In 1979 Cadillac launched an advanced halo car. The Cadillac Seville boasted the kinds of equipment we take for granted in cars today like self-leveling suspension, digital gauges, and absolutely power everything. The Seville also came with two engines of the future, but hilariously poor implementation of this future tech and a controversial design mars this burned-out halo’s history. We think it’s time to forgive the sins of 1980s General Motors.
Welcome to the first entry in a series we’re calling Automotive Pardons. We’re unapologetically pro-car at the Autopian. We love the icons and we love the stinkers. We love EVs and we love ICE. We just love cars. Every once in a while, we feel as if a car in history wasn’t given a fair shake. Or perhaps enough time has passed that a car’s faults don’t really matter anymore. Regardless, we think some vehicles deserve a pardon for the crimes they’ve been convicted of in the past.
You’ve already seen us pardon some vehicles in the past from the Pontiac Aztek and the Volkswagen New Beetle to the Dodge Caliber and the Chrysler PT Cruiser. We’re finally giving these sorts of stories their own dedicated category.
One of history’s maligned rides is the second-generation Cadillac Seville.
On the surface, this car is easy to hate. It’s a vehicle that’s clearly from the 1980s but has a rear-end design that’s trying its hardest to go back to the 1930s. Then there are the engines. Cadillac saddled these with Oldsmobile’s infamously unreliable diesel engine and then gave you the option for GM’s also infamously unreliable displacement-on-demand engine. But look past this and I think there’s something awesome for the Radwood-era collector.
Imported From Detroit
The Seville is a nameplate that hasn’t been around for two decades, but when it launched in 1976 the vehicle was a big deal. This luxury car was Cadillac’s answer to European imports.
The Seville was also more than just an American import. As Hagerty notes, Cadillac faced peculiar headwinds in the 1970s. The brand, which was known for its large and ostentatious vehicles, watched as some American customers darkened the showrooms of European automakers. While a Cadillac was practically large enough to land a Cessna on, the German imports were comparatively svelte.
As Hagerty continued, this baffled Cadillac. For decades, Americans with money overflowing from their wallets purchased the largest, grandest vehicles. Having a Cadillac — The Standard Of The World — meant you made it. So why were some of Cadillac’s clientele spending their valuable money on smaller, seemingly lesser imports?
Research conducted by Cadillac revealed a new type of luxury customer. Americans were getting fed up with a perceived loss in quality and exclusivity in American cars, plus, these drivers just weren’t really into commanding land yachts anymore. They wanted luxury, but with refinement. They wanted style, but didn’t want to shout about it.
This sent Cadillac looking for a way to compete. Reportedly, one of Cadillac’s early ideas was to beat the Europeans by joining them. Cadillac figured it could possibly take an Opel Diplomat and make that into something for the American market, but the automaker figured out that turning an Opel into a Cadillac would have been impractical.
Thankfully, the General Motors parts bin provided some help. Cadillac found that the X platform would be a decent fit for the mission, but that was the platform used for the Nova, and Cadillac couldn’t just sell a rebadged Nova! Engineers were given broad authority to Cadillac-ify the X platform and they did just that. Cadillac designers stretched the X platform from a 111-inch wheelbase to a 114.3-inch wheelbase and the changes were extensive. The resulting K platform shared some floorpan, front suspension, roof, and rear subframe with the X platform, but the rest was Cadillac.
The original Seville, which was named the LaSalle during its development, launched in 1976. The sedan was a reinvention of Cadillac, one where the most expensive flagship model was actually its smallest car, a reversal of the past. The original Seville was a commercial success with sales that increased every single year throughout its first generation.
But there was one problem the Seville didn’t solve.
The Caddy For Young People
Cadillac enjoyed the success brought on by the first Seville, but research by the automaker brought out bad news. While plenty of people were lining up to buy the Seville, the brand still failed to pull buyers away from the import brands. Cadillac still wanted those young, affluent buyers and figured there had to be some way to lure them away from a Mercedes.
Based on this, you would think Cadillac would try to make a car like a BMW or Mercedes, but the brand went in a completely different direction, one more appealing to older car buyers rather than the youth.
Reportedly, legendary auto designer Bill Mitchell was getting close to retirement and he wanted to go out with a bang. As luck would have it, General Motors was working on the second generation of the Seville, so that’s where Mitchell would make his mark. There was just one problem as Mitchell had a bit of a different outlook than other designers of the time. Mitchell loved the beauty of pre-World War II cars and wanted to apply classical design to new cars whenever possible.
Mitchell’s influence can be seen in the gorgeous “boattail” Buick Riviera and all of GM’s A-body vehicles of 1973.
Mitchell would find an ally with Wayne Kady. Like Mitchell, Kady loved applying the design philosophies of old to modern vehicles. In an interview with Hagerty, Kady indicated that in the early to mid-1960s, he began focusing a lot of his design efforts on making vehicles with distinctive rear ends. Sure, Harley Earl thought a car’s face was its most important part, but Kady felt that the rear end deserved just as much attention, too.
One of the sketches Kady penned was the 1967 Cadillac V16 concept. This vehicle was a coupe that was a nod to the 1930s while also having a comically long hood. It’s one of those cars you might expect an oil baron to own. Sadly, that design did not go into a production car back then, but Kady did lead the design for the 1971 Cadillac Eldorado.
Still, Kady never gave up championing his rear-end design. Kady really wanted to see the “bustleback” treatment applied to a coupe and pitched it for the 1979 Eldorado. However, Cadillac General Manager Ed Kennard wasn’t having it. Mitchell loved the bustleback and managed to convince brass that it could be used for the Seville. The distinctive coupe styled by Kady gained two more doors and the green light was given.
As Kady says in the interview with Hagerty, the new Seville was initially a hit out of the park, from Hagerty:
I was invited to the dealer announcement in Long Beach. When they announced that car, they had it on the stage and when they pulled the curtains back, the car started to revolve on a turntable and was partially concealed with fog. Then the lights gradually came on, like the sun coming up. As the fog cleared, you could see the car. It got a standing ovation. I’ve been to a lot of these dealer announcements, and this was by far the most applause for a new car that I’d ever seen.
The new Seville wasn’t just a striking design piece, but also an advanced piece of tech on wheels. Front-wheel-drive was pitched as a possible innovation for the first Seville, but that didn’t happen. That finally came true in the second generation thanks to the vehicle riding on a modified K platform, itself a derivative of the E platform used for the Cadillac Eldorado, Buick Riviera, and Oldsmobile Toronado.
The E-body was an advanced piece of engineering for its day. It sported four-wheel independent suspension, four-wheel disc brakes, anti-roll bars front and rear, and even electronic suspension leveling. The platform also boasted quick over-boosted recirculating ball steering and it was even lighter than the outgoing platform despite not much of a change in size.
Perhaps the quirkiest part about the platform under the second-generation Seville was the fact that the standard engine was a diesel V8, but we’ll get to that later.
The interior continued more technological advancement. I’ll hand the microphone to Car and Driver for a moment:
As before, the Seville is nothing if not a gimmick car. It has, for your pleasure and detachment from reality, a headlight sentinel with automatic dimming and shutoff; intermittent windshield wipers; a cruise control almost the match of Mercedes’s; power windows, power mirrors, and power locks; an ambient-temperature gauge on the driver’s outside mirror; an anti-theft security system that flashes the lights, sounds the horn, and disables the engine; light-Âup information centers, left and right, with various words of warning; a three-Âlight, fender-mounted monitoring system for headlights, brights, and turn signals; tiny red taillight telltales that show in the rear-view mirror; cornering lights that activate with the turn signals; a glide-out ashtray nearly big enough to serve a TV dinner on; an electric trunk release; and infinitely more. Drive the Seville a hundred thousand miles and we’ll bet you still won’t know all its tricks. Why, the console alone is a work of genius, albeit a sizably chunky one. It has a map-and-litter pocket on its front and two storage spaces within. The back one is smallish, intended for whatever you like. The front one, on the other hand, is ribbed to organize a row of eight-track tapes (or presumably cassettes if you order that sound system), and also provides a miniature clipboard for a notepad, a clip for the writing utensil of your choice, and a light to scribble by. What next?
How about the glowing, all-encompassing sound of a digital electronic AM/FM/CB/eight-track stereo with scanning functions, an integral digital clock, and the ability to monitor CB reÂceptions while you’re listening to the regular part of the radio? Perhaps you’II find the superlative automatic electronic climate control to your body’s liking. Red and blue buttons raise and lower the Seville’s cabin temperature one degree for each push of a button. Once set, the system functions without notice or adjustment, providing a continuous flow of air, your choice of blast or balm, neither dry nor humid.
And, oh, we can’t forget the seats. Ours were done up in gray leather, leather being the equipment on all Elegantes, and embossed with a large Cadillac crest in the center of each backrest. These are the most power-adjustable production-car seats in the world. Their controls send them forward, backward, upward, and downward, and tilt the lower seat itself. Cadillac has also powered the backrest rake adjustment and incorporated tilt and in-out steering wheel positioning.
If you didn’t get it from Car and Driver‘s review, Cadillac loaded the Seville down with all sorts of tech. Remember that we’re talking about a car from 1980 here and Car and Driver is listing out features we take for granted today, over four decades later.
The Seville Quickly Falls Apart
Most retrospectives note that the initial response to the Seville was strong. Sure, the design was polarizing, but the car was anything but boring. And that bustleback design was such a stunner that other brands started coming out with their own takes on the same.
Unfortunately, cracks started to show early on. Just above, I snipped a quote out of Car and Driver‘s review of the 1980 Seville, a first model year for the second generation. Well, the car showed its ugly side back then. The first signs of trouble came from the 5.7-liter Oldsmobile diesel V8:
Cadillac’s glow plugs prepare the engine very quickly for starting, even in cold weather taking no more than five seconds to get the job done. The engine’s dieselness seems unobtrusive until the need for fuel or more than marginal performance arises. Its lack of pop is a painful shortcoming in busy traffic. This is the only car we’ve been able to full-throttle around our favorite ramp. Hitchcock could do a film about passing on two-lanes. The motor likes part throttle better than full, feeling less strained and tending to sag less noticeably as you first toe into the throttle. The faultless cruise control is a savior for the muscles of your right leg, which battle a strong throttle-return spring.
That sounds rough enough, but then that late 1970s and early 1980s quality reared its ugly head, from Car and Driver:
The biggest drawback besides the lack of power is constant and wearing wind noise around the A-pillar at speeds over 55 mph, a realm Cadillac seems to have ignored. A steady moan of effort intrudes at 75 to 80 mph, proving this more a town car than dedicated cross-country artiste. At lesser velocities the Seville is a mindless cruiser, almost hallucinogenic in its ability to just driffffift aloonnng. It is sleep-inducing. Its steering is very light, has adequate feel and decent response, but our car had a wander problem with which a momentary daydream could probably be combined to produce an expensive side trip.
Lewin has already written an excellent explainer on why the Olds diesel V8 was such a problem child, aside from its meager 105 HP output:
Oldsmobile engineers decided to start with what they knew, and based their work on the existing Oldsmobile 350 cubic-inch V8. It was this decision that played a role in the failures to come. That’s because a diesel engine typically runs at a far higher compression ratio than a typical gasoline engine. A gas engine might run at somewhere between 8:1 and 12:1, while diesels typically run from 14:1 to 22:1. This is mostly because gas engines are desperately trying to avoid compression ignition of the fuel, while diesel engines rely on that same effect.
The engine’s designers took this into account to some degree, designing a reinforced block for the diesel application. Other changes included hardened camshafts, larger main bearings, and tougher, thicker connecting rods and piston pins.
For all that the engineers did, they didn’t go far enough. The diesel engine’s heads used the same head bolts and 10-bolt pattern as the gas engine. This decision was made to allow the diesel engine and gasoline engine to share some of the same tooling. However, it meant that the head bolts were extremely overstressed in the diesel application. They were more than capable of handling the cylinder pressures of a gasoline engine, but they couldn’t take the additional strain of the high-compression Oldsmobile diesel design, which ran at a lofty 22.5:1. The design really needed more head bolts, and likely stronger ones too, but budget concerns won the day.
Unfortunately, engineers knew the engine wasn’t ready for primetime, but GM desperately needed to meet fuel economy standards. The engines were shipped out and in the field, they experienced stretched head bolts, corrosion, blown head gaskets, stretched timing chains, failed injectors, failed injection pumps, and so much more.
The Oldsmobile V8 diesel was so unreliable that it couldn’t even be certified for sale in California. You’d think the reason would be because the engine wasn’t that efficient. It was actually pretty thrifty, scoring 21 mpg in the Seville and 28 mpg in a pickup truck. So, that wasn’t the problem. California couldn’t even complete its testing because the Oldsmobile diesel V8s on hand didn’t run long enough.
Kady mentions another problem. The 1980 Cadillac Seville had a sticker price $4,000 more expensive than the first generation. That meant you were paying more for a car that might not have survived a week of commuting before the engine fell apart.
But don’t worry. If the Oldsmobile diesel V8 wasn’t your jam, you could still get the Cadillac V8-6-4 engine and still save some money at the pump, right?
The 145 HP Cadillac L62 V8 was standard equipment across the Cadillac line and an optional no-cost replacement for the Olds diesel in the Seville. This 368-cubic-inch V8 used computer-controlled solenoids to disable the rocker arms of two or four cylinders. The idea was that your V8 would become a V6 or a V4 depending on load, saving you money by upping fuel economy during mild cruising conditions.
The guts of the V8-6-4 included a microprocessor and a bunch of sensors monitoring vitals including coolant temperature, engine speed, intake manifold pressure, and more. Once the computer determined that engine load was low enough, the solenoids would lock the rocker arms, shutting down the cylinders. Compressed air in the cylinders was supposed to eliminate any feeling of misfiring. GM said the computer was so advanced that it ran 300,000 calculations per second.
Whether that was true or not ended up being irrelevant because in the real world, the computer just never kept up with demands. The engine constantly hunted between V8, V6, and V4 modes. The result was that the engine responded horrifyingly slow to pedal inputs and the constant shifting between modes transmitted roughness to the cabin of the vehicle.
Cadillac was quick to try to fix things with 13 software updates an extended warranty, but the damage was done. Those who still had their V8-6-4s often just disabled the system and used their cars like normal V8s, leaving behind the 15 percent fuel economy advantage. The V8-6-4 was also tossed out of the Cadillac lineup after just a year, leaving behind a smaller HT 4100 V8.
The problems with the Seville showed in sales. The 1980 model year saw 39,344 examples sold before sales fell to 28,631 in 1981 and 19,998 in 1982. The second-generation Seville bowed out after 1985 when it sold 39,755 that year. The second-generation Seville at its best still sold less than almost all years of the first-generation model. Even worse, Cadillac still failed its mission to get younger buyers out of their fancy BMWs.
Worth A Look Today
While the second-generation Seville could be piled into the long list of General Motors failures, we think it’s worth a second look today.
As I noted before, a lot of the luxuries found in the second-generation Seville are bits of equipment you’ll find in the cars of today. General Motors didn’t give up on displacement on demand, either, and you’ll find it in modern GM products as Active Fuel Management or Dynamic Fuel Management. The modern systems work better, but they have their own problems, too. In a way, the Seville was perhaps too far ahead of its time with ideas that were great, but didn’t quite work out at the time.
Going back to the Seville, sure, the quality wasn’t quite there, but contemporary reviews did seem to agree that the Seville was about as comfortable as you’d expect from a Cadillac. Today, many enthusiasts are looking for rides that are a bit different and many are looking to the 1980s to get their fix. The good thing about the passage of time is that many survivors have long had their kinks worked out. If you happen upon a V8-6-4 car today, you’ll either have your mind blown that the system still works or know that a previous owner already killed the variable displacement system.
If you find a working Oldsmobile V8 diesel, that alone is just pretty awesome. Sure, GM’s diesel V8 bungling almost singlehandedly killed diesel passenger cars for decades, but nowadays seeing one of these engines alive would be something novel.
These cars are also pretty cheap. It’s not hard to find one in decent shape for $10,000 or less, which is more than you can say about many ’80s and ’90s collector cars today. I’m not saying you should go out and buy one of these as a daily driver, but if you’re looking for an ’80s classic that’s a little different, maybe it’s time to consider a Seville.
(Images: GM, unless otherwise noted.)
The story of GM in the 70s, 80s, and 90s is, “Oh no! Young buyers and luxury customers are moving over to European brands! Let’s wring our hands a lot, but then do absolutely nothing differently!”
OK, I will give credit to the mid-80s Oldsmobile Touring Sedan. They made a car that looked & drove like a Volvo 760 but was probably more reliable, being equipped with the 3800.
“Cadillac figured it could possibly take an Opel Diplomat and make that into something for the American market, but the automaker figured out that turning an Opel into a Cadillac would have been impractical.”
Haw, haw, haw. That just zigs my mind…
It works in two-tone, not so much in monotone to my eyes. Didn’t Chrysler go on to try their own bustle-back with the Cordoba, which was equally as “reliable?”