We give General Motors a lot of stick for their constant corporate buffoonery, so it’s important to recognize when they do things well. In the world of car design, the GM back catalogue is stuffed with outstanding work. Given their resources it bloody well should be, but it wasn’t always the case. [Ed note: British spellings with an extra u have been left intact for an authentic content experience. You may also read the piece in the voice of Daniel Craig if you wish.] The Pontiac Aztek was a failure of vision and management – the phone call was coming from inside the building. But how well a company handles external rather than internal turbulence is a good indicator of the strength of their design studio. The mid-seventies in America were very turbulent indeed, but luckily for GM they had one of the greatest car designers who ever picked up a marker leading their studios; Bill Mitchell. Despite being near the end of his career Mitchell still had one more minor masterpiece left in him: the downsized B-body 1977 Chevrolet Caprice. Bill regularly enjoyed a lunchtime martini or three, so shake some up; it’s time for Damn Good Design.
Only seven people have held the position of GM vice president of design. William L. Mitchell was the second, hand picked by his predecessor and the father of modern car design, Harley Earl. Mitchell took over from Earl in late 1958 and was a rambunctious Hemingway-esque figure with a passion for fishing and drinking. But unlike Earl he was an exceptional artist in his own right and in winding back the excesses of the Earl era Mitchell ushered in a sleeker, sharper look for GM cars that from the early sixties until the mid seventies represented a golden age for American car design.
The interstates were endless and gas was cheap. The default American automobile had evolved as a creature of this environment – constellation class cruisers with power everything at your fingertips. Lounges on wheels soundtracked by the backbeat of an unstressed V8. Air-conditioned point and purr as the industrial decline rolls by your tinted windows. The domestic auto manufacturers were masters of their domain, but like Galapagos wildlife, tame and without any natural predators.
Big Government, Smaller Cars
The first Oil crisis of 1973 forced a sudden spike in the price of crude oil and a corresponding rise in gas prices which sent American buyers flocking to import showrooms in search of smaller, more economical vehicles that Detroit was unable to provide. There was also incoming federal regulation. to consider. In 1971 the NHTSA issued FMVSS215 “Exterior Protection” which mandated the ability of a car to withstand a 5 mph front and 2½ mph rear impact, coming into effect for the 1973 model year, along with the October 1972 Motor Vehicle Information and Cost Saving (MVICS) Act. To meet the requirements of these two pieces of legislation, manufacturers would need to add length and weight to their cars, just after the 1970 creation of the Environment Protection Agency and Clean Air Act would force them to consider the unthinkable: downsizing them.
As described by Michael Lamm and ex-GM designer Dave Holls in their definitive history of American car design, A Century of Automotive Style:
“Large cars like the 1971 Eldorado stood for an age that was about to end. By 1971, Cadillac had a 500-cubic-inch, 365-horsepower V-8 that delivered eight miles per gallon. Large Detroit cars with single-digit fuel mileage were common in the early 1970s. So when the first oil embargo hit in late 1973, it sent American car buyers scurrying into small, lightweight, fuel-efficient Japanese cars. That plus a flurry of new federal standards that regulated everything from bumper heights and strength to tailpipe emissions suddenly lifted the engineer into prominence, shoved money toward safety, downsizing, front-wheel drive and fuel economy and pushed the designer into a secondary role. The stylist’s glory days were suddenly and unceremoniously over.
Mitchell, along with everyone else who shaped sheet metal, had major problems with the often contradictory mandates of the new laws and requirements. Fuel-economy standards, for example, suggested smaller, lighter cars, while impact and rollover standards required heavier, bulkier pillars and bumpers. These tough times very much tested the stylists’ skills and, in the opinion of many, made men out of boys. George Moon commented this was the period when stylists became designers”.
Pete Estes was president of GM from 1974 to 1981. An engineer by training he decided GM would begin downsizing its full size cars in two stages. The first stage would be relatively low-risk: the downsized 1976 K-body Cadillac Seville. The 1976 Seville represented the exact opposite of Detroit’s ‘bigger is more prestigious’ thinking. It was the smallest Cadillac at the time, but the most expensive. A good reception and strong sales helped convince GM they could pull off this downsizing thing after all.
Mitchell’s ‘Sheer Look’
The Seville debuted what Mitchell called the ‘sheer look’: crisp edges and unbroken surfaces that looked like they had been created in one smooth movement over the clay. Boxiness provided more interior volume and making them squarer and more rigid looking introduced a formality and elegance that was perfect for Cadillac. Mitchell would next use his ‘sheer look’ on stage two of the big GM downsizing program – the volume seller Chevrolet Caprice. This was part of GM’s Project 77. According to lead project engineer William Collins in an interview with Hemmings:
The mandates for Project 77 were to reduce size and weight, while retaining style, comfort and roominess and improving fuel mileage and ride qualities. “The corporation proposed that development be done in a common location, and the chief engineers of the car divisions chose me to head up the program,” Bill recollects. “One of my responsibilities as project manager involved ‘politicking’ those same chief engineers to get them to agree on a package that design staff could work with.
It was one thing for luxury buyers to accept a more European influenced Cadillac. Whether the American heartland Chevrolet customer could be convinced to accept a more demure, smaller family car was another matter entirely. According to an article in the New Yorker from 1980, the downsizing decision was riven with controversy inside the company and outside in the wider domestic industry.
The new for 1977 Caprice/Impalas were to be 600-800 lbs (270-360 kg) lighter, over 10” (250 mm) shorter and 3.5” (90 mm) narrower than the cars they replaced. Mitchell directed Chevrolet advanced studio head Terry Henline to adopt the ‘sheer look’ to maximize the amount of interior volume for passengers and their luggage. Mitchell was a big fan of European cars, and at the time Jaguar was beginning to think about replacing the XJ, which had been introduced in 1968 (in typical BL fashion the XJ40 wouldn’t appear until 1986). Jaguar had solicited proposals from various external studios, and Mitchell got hold of a photo of Giorgetto Giugiaro’s ItalDesign proposal to show Henline. It had the boxy volumes, straight edges and almost totally flat surfaces Mitchell had introduced on the Seville and now wanted to develop further on the Caprice.
It’s Not Just Three Boxes. It’s Three Stylish Boxes.
Compared to the Seville, the Caprice is less formal in its proportions. At first glance the ’77 Caprice is just a simple three box sedan, but there’s a lot of very sophisticated design going on. The faster rake of the rear windshield tempers a lot of the formal, upright look that was appropriate for a Cadillac but would have looked out of place on a more mainstream model intended to have popular appeal. The amount of restraint shown in the lines of the Caprice are remarkable. It looks almost Italianate in its simplicity and elegance.
The chrome cladding on the rocker panels is proof Detroit couldn’t let go of its old habits entirely, but it’s pulling the old trick of hiding the depth of the bodyside, making the Caprice look longer and lower than it really is. The gentle taper of the trunk starts higher than the cowl at the base of the windscreen. Because the back is shorter than the front, this extra bulk balances out the proportions at the ends of the car.
Notice the gently curving feature line along the tops of the fenders. This again helps lengthen the car but also adds a feeling of strength and solidity. It’s subtle but provides a useful break in the body for two tone paint schemes, as well as adding visual interest and again helps the car look longer. This was important for customers not to feel they were getting less car for their money. You can’t just take a larger car, slap it on the photocopier and reduce the scale by 10 percent. It doesn’t work because the proportions end up being all wrong. Quite often in the studio if you’re making a quarter scale model, you have to cheat it to make it look right – it’s the difference between optically correct as opposed to dimensionally correct.
It Outlived Its Designer
The buying public responded. The ’77 Caprice (and its platform mates) were exactly the right cars at the right time – it was Motor Trend Car of the Year, and sold over 650,000 in its first year alone, up 45% on 1976, the last year of the full size cars. With minor facelifts it remained in production until 1990, outliving Mitchell who died in 1988, a remarkable achievement. The ‘sheer look’ would go on to influence Ford and Chrysler, and it would remain contemporary in American car design right up until the 1986 Taurus instantly rendered everything else outdated overnight. Even so, the third-gen Caprice was very different from the last gasp of the body-on-frame V8 traditional sedan. After Ford revolutionized the sedan form-factor, Chevrolet took those aero ideas and bolted them onto the bones of the ’77 to create the updated fourth generation ’91 Caprice, proving there was still life in the old dog yet.
The 1977 Caprice wasn’t the most glamourous car, but it was an important one. Good design is not a selling point we equate only with expensive products. It’s the process that enables you to arrive at an aesthetically desirable conclusion that fulfills the brief, whether it’s a Chevrolet or a Cadillac. The Caprice is skin to the GMT400 – you didn’t really notice them at the time because they would have been everywhere. It’s only with the benefit of hindsight, and comparing what came before and after that we can really appreciate just how good these were. The kids these days would probably only encounter them on YouTube watching car chases from old movies or TV shows, because like its crosstown rival the Crown Vic, the Caprice virtues of roominess, robustness and dependable V8 power made it the default car for John Q Law. But that association with law enforcement shouldn’t undermine what an outstanding piece of design work it is.
Once again this article would not have been possible without the generous assistance of Kathy at GM Design Heritage, who patiently dug into the archives to bring us these exclusive studio process images. Many thanks for your help.
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- How Ford Could Have Made the Chrysler’s Cab Forward Cars Before Chrysler Did
*Akin? Is Mr. Tracy already elbow deep in rusty jeeps?
Credit the Autopian mainframe for that one.
Amazed at how that first Bill Michalak 77 3/4 drawing looks like the 91 Caprice.
I was thinking the same thing. Imagine if that had been the 77 design!
General Motours*
Adrian, I enjoyed this immensely… thank you very much! 🙂 Though I’ve never (yet) developed a bona fide fetish for full-size GM iron of this period, I’ve seen many of this generation of the Caprice (being of a certain age myself) and I’ve always thought it to be an unusually handsome chariot relative to its peers.
Your entertaining, informative, and insightful analysis, accompanied by the new-to-me photos from Kathy at GM, and a nice Hefeweizen from Trader Joe’s, made my Sunday evening a genuine pleasure. Thanks again!
GM knew if these had been crap it would have sunk them and planned accordingly.
We had a ’77 Bonneville Brougham purchased new and kept until 2008 or so. Absolutely nothing broke on that car and it still looked great when sold, tiny bit of pitting on the back bumper and a few splits in the black rubber bumper inserts. I hated the grab-ass mouse fur seats but otherwise that car was a like-new beast at age 31.
If GM had cared as much about all the platforms they launched, they would still be upper case GM and not lower case gm.
My first car, a 1985 Caprice Classic in grey. Bought it for $500 from a buddy and sold it to my aunt’s minister for the same a few years later. Left it to him to scrape the Grateful Dead sticker out of the back window. Such a great read.
Oy. Very convincing article that made me rethink (or think at all) about this vehicle, but other than it being WAY better than the crap it replaced, I’m not going to bite. I LOVE that the clay models have the sagging looking rear suspension already baked in as if the bodies CAME preloaded in the trunk from the design team…
Marketing team: You’ve got to be thinking about who is going to be buying this car
Designer: Waste management executives?
Interesting defense of a car whose ubiquity made it automotive white noise for my generation.
I’m nothing if not a champion of the underdog.
I guess this is a case of beauty in the eye of the beholder. It’s not ugly per see, its just kinda…there, like a homelier, boxier, uberbeige American Camry but with worse gas mileage, more rust and way more meh.
The fake wire wheel hubcaps aren’t helping.
“The domestic auto manufacturers were masters of their domain, but like Galapagos wildlife, tame and without any natural predators.”
Brilliant writing.
Read the rest, but I can’t get on board. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the 90s when all this stuff was dirt cheap, but all of this slab sided 90 degree surfaced stuff looks like trash to me. It’s like they got the first copy of ProE and let an engineer design a car who only understood parametric modeling and didn’t comprehend nurbs/surfacing at all. I get it has very subtle curvature in a couple places, but from 20′ away it’s hard to see any of it.
These cars were slow, underpowered, and got horrible MPG to almost everything in the 90s. They drive terrible. They’re not particularly luxurious. Or safe. Or reliable. The only thing they were good at, from a 90s perspective, were sucking fuel and being boring to drive.
I understand they seem more exotic to you, but growing up with them, mehhhhhh.
I think it makes sense for them to be bleh from a 90s perspective. They were at the end of their life, their time was over and the soap bars were taking over. Compared to the cars at the time of their design though, these were at the leading edge of some of the best ideas in 80s car design.
Na, these were bleh since their inception – nothing cutting edge about them. This was just American car companies willfully ignoring the competition brewing around the world.
GM’s downsizing waves in the late ’70s and early ’80s were extremely successful, and these ’77 B-bodies belong near or at the top of GM’s Best Hits list. And it was certainly a high mark for Mitchell.
But GM’s luck–and skill in execution–ran out with the ’86 E-bodies (Toronado, Riviera, Eldorado, and related “K-body” Seville). Incidentally, that’s the same time those cars went from using a longitude-FWD powertrain to a transverse-FWD one. The ’86 downsizing of what should have been GM’s most stylish and most aspirational personal luxury coupes was so poorly done and so poorly received by the general public that sales fell off a cliff for all three divisions. To say nothing of the fact that they looked uncannily similar to the N-body coupes costing half as much.
Eventually, all three models got some extra length grafted onto each end, but there was nothing for it. GM squandered a really good opportunity to retain its PLC customers and gain new ones right as crosstown Ford came up with some really striking designs (Thunderbird, Cougar, Mark VII) and right as other brands were really making in-roads in that segment (Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Acura, Lexus).
Anyway, back to the ’77 B-bodies, this might have been the last time GM ever delivered such an impactful and groundbreaking design. They’ve certainly had beautiful cars in the years since, but I can’t think of any that were as relevant to the market, rather than just being niche or low-volume models. Their EV designs do show some promise.
This article was so good, so interesting, and so well written, I take back my mean-spirited comment from last month about the design of the L663 Defender fuel cap. From this point on, I’ll watch the cap dangling on the end of the tether while filling up and think about how to be a better person. I’m sorry, Adrian. Keep up the great work.
I must have missed that comment about the L663 fuel cap. I designed it.
My grandfather had the 72 model year of that Chevy Caprice land whale. Worst rear seat dimensions I have ever encountered, but it was the first car I ever drove at age 14 on a backroad in Scottsdale Az.
My grandmother had the 86 Buick version of the new design. One thing I remember was that GM vehicles of that era had a body seam at the front and rear where each division would just bolt on their version of a front and rear fascia, and the car in the middle was basically the same (with some tweaks). The Buick had a classic land yacht suspension that was pillow soft, but would roll and wallow at the slightest hint of spirited driving.
I had forgotten about the Caprice coupe, with its sexy rear windshield, until I stumbled across a few for sale recently. That was one damn handsome car. It’s crying out for a sleeper restomod. Just keep the wire wheel covers, to maximize both FA and FO.
Great article! I’ve always loved the Caprice- great design. My older brother had a Caprice station wagon in high school and drove us around in it…I want that blue one in the pic
Just to add to the chorus here, a great article. The GM Heritage stuff is great. I could spend all day looking at clay models in various states and see the design process play out.
Like some other folks here, by the time I started paying attention to cars in the late 80’s, the Caprices were usually pretty beat up. Missing hubcaps, rust, trail of smoke behind them because they ran poorly, etc. A buddy of mine’s step Dad had a Pontiac Parisienne that we would make fun of for being some dinosaur “box” with a couch for a back seat.
But reading this and understanding the approach makes you appreciate what the Caprice was and what the designers were trying to do.
And now that I am older, a nice big comfy couch on wheels doesn’t sound so bad.
My mom picked me up in an early 80’s Buick in the 90’s. I remember hearing and smelling it among all the modern (mostly Japanese) cars. Even 30 years later they aren’t considered cool, maybe something a deadbeat movie character in a rust belt city would drive.
Right. Open the car door and an empty fifth of cheap whiskey falls out.
Born and raised riding around in Caprice Classics. Dad had a 77, then an 80, 83, 87, and Mom got an 89. I learned to drive in that 89, it had posi-traction rear end, a 305 V8, and a police handling package. Maroon inside and out. A fantastic car. My friends and I burned through one of the rear tires down to the steel belts doing donuts in a parking lot. Dad got a free set of tires out of that!
When I was a senior in high school my dad got a new silver over blue ’77 as a company car, replacing his 1975 Ford LTD. The new Chevy came with a 350 4bbl and amazingly enough had the F41 sport package. To him it was a sports car. I really miss the clean styling of that era, especially now where most cars look like they let the 12 year olds into the studio.
I love your articles, I know you realize the lead photo was from the areo updated model that came out for the 1980 model year. I used to prefer the updated reskinned version, but recently, have come to admire the original slab sided original more. The proportions just worked. The downsized B body that always annoyed me was the Buick version. That downward slope at the end of the rear deck always struck me odd. The slanty front end was a bit ill-fitting too. Like an old person that had the saggy skin over their eyelid’s pulled back way too far during plastic surgery trying desperately to obtain a newly found youthful look.. I’ve always had an odd love of the Pontiac Bonneville of this era. Throw in a Valencia interior and I’m over the moon! My parents were Pontiac lovers during my childhood. I’ve ridden in the back of many a Safari wagon during my childhood. Truly appreciate your articles. Sorry the UK likes to beat you up for having a Ferrari. They’re just jealous and looking for extra government funding from any means possible….(The USA, sadly, is starting to be the same way) I LOVED THE PICTURES OF THE CONCEPT MODELS AND CONCEPTUAL DRAWINGS!!!! Thank you sooooo much for including them
I’ve really got to hand it to GM for archiving all this stuff and taking their design heritage seriously. Too many companies don’t, or think it’s not important. But there are always lessons, if not inspiration to be taken from the past.
When Kathy sent this stuff over to me (and there was a LOT – I had to be really ruthless in choosing what to share) the corners of my mouth almost twitched into a smile. It’s absolute gold, because you so rarely get to see inside the studio even though every studio documents everything at the time, a lot gets lost to history.
Any way you could post more of it? I love that stuff, and I’m sure lots of other geeks do too!
I’ll chuck something up on Instagram.
Thanks!
Great article, thanks.
GM absolutely nailed it with the designs of the downsized B bodies in ’77. My favorite detail is how the apex of the wheel arches are slightly ahead of the wheel center, giving the car the look of swooping forward even when stationary.
My grandparents had one of these when I was younger and it always had presence out on the road. Even owned a Caprice wagon for like a day when I was 16 until my parents found out and forced me to give it back.
“You may also read the piece in the voice of Daniel Craig if you wish”
That one in Knives Out ?
https://youtu.be/LSIVvL-wUqY?si=Al7RcuqytEafm-DD
There has been a mistruthin’ going on.
I had an inlaw with a Caprice Coupe of that vintage (I forget the exact year.) It was a really good-looking car.
If you look at the automobile design drawings of the later 1960s and 1970s era, you might see a cultural shift in the making in the design studios.
During the early 1960s and prior, comic books were simply not to be taken seriously. Then, several years after “Big Daddy” Ed Roth became popular on the west coast, the influence of comic books, Ed Roth, George Barris, and similar outrageousness finally started showing in the professional studios of the Detroit area. But only gradually, over the course of many, many years.
Some of the details in these designs of the 1970s are good examples of some of the changes.
Prior to the 60s and 70s, design drawings were more illustrative than they are today. Less free-form expression. And back then, the wheels and tires in studio sketches were almost always illustrated in much more realistic proportions, even in most of the most outrageous designs.
Huge wheels and tires in design sketches weren’t always part of the automobile design vocabulary. They’re a trend that I believe comes from the gradual acceptance of comic books as legitimate art. At least how it seems to me. Maybe the changes are coincidental, but I think they’re too parallel to ignore the connection.
I’ve always loved the downsized 1977 Caprice/Impala family of cars, as well as the 1978 Malibu family of the era, and I thoroughly enjoyed this article.
A Bustleback Seville would make a sick goth-ride, regardless of whether it is stock or decorated/desecrated.
I’m not a fan of malaise-mobiles, but I can appreciate some of them for what they are.
Consider the Cadillac Seville Opera convertible in bustleback form. The baroque is extra strong in that one. When cars of the era were advertising their opera lamps on their brougham carriages, here comes the whole damned redneck opera. It’s quite a dramatic car, and will give its drama to you where it can. It’s such a pile of shit IMO. Its aerodynamics would be comparable to one of David’s classic Jeeps. BUT, it has just a delightful ugliness to its appearance that I swoon over. One re-painted black and given the gaudiest chrome wheels would be amazing in a sense, because all the normies would be thinking “KILL IT WITH FIRE!” The world needs more eyesores, dammit.
It gets better. There’s a diesel version of the bustleback Seville:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DZQeppuD8s
For some reason, I could so see Adrian cruising around in a ‘Murdered’ out Diesel Seville. I was informed today by a young employee that a ‘murdered’ car has black paint, wheels, trim, windows, etc. If that’s not Goth, I have no idea what Goth is. And back in the 80s I thought that I knew goth well!!! I should have invested all of the money I spent back then on eyeliner, mascara, black leather clothes, and hair dye in the stock market. Hindsight is always 20/20 dammit. I may have been able to be an “The Autopian” leather member instead of my po’ azz cloth level ha ha ha
“Murdered out” is a stylistic choice that is in vogue among Weaverland Mennonite communities, most especially their automobiles. Black wheels, black bumpers, black paint, black everywhere.
I always thought a mennonite car of choice was a chrome free old Chevy Impala without a radio. I’m in the know now LOL. Damm, you tell me they can have hubcaps now and I’ll fall over. I need to subscribe to the mennonite times news letter I guess. You have a great night Toecutter. I always get a kick from your witty and insightful comments. People like you are why I enjoy this site.
It’s worth noting that the Mennonites can’t use most machine guns or even machines because of their beliefs, so achieving the ‘murdered out’ image requires a “Hoe”
PSS, you want an eyesore, kill it with fire kind of car, The Mohs Ostentatienne Opera Sedan just entered the room. After seeing it, your eyes will need 10 bottles of bleach to unsee it, and your mind will require about 18 months of therapy to get rid of the painful memory your eyes just exposed your brain to. Makes an Aztec or Edsel look like the beauty winner at a Miss Universe pageant. I dare you to look one up, it’s that fugly
Seen it. It’s the real-life car that possibly inspired “The Homer”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHGczDHTDpo
Diesel? What am I a farmer?
No, but wouldn’t it be dandy to have the most odoriferous car on the road, leaving soot as you clumsily putt-putt down the street with that diesel engine loudly clattering away in an unsettling manner in what is perhaps one of the most glorious eyesores to ever be given 4 wheels?
There’s also something incredibly Goth about having your daily driver so untrustworthy that it just barely fits the definition of automobile.
COTD