I always wondered why Bill Mitchell decided to have both 4 and 6 window versions of the 1962-1964 big C Body sedans. He was certainly a fan of these baroque British cars otherwise, with their sharp-edge elements and bustle-backs.
Just in case you needed a bit of visual prompting.
Not sure if those were directly responsible but at least must have been in the back of his mind, as he clearly vacuumed up many European stylistic ideas and loved classic designs, as did Exner.
Regardless, these ’63’s showed Cadillac at the top of their game. Our neighbor directly across the street bought a new ’64 white with blue interior 6 window Sedan deVille from Chesapeake Cadillac, it was jewel-like in quality and babied it to an extreme. It was his wife’s car, as he drove a ’63 Biscayne stripper to his law office downtown. The Cad was driven sparely and always garaged, and literally every time it was driven he’d wipe the engine compartment with a rag. He hand washed and chamois dried it every clement weekend. After college when I went back to visit in 1973 that car looked exactly like new. They were moving to Florida, I should have offered to buy it on the spot.
Wouldn’t mind having a 6 window Siddley. Anyone know something about the driving experience of these?
This comparison with a Bentley gives some impressions
https://www.classicandsportscar.com/features/how-other-half-lived-bentley-mkvi-vs-armstrong-siddeley-sapphire-346
What a brilliant job the author does in setting the scene, describing Fifties Britain and the Armstrong-Siddeley’s place in the automotive ‘pecking order’.
Something I never knew was that Rolls-Royce built at least the original Hydra-Matic under license (and sold it to A-S) rather than just buying them in.
I wonder what that meant for parts interchangeability in service?
I found this document, which covers how Rolls-Royce arrived at using the Hydramatic.
It states that the first 100 units were bought directly from GM (before Rolls-Royce started manufacturing it on their own) and “Once at Crewe they were modified to Rolls-Royce specification with the addition of a modified tail housing, and output shaft. These housed and powered the ride control pump and fiction servo for the brakes.”
It goes on to mention slight dimensional differences between GM and Rolls-Royce built Hydramatics, so parts interchangeability is not guaranteed. Interestingly, once Rolls-Royce started manufacturing Hydramatics in-house they tried tightening up the tolerances and improving the finish on the internal components, which caused the units to perform poorly. It was soon discovered that certain components required a rough finish to perform properly!
But Pete, that is Martin Buckley, the gruff Northern chronicler of old barges for Classic and Sportscar for decades now. His evocations are always as sharp as they are original. He has, incidentally, owned many, many upthrusting lost causes barges from the ’60’s-’80’s (things like Alfa 6, Pug 604, Fiat 130’s), and that alone qualifies as him for CC sainthood.
As it happens, in this piece, I don’t know if I agree that a nation which made its fortune from centuries of colonialist blood doesn’t have some permanent atoning to do, but I do forget just how utterly smashed and broke that same country was by the passage of WW2. Even the ruling class had little left to spend on such cars as these, making their presence today (and their impact then) all the more remarkable.
I’ve read enough of his pieces over the years. It figures that he’d do the hard research to present to us pampered Colonials, so we knew what life in the Mother Country was really like back then. Explains why I had so many classmates from over there….
When a dealer in Mid Bedfordshire showed a list of complaints by unhappy owners the factory service rep his reply was ” Tell them they are fortunate to own A Siddley “. That attitude and lower quality compared to the cheaper Jags lead to A-S demise.
Jags were also more successful in export because they were *rakish* and appealed to a rakish customer. A-S had the same problem as Rover and Wolseley did slightly downmarket, they had decent sales in places like Australia and the Benelux countries with a tradition of buying British and/or no native auto industry; but in Germany, France and above all America the staid customer they were made to appeal to simply wasn’t ready to consider a foreign car in the ’50s.
Mitchell more or less introduced the 4-window sedan with the Sixty Special. The Studie Land Cruiser and various custom bodies were there first but weren’t influential. So it’s not surprising that he continued using both forms.
It’s odd that we don’t have proper names for the four ways of arranging four doors. The Armstrong Siddeley was using a typical Euro pattern with both doors hinged on the B pillar. This pattern was extremely rare in America. The ’34 Hupmobile and the Cord used it, both self-consciously Euro. The clamshell pattern was the default until (again) the Sixty Special, which standardized both opening from the front.
Do the GM 4 light sedans share a roof with the 62 Coupe deVille (and the 63-64 Buick and Olds C body coupes)? If so this might be an example of a way to add cheaply to the product portfolio, or perhaps to amortize the cost of the new roof.
As for the AS, the roof looks the same, just with a fill panel on the 4 light. The coachbilt Bentleys of the same period also had a mix of 4 and 6 light styles, but with different roofs. Those also could have inspired Mitchell.
But I suspect the real inspiration for adding the 4 light was the 58 Thunderbird.
From my recollection (we owned a 1963 Cadillac four-window) the roofs were the same except for the added opening for the sixth windows.
FWIU the coupes were more close-coupled and share the roof pressing with the *B-body* 4-door hardtops.
The 63 and 64 Cadillac coupes used the B hardtop sedan roof, but I don’t think the Electra or 98 coupes do. They look like a continuation of the 62 C body coupe roof.
Not sure how the 6 light roof could be the same as the 4 light roof given the very different angle of the rear door glass. Is the rake of the rear windscreen even the same? If so, is it a parallelogram filler?
Don’t know if there’s a connection between Mitchell and the Siddely Saphire 6- and 4-light variants, but I’d be willing to bet there’s definitely one with Mitchell and Elwood Engel’s 1965 Chrysler New Yorker sedans.
Oddly enough the ‘big’ British Fords Zephyr and Zodiac (1962-6) were also differentiated in the same way, the Zephyrs four light, the Zodiacs six light, and were more-or-less contemporary to the C bodies.
GM did a bit of those 6 and 8 window variants in pre-war La Salles, no? And, Mitchell would have been there, then. No sharp edges, though.
I haven’t seen a 4-light Sapphire before. I thought that style disappeared with the Whitley. It gives the car quite a different look. Hmm, which would I choose…..
I’m pretty sure the 6 window has more rear legroom, plus it’s easier to get in and out of.
Could well be. Could also be the 4-light was where he really wanted to go for ’63, but the conservative division managers, who’d just sold six window sedans for four years wanted to hedge their bets. Whatever the case, he certainly pulled it off with more aplomb than Elwood Engel two years later.
There was also a trend for higher-end automakers before WWII to offer 6-light and 4-light sedans similar to these; with the 4-light called something special like a ‘Town Sedan’. These usually were a fraction of 6-light sales.
If he’d based it on those pics from AS, one side would be quite some bit longer than the other. They are remarkably poor quality drawings.
On either vehicle, Caddy or AS, it’s inelegant to me. Can’t pinpoint why: something to do with looking cheaper somehow, like a distracting extra prop had to be stuck to hold the roof up.
It just occurred to me that the once-numerous 6-light glasshouse has not been seen ever since the arrival of the Big C about 15 or so years ago, since which every car on the road has eventually been blessed with a gigantic and solid c-pillar. (I’ve speculated here before that that design feature surely must be to do with massive load transference through the body for it to absorb the “rest” of the crashes forces once front crumpling is done, though I still can’t find proof of that).
I don’t know what the Big C is, but that third window is on a lot of recent sedans, or was before sedans disappeared. Some are small and worthless as windows. Remember the flap when the Cadillac CT5 appeared with a fake one.
As a fellow countryman, I’d guess he’s referring to the Chrysler 300 which pretty much introduced the fat pillar/tiny window look to the Aussie market.
If Mitchell was influenced by the Armstrong-Siddeley 4-window & 6-window, it would have been an extremely minor factor. The 6-window style simply carried on from the 1959-’61, taking its razor-edge details from the 1959-’60 Eldorado Broughams. Then, Mitchell added the four-window ’61 60 Special with formal roof quarters.
Concurrent and highly influential was the 1961 Lincoln Continental with its elegant, 4-window, formal roof sedan. Not to be left without a choice, the 4-window C-Bodies were added to give the buyers one less reason to depart from GM.
Mitchell influenced by a razor-edge Rolls-Royce for his ’63 Riviera, yes. By the A-S, I hardly think so!