillac Sedan de Ville: A Wedge Issue

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– Posted on February 20, 2025

Something caught my eye recently that sparked an intense curiosity. In the 2019 CC story on the 1988-91 Buick Reatta that was recently reposted, there is a picture of GM’s Design VP, Irv Rybicki, and in the backdrop are several renderings, with the overarching theme being the familiar wedge shape that so characterized GM’s cars in the Eighties.

I have always dismissed the wedge, and by extension its Studio champion, because some of the cars were quite bad. And in the case of the 1985 Cadillac C-body, wreck-the-marque bad. Maybe the ’82 Cimarron and ’86 Eldorado/Seville committed deadlier sins, but for Cadillac’s bread-and-butter line to have found itself standing directly behind them in the confession line was a major blow at a time when Cadillac needed to successfully battle a growing foreign onslaught.

But as I pondered the many themes behind Irv, and particularly the black sedan directly above him, a Winter Warlock transformation suddenly came over me. For while that car is more suggestive of Design Center’s intent for the ’86 Seville, I couldn’t help but see in it the unrealized potential for Cadillac’s ’85 C-body. And two specific design elements stood out.

The first was the long hood, the result of both a long front overhang and ball-of-foot-to-front-axle, or “BOFFA” as GM calls it. In other words, a transverse engine, FWD powertrain with exaggerated proportions. The second was the much longer front-door glass compared to rear, and wide C-pillar, that together created coupe-like proportions. All of which raised a question: what if Cadillac’s ’85 C-body had been fashioned more along these lines?

Curious to explore answers, I found a good factory photo of a side view of an ’85 Sedan de Ville courtesy Amazon, and began tinkering.

Eventually, I settled on a whopping 7-inch longer BOFFA and a more reasonable 5-inch wider C-pillar that narrowed the rear door glass by same.

Wouldn’t a 7-inch longer BOFFA have been overkill? Not after I recalled my future wife’s ’77 Subaru sedan that I learned to drive a stick on in the early Eighties, and its unusually large trunk that was enabled by packaging the spare tire horizontally, above the boxer Four.

Packaging Cadillac’s standard 5-inch wide space-saver spare tire in the engine compartment would have required that it be mounted vertically, in a roughly 7-inch wide gap between the engine assembly and components attached to the firewall. Assuming that such a space could have been carved out (not a given), the result would have not only amped up the car’s visual drama up front, it would have delivered a noticeable win every time the trunk was used.

Now seeing real potential in the ’85 Cadillac C-body, I began working down a list of other problems that plagued the vehicle. The easiest was to eliminate the sloppy ride and handling by making the ’86 Touring suspension and related upgrades standard equipment beginning with Job 1. Firmer seats and better interior quality would have helped too, but the Touring Sedan’s drab exterior needed to be avoided, as did excessive lower body cladding. This was a Cadillac, not a Mercedes.

Which also meant that alloys were fine, but with whitewalls.

Next task was to figure out what to do with the unreliable 4.1 liter V8, and particularly the block/head metal mismatch. My limited understanding is that this wasn’t the engine’s only problem, but it might have been the source of some of its worst failings. Why did Cadillac put a cast iron head atop an aluminum block? It may have been a simple case of wanting to minimize the engine’s weight given its location above the front axle, which an aluminum block would go a long way towards achieving, while also wanting to minimize engine noise into the cabin, which a cast iron head would help facilitate.

What would have been a better course of action? Probably to make the head aluminum, stop trying to eliminate engine noise entirely, and instead focus on engine sound quality, as is common practice today.

The final task would have been figuring out how to price and market what was effectively a high-end sport sedan. Was it really a Sedan de Ville, the Cush-mobile standard-bearer since 1956? No, and nor was it a Fleetwood or Sixty Special. Instead, I think it was the next-generation Seville, and with good timing given the Gen 2’s dramatic fall from grace at a time when its sales should have been rising. With this suggested new design, Cadillac might have finally offered a credible alternative to the S-Class. And like that car, the goal would have been strong margins rather than maximum sales.

What about a 2-door version? Well, were M-B, BMW and Audi selling 2-door versions of their big cars? No, and for Cadillac the tooling savings would have broadly covered the additional investment needed to lengthen the sedan’s BOFFA and shorten its rear doors. That said, here is a rough work-up of a Fleetwood Coupe with a 7-inch longer BOFFA that depicts what was possible as a next-gen Eldorado. Its C-body interior would have been roomier than the existing Eldorado, and no changes would have been needed to the original greenhouse.

Alternatively, a decluttered Eldorado, or maybe the base Eldorado could have looked like this.

Or the existing Eldorado could have continued, its proportions similar and its exterior design more vibrant, if aging.

And as long as its sales justified it, the big RWD 2-door could have joined the 4-door in staying in production.

Looking at the original ’85 Cadillac C-body program more broadly, perhaps the real opportunity rested with the Cadillac team working as a unified whole. Strategy, Design, Marketing, Engineering, Manufacturing, Finance and Sales all needed to stand together and make the C-body a wedge issue within GM’s top brass, splitting the real players from the dead heads by insisting that a new course was needed to secure Cadillac’s future. Other all-new mid-1980s Cadillac models would be needed too, of which more in due course.

As for Irv Rybicki, I have a newfound respect for him and the concepts that he championed. No, he wasn’t perfect. Nor was Mitchell, and even Earl had his moments. But I prefer to build on their positive contributions as we explore the auto industry’s history here at CC.