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There was a time when Cadillacs were all really big, way bigger than a Chevy Malibu. But in the mid eighties, the natural order of things was turned upside down, with predictable results. Oh, and do you remember when a Civic was just a speck compared to a Caddy?
38 Comments on “Curbside Classic Outtake: Role Reversal...”
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Yes, and perhaps not a particularly good trend. Cars hit their minimum size in the 80s, and were still appropriately roomy. Since then, cars are getting bigger, heavier, and more bloated.
Agreed. I swear my 1980 VW Rabbit had much more interior space than my 2002 VW Jetta.
Must we go through this every month?
If you want something about the size of a 90s Civic, Honda will sell you a Fit. If you want something the size of 90s Accord, Honda will sell you a Civic. If you wanted a big Honda, you used to be out of luck.
This pattern repeats itself across most brands. No one is forcing you to buy an Accord over a Civic, for example.
So if cars reached their “optimal size”, how come the Camry outsells the “optimally sized” Yaris? The truth is, cars in the 1980s and early were an aberration, not the “optimum”. Both before and after that era, cars were larger. Heck, even in Europe cars are creeping up in size. There are good reasons for cars to be smaller, but without those conditions, it just doesn’t happen.
We can complain about bloat all we want, but we’re the ones signing the papers.
I wish we people bought smaller cars, but complaining about this being a new thing, or the fault of the manufacturer, is kind of silly. If Honda (or whomever) didn’t grow their product or offer the kinds of cars people wanted to buy, they’d be out of business.
Cadillac is different, though. There’s nothing really wrong with offering a smaller Cadillac to suit the tastes of the times (eg, like the Mercedes C-Class was originally meant to be), but rebadging J-Bodies was not the way to get there
“Must we go through this every month?”
Jesus Christ…must you interject yourself into a completely harmless, friendly exchange with a didactic screed at every available opportunity? Is it not possible for two good natured blokes to wax nostalgic without you lecturing them like a patronising dick? Why should you give a toss? What possible stake could you have in this?
Cars are bigger. Period. The end. Why? Because Americans are by and large a fat people and don’t understand that things sold by the gram are always more fun than things sold by the pound? Among a myriad of other reasons, yes. But what, pray tell, is VW’s current American market equivalent of a 1980 Rabbit/Golf? Is there one of an equivalent size? No, there isn’t, and while VW seemingly believes consumers wouldn’t buy one in the North American market, this chap chimed in with his two cents, suggesting by inference that if they were to do such a thing, he, personally, might be inclined to buy one. Or not, as the case may be. That’s it. That’s all that transpired. It was two good-natured posts, totaling four lines, with nothing in them remotely suggesting the need for a condescending diatribe in response. Why are you so damned angry?
“…and while VW seemingly believes consumers wouldn’t buy one in the North American market, this chap chimed in with his two cents, suggesting by inference that if they were to do such a thing, he, personally, might be inclined to buy one.”
On the bright side, it looks as if VW might be finally bringing the new Polo here. I’m pretty interested in seeing it as it looks to be a really nice little car (particularly in GTI guise).
The Polo is quite a nice little car, actually. I rented one in Paris, and was quite impressed with it, for the most part. The only significant beef I had was with regards to the turning circle, which for a small car was pretty mediocre. I don’t know how it stacks up to the competition on paper in that regard, but threading my way through tiny French villages and mountain passes, it wound up requiring three-point turns more often than the Nissan X-Trail (!) being driven by friends.
Oh, and the brakes were completely toast after a run across the Stelvio Pass, but I suppose it’s a bit much to pin the rap for that one on VW…
The Guvna
Pretty much agree. Unfortunatley, to some, it’s never enough. Buy _______ (insert your favorite brande here) or be damned!
Wow!
It would be an even more amazing juxtaposition if one of those downsized Cadillacs could be photographed next to an even newer car with an even higher beltline such as the new Buick LaCrosse or any other 2010 family sedan.
Wow, that Seville/Civic juxtaposition is blowing my mind…how about a shrunken Seville next to a ’75-76 Eldorado or Sedan DeVille, that would be pretty freaky as well…
How much bigger was that Seville vs. Cimarron? Doesn’t look like it would be bigger by much..
I’m oddly a real fan of this generation of Cadillacs, for purely nostalgic reasons. I took my grandfather’s pristine dark blue 1988 Sedan de Ville to my junior prom.
Although it had over 60K on the clock when he bought it, he’d paid a lavish sum of money to bring it back to like-new condition. It was tight as a drum, inside and out, and seemed the “right” size for its mission. The 4.5 never gave him any problems, either.
(Then again, he later traded the ’88 for a new 1992 de Ville, with its longer wheelbase and trunk, and more “Caddy-like” proportions.)
The same-generation Sevilles are also pretty decent cars, if you can find one that hasn’t been beat to death. The Seville’s main problem was GM tried to market it as a European competitor, which of course it wasn’t.
Somehow in that pic, the blue Eldorado (or DeVille Coupe) looks good. And I don’t know why, I dig both of them.
Did they have independent rear suspension?
Does a Northstar fit in it? Or in the Malibu?
This is why The Standard of the World isn’t.
Bob
I dunno, those Cadillacs would be a tough sell versus the Lee Iacocca Special K-car variants.
/snark
The Brougham of that era still brought the traditional Cadillac dimensions with a 121 inch wheelbase and a 221 inch total length.
I would take a Coupe De Ville from any year Cadillac offered Coupe De Villes, including the FWDers. I’d prefer the slightly enlarged 90s models with the 4.9V8.
I think an interesting experiement would have been (if time travel was possible) debadge some of the luxurious mid to compact cars of today (you know the one’s available with leather and such) and have people from the late 80s try to guess the manufacturer and brand of each.
You could have done a similar experiment with 80’s cars… don’t think the result would be THAT different.
Yeah but my point is the huge shifts in thinking that can happen within short amounts of time. Like the fact that you can get a new Fiesta with leather. I understand why certain people demand nicely appointed economy cars but a little piece of me thinks WTF? I don’t think my dear departed grandmother who once owned a Chevette would understand leather in an economical car.
@educatordan
But why is the Fiesta an “economy car”? It is certainly a SMALL car, but it isn’t cheap, or simple, or spartan in any way. It is a very nice SMALL car. Some people don’t need or don’t want acres of space and road-hugging wieght. But why do without all the creature comforts that modern technology can bring? And realistically, non of those niceties add significantly to the cost anyway. In fact, it is probably cheaper to just make power windows and locks and A/C etc. standard than to have to engineer and then produce two seperate sets of parts. The marginal cost of leather seats is trivial, and then you get to turn a HUGE profit on the option price.
This is exactly the thinking that has killed Detroit in the small-car market all these years. Small does not equal cheap and nasty unless you make it equal cheap and nasty. Ford is finally getting it, Chrysler might learn from FIAT, GM is screwed as usual based on the reviews of the Euro-Cruse.
That Malibu must have lived most of its life in Eugene. A lot of the ones from that generation have rust below the fuel door.
Don’t be too surprise on how cars are pigging out anymore. When I got my Porsche 924S, I expected to be swamped next to an SUV. What I didn’t expect was to see the same effect when parked to a co-worker’s Kia Soul.
I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that I’m not going to be buying cars much newer than 1990 anymore. They’re too bloody big.
To deliver the level of gas mileage as demanded by consumers during this era, cars had to be downsized and given underpowered engines. No one in their right mind bought the four cylinder entry level variants of these cars and expected them to perform well. The purpose of having these engine available as a base option allowed the cars to advertise remarkable MPG numbers to attract buyers.
Another situation was the materials used and the technologies available at that time to manufacture these cars. This necessitated making cars smaller, because computers crafting them to be capable of being built with lighter materials, didn’t exist.
Let’s also remember that it takes machines to make a car. The technologies available to assemble the car dictated the manufacturing processes as well as the materials used. How a 1980 Cutlass was manufactured didn’t change dramatically even though the design of the car did.
Then there is the issue of profit. Believe it or not, at one time domestic auto manufacturers used to earn profits enough to actually pay for themselves without public handouts. To do this, the manufacturing costs including the machine tools and materials had to be taken into consideration. It is better to keep overhead as low as possible, necessitating the reuse of the manufacturing process as much as possible.
So, we got smaller cars. If auto manufacturers were able to give us bigger cars that could meet emission, safety and fuel requirements, they would have. What we can do now is build big cars that meet these expectations thanks to the technological advances within the industry.
Just as the Second World War and the Korean War impacted auto manufacturing from 1942 to 1952, we see that during this era the auto reflecting societal and governmental demands through their designs. Whether this actually made the cars better wasn’t the point. There were conditions that were forced upon manufacturers that created these little beasties.
Despite the (apparent) similar exterior size, the Seville has 7 cubic feet more space inside and 4 more in the trunk than the Civic. The DeVille and Malibu have an equal 14 cubic feet of trunk space but the DeVille has a whopping 11 cubic feet more space inside. According to the EPA. Interestingly, and in fact, both Cadillacs possess infinitely more character and comfort than the two blandmobilepods.
Depends on the model of the Civic. I own a Black 2002 Civic Si Coupe 5spd. I wouldn’t call it bland. In fact, it’s an awesome car for what it cost new. That being said, I would really like to move on to something else soon… if I start actually making real money.
Just sticking up for my poor-mans sports car :)
What always surprised me about the GM C bodies of this era was how shockingly bad they were. There didn’t even try to be good. They were designed to produce as much profit per until out the door as they could and resale be damned. They didn’t care of their crappy designs plunked an expensive Caddy in the shop three times a month and they cared even less of the GM techs could even wrench on the things.
You can say what you want about these things but actually owning one was a nightmare. This was especially true because the previous generation RWD C bodies were actually pretty good cars. You could plop down your (not insignificant) cash and actually drive them until you got bored with it without repeated trips to the dealer for warranty work and at 36,001 miles retail repair. Not the case with the FWD C bodies, which were nightmares to own.
Until these things came along, a Caddy was something people aspired to. These cars destroyed that.
Would a 1980s McDonalds meal deal juxtapositioned beside the 2010 version help explain some of this?
Trite, but McDonalds et al has been serving smaller portions for a while now.
Smaller than recent extremes, granted. But my point is that cars haven’t grown that much on an obesity-adjusted basis.
I had a DeVille of that generation, an ’88. It was bland styling, to be sure. But, it was better composed than the previous barges, and the interior space was deceiving. I’ve been in those Malibus, too (unfortunately). The DeVille, despite being smaller, felt much bigger.
I still miss the seats in that DeVille. I could cruise all the way across Texas in a day and not feel fatigued at all. That hasn’t happened since. And you’ve got to love a car with a built in trash bin. lol
I’m a bigger fan of the ’90s Deville, I’ve been in one before and damn are those seats comfy. Looks more modern than the ’80s one, and you can pick them up pretty well maintained for cheap. But the Northstar engine issues scare me away from ever getting one.
I got my mother’s 88 Sedan e Vile (spelling IS correct, as it was a evil little car). It had been a garage queen since she bought it. She missed the 81 Continental Mark VI that was the trade soon after the ink on the title was dry. The caddy’s handling and overall driveability reminded me of my 1990 Old Calais, which was probably about right as the cars were both GM, FWD and had similar interiors. When I got it back in 2004 with 80,000 miles on the odometer, I was warned by my father to never use the A/C if the outside temperature was above 90, as it would conk out and need a $500-$1000 repair and the car wouldn’t be able to run. The fancy air leveling rear suspension was shot, sending the headlamps glaring into the night sky. The driver’s side door window was balky and would often stick, requiring the assistance of my hand forcing the window up while the index finger on the other turned white as it mashed the window switch in the ‘up’ position as hard as it could. The glove box would unlock and swing open, smashing my wife on the knees at the mere mention of road bumps. The trunk lid closing & locking motor was broken, leading to leakage whenever it rained. I fixed that one with a motor from a junkyard caddy of the same vintage. The actual part didn’t fit, but I took out the motor and put in into the assembly of the broken one. The engine was so weak I thought it was a V-6 until I checked before buying an oil filter. The interior was loaded with wind and road noise, and had the everpresent mousefur headliner that sagged so badly that it interfered with the view from the auto-dimming mirror (also broken). The only thing good about the car was that it was free and never failed to start or drive during the year I owned it. I was constantly going to the junkyard for parts to fix the never-ending maladies that would pop up. At the end of that year, mysterious frontal thuds started happening, suggesting that imminent expenses relating to engine mounts or the fwd axle joints were about to occur. As my finances were looking okay at the time, I traded it for a 2002 Impala, which was a better car.
psarhjinian: How nice for domestic Honda fans that they can still buy a small car, the Fit, but can also choose from a larger size range than before. Would that the same were true for Subaru of America’s offerings. (I know the Toyobaru sports car will be smallish, but I mean something more practical, easy to see out of, and available with AWD, if not necessarily as small as the old Justy.)
Those E-bodies ( as I think the ’86 – ’91ish Seville, Eldorado, Toronado and Riviera were called) were styled to look small, and they were drastically shorter than their predecessors, but they were actually quite wide. I think that’s where the extra room over the larger-looking (at least in profile) Civic comes in. If only today’s CTS could be as space-efficient! I actually have always liked the exterior design of those Sevilles. It’s a very tidy-looking, crisp design. Unfortunately, it looked a little too much like the Olds Cutlass Calais, Buick Somerset Regal etc.
I had a 1989 Fleetwood Coupe (same as the Coupe deVille with plusher seats and real wood trim inside) as a daily driver from 2001-04. I bought it with 54K on the clock and it was very tight and quiet and indistinguishable from a new car in condition. I got about 45K trouble free miles out of it and then all the electronics crapped out in a short time frame. Replacing the tank sensor was an $800 job and it did not fix the dead gas gauge. The next steps suggested by the shop manual involved replacing some modules under the dash through which multiple functions were routed and had to be replaced at huge cost if any one of those systems failed (an experience which will sour you on automotive electronics right quick). While I was pondering that, several other things went bad and I decided to sell while the poor beast ran and drove.
A shame because the basic drivetrain was super solid. The 4.5 and 4.9 liter engines from 1988-92 were much less trouble than either the 4.1 that preceded them or the Northstar that came afterward. These also had ABS earlier than most other cars. GM was just a bit too ambitious within the confines of late 80’s electronics.
Ah, the mid Eighties front wheel drive C body Cadillacs…absolute garbage. Underpowered, unreliable “HT 4100″ engine, failure prone transmission, problematic electronics, too much more to mention. My grandfather had an ’85 and it was constant trouble. A friend of mine had an ’85 as well, which I think had already had it’s engine rebuilt at less than 75K, only to fail again. My dad had a beater ’86 (I think) for a short time, admittedly with over 150K on it, but it didn’t last much beyond that (major engine trouble IIRC). Saw another one ~1985-86 that blew some kind of plug out of the engine block and lost almost every drop of it’s oil. These were sooooo bad that I actually think the earlier V-8-6-4 may have been somewhat more reliable.
I was mostly okay with the downsized Electra and Ninety-Eight, but shrinking the de Ville to the FWD C platform never seemed right to me. It was strange enough seeing much larger RWD B-body Caprices at the time dwarfing Electras/Ninety-Eights, but it was downright mind-boggling to see a Caprice that much larger than a de Ville. And while all 3 C-bodies had troublesome transmissions early on, at least the Buick/Olds had one okay engine available-the 3.8 liter V6, which got better when the 3800 arrived for ’88. The Cadillac, on the other hand, was stuck with nothing but junk engines for most of that time. These things were a disaster. Arguably the worst Cadillacs of all time. Yes, even worse than the Cimarron! Then there’s that hideous Seville pictured above. Another disaster. Styling so bland and boring that watching the paint on it dry would be more exciting than looking at the car itself. Granted, a lot of GM cars of this era were bland, but the Seville took it to a new extreme. Plus it was stuck with the same garbage engine that the de Ville had, at least early on.
On to the Malibu…the replacement for the Corsica. The car that was supposed to be a game changer and just wound up being mediocre and forgettable. An acquaintance of mine has one. Rough and loud 4-cylinder engine. I’ve had the displeasure of riding in the back seat. I’m 6’2” and my head is jammed up against the roof back there. I have to sit at an odd angle. This in a supposedly mid-sized car. Who designed that thing, anyway?
GM has made some great vehicles over the years, but the Malibu and most Eighties era Cadillacs certainly aren’t among them!
The new era cars would feel even roomier if they had less raked windshields and sloping coupe roofs.
Be interesting to see an Altima or Accord offered as an Executive roof model (with upright greenhouse) and sold alongside the coupy swoopy roof four door versions.
It would address the reason a lot of buyers went for SUVs and CUVs.
This shows why so many rwd Broughams and Town Cars (and Grand Marqs and Vics) were sold during those years. There were a lot of longtime GM families in my parents’ age group that wound up in Town Cars and Grand Marqs in the 80s.
Nobody has made the point that these Cads were purely the result of CAFE regs. The US had been through some fuel price spikes in the late 70s, and CAFE regs were passed, to go into effect in 80 or 81, IIRC. CAFE had the manufacturers scared to death, and virtually the entire US vehicle fleet was re-engineered as a result.
Oddly, GM was the only company in the late 70s who went into the CAFE era at full strenth. Both Ford and Chrysler teetered at the edge of bankruptcy by 1979-80-81, and could only afford a limited number of platforms to concentrate on. But GM could do it all in those days, and did. Funny how these things turn out.
The only “small” Cadillac I’ve ever liked was the shrunken Eldorado introduced in ’79, I think it lived through the mid 80’s. That was a pretty car, still looked like a Cadillac, but was no longer a boat.
Is it the proportions? Or memmory fooling us? The other day I saw a Fiat Tipo parked alongside a Renault/Dacia Sandero. And the Sandero was just as big, if not bigger! I always thought the Tipo was a full-blown compact-midsizer. The Sandero is considerd by most a compact. So if it is bigger than the Tipo it would swallow VW’s circa 90-95 Golf. Impressive.