Cadillac Seville

The Seville was Cadillac's answer to the fuel crunch of the early Seventies, and the rising popularity of luxury imports such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW. At one time, Cadillac toyed with the idea of bringing back the LaSalle moniker for its new car, but choose Seville (a name attached to the pricey Eldorado hardtops of the 1950's) when it was decided that it would command a premium price in the Cadillac model range. Based on the humble GM X-body platform that underpinned the Chevrolet Nova, Pontiac Phoenix, Buick Skylark and Oldsmoblile Omega, Cadillac stylists added a crisp, angular body that set the tone for GM styling for the next decade, and wheel spacers that brought the tires out to the edge of the bodywork, giving the car a more substantial appearance then its lesser X-body progenitors. Under the hood went an Oldsmobile sourced 350 cid (5.7L)V-8, fitted with one of GM's earliest forms of electronically controlled fuel injection. This system gave the Seville a smooth drivabilty and performance sadly lacking in most other domestic cars of the mid-seventies. Introduced in mid 1975, and billed as the new "Internationally-sized" Cadillac, the Seville was almost 1,000 lbs. lighter then the hulking DeVilles, nimble, easy to park, attractive and loaded with the full compliment of Cadillac gadgets. More expensive then all but the Fleetwood, the Seville was a smash hit, and spawned several imitators, such as the less-then-successful Lincoln Versailles, and, later, the Volare based Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue.In 1980, the X-body platform was downsized and re-concieved with front wheel drive. Cadillac felt this new platform, with its small size and no room for a V-8, was inappropriate for Seville, and instead moved it to the E-body platform shared by the Eldorado, Buick Riviera and Oldsmobile Toronado. Stylists created a controversial bustle-backed body intended to invoke Daimlers of a past era, and engineers gave it front wheel drive and independent rear suspension. Again this spawned imitators such as the Lincoln Continental and Chrysler Imperial. Sales were strong at first, but disasterous flirtation with diesel engines and the ill-fated V-8-6-4 variable displacement gasoline engine, coupled with poor quality control, began to erode Seville's standing in the market-place. In 1985, an all new body attempted to combine the crisp angularity of the original Seville with the rounded edges of the new aerodynamic aesthetic. The result was just bland, and customers stayed away in droves. Finally, in 1992, Cadillac delivered a new, much more European flavored Seville with looks that attracted rave reviews, and customers. The 1993 addition of the Northstar quad-cam, 32-valve aluminum V-8 to the attractive, understated, STS touring edition helped put Seville back on the best seller list.