I Wish I Lived In The Alternate Reality Where ’80s GM Sent Us The Awesome Australian Statesman

There was a commercial a little while back based on the movie Castaway where Tom Hank’s character is stranded on a deserted island with nothing but the packages from his downed FedEx flight to keep him company. After barely escaping years later on a makeshift raft and being rescued with the still-unopened parcels, he makes it his mission to deliver these now-very-late parcels himself. What was in the final package that he drops off? The recipient opens it to reveal a satellite phone, extra batteries, a GPS locating device, and a few flares. Sonuva …

In terms of desirable car models, Cadillac was on a metaphorical deserted island of its own forty-five years ago with scarce offerings worthy of “The Standard Of The World.” After a tremendously successful few years, the brand entered the challenges of the eighties with products that made Cadillac fans shake their heads in disbelief. It seemed Cadillac didn’t have a clue how to fight the imports or even maintain its traditional sales in a changing environment. The sad thing is that General Motors actually sold cars under their own brands in Europe and Australia that would have made great additions to the Cadillac line.

Cadillac! At The Disco

A few weeks back, my kid asked me what “hubris” meant. I told him it meant “too much pride and self-confidence,” but my first thought was to say, “Cadillac in 1980.” When writing histories of consumer goods, very few authors will be able to avoid citing this car company in this era as one of the worst examples of overestimating the power of a storied brand name applied to subpar product.

Seeing the rise in popularity of expensive European imports among the well-to-do in the mid-seventies, Cadillac developed the “internationally sized” Seville that was a full two feet shorter than their standard DeVilles and Fleetwoods. Based on the X-platform that underpinned cars of the unwashed masses like the Chevrolet Nova, the Seville was actually stretched and modified enough to earn its own platform name (K-car, or all things) and it successfully eschewed any resemblance to those bottom-feeder cars.

Considering the humble beginnings, the Seville was a surprisingly nice to drive and it certainly looked substantial enough to be a Cadillac. Priced as the most expensive Cadillac (other than the factory-built 75 stretched limousine) it still sold well; 43,772 units left Cadillac dealers in 1976, increasing to 56,985 in 1978 and still strong at 53,487 in 1979. I’d forgotten how well-balanced the side profile was on these; it looked even better without that vinyl roof (which was required on early ones to hide the seam where the different rear roof stamping joined the standard Nova pressing).

Studies showed that the Seville didn’t accomplish lowering the average age of Cadillac buyers; many were bought for older rich ladies that wanted something smaller from their usual Cadillac dealership. Still, they didn’t go buy a Mercedes, right? Hey, could they have gotten a 450SEL Benz in a gangsta-fabulous Gucci Edition? Forget it. That don’t look like no Nova to me, boy.

Cadillac’s primary lineup was dramatically downsized as well, with the Caprice-based full-sized models and the front-drive Eldorado each losing feet in length and half a ton in weight from previous models while keeping or increasing interior space. Despite the 1979 fuel crunch, sales were still strong. Certainly, it was a time for Cadillac to celebrate, as anyone in the tri-state area at the time will remember:

With this great start, Cadillac was poised to continue their smaller sedan success into the next decade; they probably assumed that they couldn’t lose. Should I mention “hubris” again?

Standard Of The Turd

For the early eighties, Cadillac took a two-pronged approach to compact cars, offering a Euro-car fighter the size of a little BMW, and a new, smaller Seville. This gave them a fifty/fifty chance to win buyers in the “internationally sized” car segment. They lost on both counts.

Following the formula they’d used for the first Seville, the Cadillac guys chose to use an existing GM platform for their Bimmer fighter. Somehow, the people responsible had either lost that recipe or were just damn lazy (hubris again); they forgot that the humble Nova had been heavily, heavily altered to become Caddy’s boutique flagship. With the 1982 Cimarron, the Standard of the World crest was stuck onto a barely modified Cavalier

Wider taillights, an extra set of headlamps, and leather upholstery were supposed to justify a pricetag double that of what the Chevy was going for. Well, you couldn’t get a 3 Series with four doors back then, so maybe the Cimarron had that going for it? Yeah, not many conquest sales there.

Live and learn. For the 1980 Seville, Cadillac had the opportunity to lean more heavily into something even tidier and more “Euro” than the successful outgoing model. Was that the direction Cadillac went? Of course not.

As one of last cars championed by outgoing Cadillac design boss Bill Mitchell, the favored direction for a new Seville to bring Cadillac into 1980s was not a look into the future of car design but instead a love letter to pre-war cars like the bustle-backed, Hooper-bodied Rolls Royces.

While neoclassic style had worked so well on earlier Mitchell products such as the boattail Buick Riveira, sticking a bustle-back onto the boxy four-door Eldorado didn’t exactly receive universal acclaim. Personally, I like the look, but I’m well aware that any “ugliest cars ever” list will have Mitchell’s baby as a knee-jerk entry.

Regardless of whether you tweaked the proportions, it would be of no use since the 1980 Seville was like the Warrant or Candlebox of neoclassics: it arrived at the tail end of a trend and was out of style almost before it even debuted. Seville sales dropped by around 25 percent, with a mere 39,344 units finding customers, a sharp falloff from the success of the first-generation car.

Could Cadillac really have developed home-grown cars to fight the imports? Maybe, but why bother when GM had their own “foreign” cars ready for America?

Austria? Australia? Who Cares, Bring It In…

To compete with smaller imported executive cars, the cheat-code solution might have been using an actual imported executive car to begin with, particularly one that a GM division was already making. We’ve already explored how GM could have taken their Opel Senator luxury sedan with similar-on-paper specs to a 5 or 7 Series BMW and sold it as the Cadillac Cantata with slick styling from the Opel-based Bitter SC.

The Cantata would have been a little larger than the embarrassing Cimarron but ideally matched to the sizing of BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis. A straight six, fully independent suspension, all-wheel disc brakes, and an available five-speed would have made this underrated Russelsheim-built rear-drive sedan a legitimate rival to the painfully expensive and often austere offerings from Germany.

We even came up with a second-generation Cantata for later in the decade, underpinned by the next-gen Senator and Pininfarina styling as used on the ill-fated Allante:

What about the larger “little” Cadillac, the Seville? There can’t be a German or English GM car to really sub in for that, could there? No, but you could say g’day to the Statesman, mate.

Can’t You Hear, Can’t You Hear The Thunder?

If you’ve read enough of my posts, you’ll know of my love for Aussie cars from the seventies and eighties. How could you not? These were an odd but highly appealing blend of American cruisers with a more European style and respect for roadability.

One of the best examples of this is the Holden line of large cars, the range-topping model being its own brand called Statesman. Despite being nearly a decade old, by the late seventies Holden had kept the chassis of the Statesman capable with “Radial Tuned Suspension” that belied its age. You didn’t get independent suspension in back, but you got four-wheel disc brakes and a five-liter V8 under the hood. While the lesser Holden sedans were replaced in 1980 by smaller Commodore models based on the Opel Rekord and Senator (the same platform we’d be using for the Cantata), the big Statesman received one final facelift for what was called the WB series. Seeing a picture of one the other day really took me aback: that thing is a Cadillac.

The Statesman might be the same length and width of the first- and second-gen Sevilles, but designer Leo Pruneau’s creation has a presence that it makes it seem longer and leaner than either of those cars. “Everyone thinks it is based on a Cadillac,” Pruneau said some time back, “but it is not.” Surprisingly, he also said that he “wanted to reflect the Aston Martin Lagonda in its lines.”Indeed, it does have that flat-plane look, though not as extreme and easier to be accepted by proletarian idiots that put the underappreciated Lagonda on ugliest-cars lists.

There’s no way that Cadillac would have replaced the Seville with a completely European-looking car like an Opel or Bitter SC, but it likely would have found success with a car that had a transitional design attractive to imported-car buyers that remained palatable to traditional Caddy people. This Statesman is exactly that car. It almost looks like an AI illustration based on prompts of “make a more transatlantic looking Cadillac for 1980” or “combine a W116 Mercedes S-Class with an American road locomotive.”

There’s nothing extraneous about the appearance; just enough brightwork and a formal grille combined with rakish-looking aluminum wheels. The backlight on the Statesman is upright without being as cartoonish as the near-vertical rear windows on most American luxury cars of the time, and the extra rear quarter window is reminiscent of the 760 Volvo from a few years later. If a Yuengling and bratwurst with mustard is your idea of a “German” meal, you’ll love the look of the Statesman.

If you know anything about the Australians, you’ll be aware that they like to make heated-up versions of virtually any of their cars. The Holden Dealer Team (HDT) Specialty Vehicles Group created a number of modified performance editions of various Holden cars, but you would think that a stately barge like the Statesman would avoid such treatment. You’d be wrong.

With 50 percent more power than a standard Statesman model plus lowered suspension, AMG-style black trim, Bilstein shocks, and Pirelli P600 tires, the HDT “Magnum” was the rarest of all the HDT cars. Only about 100 were built, and according to some it was one of serial Bathurst winner and HDT legend Peter Brock’s favorite cars. Said Peter:

 “It went hard. I remember going out to Calder (Park Raceway), and the best I could do with a stock Statesman was something like 61.5 seconds on a lap. And as soon as we whacked the Magnum out there – it had Pirelli P600s on that car – we were down in the 57 [seconds] dead. It was just like a weapon.”

Sure, he wasn’t going to race this bemouth (even with an energy polarizer) but if the bones of this Statesman were good enough for Brocky, they’re a good basis for a Seville that wouldn’t have been an embarrassment. Let’s try it.

Caddywhompus

To make the Statesman into a Cadillac Seville-type car, our changes would be rather minor. Sealed beam lights in front sit atop bumpers pushed out slightly for 5MPH compliance. The sides are unchanged save for FUEL INJECTION badges on the front fenders to call out the gasoline delivery system on the 350 Chevy small block. If GM had their way you just know that damn diesel 350 would have found a home there too- please no.

In back, the Statesman had what seemed like a bit too much overhang aft of the rear wheels. The reason I’ve heard for this was to set the Statesman apart from the lesser Holden models, which were to be based on the same wheelbase chassis but with a shorter trunk (or boot). Ultimately, Holden ditched the idea and launched Opel-based lower-level models, leaving the Statesman as Last Big Car Standing.

This range-topper Statesman featured an enormous cargo area that seemed to follow some unwritten Aussie goal to be able to hold a fifty-gallon barrel of fertilizer or something. I’ve knocked maybe five inches off the back of the Statesman to give it a more balanced look and help compensate for some of the length addition of the NHTSA ram bars (but you’d still probably have a far more commodious trunk than the bustle-back Caddy). More Cadillac-looking taillights and relocated license plate finish off the rear, and that’s essentially it.

The interior would need to be upgraded a bit, and we’d obviously require a new left-hand-drive dashboard which is fine since the Statesman’s instrument panel is rather disappointing, like a bunch of Radio Shack switches and Steward Warner gauges slapped onto a plastic slab (you get a woodgrain look in upper models but it really isn’t much better). The single-spoke Citroen-style steering wheel also has no place in an American-style luxury car.

Our redesign would be a take on the concurrent “big” Cadillacs with a large gauge space across the top for digital displays and horizontal bands for controls and “information centers” of idiot lights just below. Piano-key style buttons allow the driver to enter distances and to cycle through various fuel and mileage data on the trip computer. There are Caddy parts bin controls for the HVAC and radio (here with 8-track player but no CB) would be used, and the flat nature of the timber panels indicates that, depending on the price point of the car, these might be actual veneer instead of fake wood.

If you chose a bench seat to replace the bucket seats and a floor shifter of the sportier “touring sedan” version shown, the totally unnecessary graphic tachometer would be replaced by a gear indicator for the column shift (forget stickshift options since that would be limited to the smaller Cantata)

You’d never think that you’re in a Mercedes or a BMW, but that kind of austerity only really works for them. Honestly, many buyers of this kind of car want more of what Lee Iacocca disgustingly called “show biz” in their dashboards; I’d hate to go that far, but at least the inside of this smaller Cadillac would not be that out of place in a Volvo or Toyota Cressida. That’s a start.

Bustin’ The Bustle

Like the spiciness of food at Indian restaurants, sometimes you need to tone down some imported things to get Americans to embrace them. A Holden product wasn’t just a perfect sort-of-European product for Cadillac to slowly move left of center from their traditional products; it was something just sitting there right under their own corporate umbrella.

Regardless of tweaks, would the chassis of Statesman be too dated for use in a new 1980 Cadillac? I’m well aware that it was pushing ten years old by the time I’m proposing this mid-sized Caddy, but I think it could still be more than acceptable. If not, there’s no reason that such bodywork couldn’t be applied to a nearly-identically-sized rear-drive GM A/G bodies like a Malibu or Cutlass sedan. I would only ask that Cadillac find a way to let the rear windows be able to roll down on their version.

We Americans might have gotten Nicole Kidman, Men At Work, and Mad Max movies from the Land Down Under, but there are so many cool cars from the Australian divisions of the Big 3 that we were denied in the malaise era. It’s truly a shame, since at this time the US branches of these same automotive giants were giving us many home-grown products we wanted about as much as we were interested in seeing more Yahoo Serious movies. Today, this unique Aussie automotive ecosystem (as Lewin has called it) is now gone and will likely never return. That’s the real tragedy.

Top graphic images: Paramount Pictures; GM

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