by the Auto Editors of Consumer Guide
Introduction to the 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 Cadillac Seville
The 1976-1979 Cadillac Seville introduced a new kind of luxury car. Bigger had always been better in the American luxury car market in which Cadillac flourished. But when a new breed of buyer began getting interested in smaller imported makes, GM's flagship steered a new course. Here is our introduction to the 1976-1979 Cadillac Seville.
The year 1975 won't likely go down in automotive history as "banner." The Mideast sheiks had recently turned off their oil taps; the U.S. economy entered rampant stagflation; safety and smog regulations loomed larger daily, as did bumper standards; Detroit saw sales drop, and now came the really serious invasion of small imports.
No new American cars appeared in 1975, except one. On April 22, Cadillac released the "international-sized" Seville as a 1976 model. Today, most of us don't think of this Seville as being all that significant, but it was. Historically, the Seville started several revolutions.
It legitimized downsizing for both the American public and U.S. automakers, and thus led to smaller, lighter cars (a trend that large SUVs seem to have reversed of late). For better or worse, the Seville also introduced the "sheer look," a styling format that car companies around the world promptly copied. In addition, this car launched computer analysis as applied to chassis and suspension development; introduced electronic fuel injection in the U.S.; and it took the audacious step of simultaneously becoming the smallest, nimblest, most fuel-efficient, and -- significantly -- the most expensive sedan in the Cadillac lineup.
Before the Seville, downsizing was a four-letter word to most Detroiters. Designers and engineers hated the very idea. Marketers weren't convinced that Americans would accept smaller, lighter cars (as indeed they had not in the case of the 1953 and 1962 Dodges and Plymouths). And the money moguls pointed out that downsizing would cost billions -- maybe more -- yet might well return nothing.
Courageous Ford, though, became the first major Detroit manufacturer to successfully downsize one of its car lines with the 1974 Mustang II, which was based on the Pinto subcompact. As it turned out, Ford's timing couldn't have been better. The downsized Mustang arrived in October 1973 -- just as the Mideast was shutting down America's gas pumps. Within months, fuel prices doubled and Mustang sales tripled. Meanwhile, Detroit dreadnoughts circled every filling station in the country, and dealers in Japanese autos suddenly became millionaires.
Yet, U.S. auto manufacturers still viewed downsizing as a gamble. And sneer though they might at the Pinto in a Mustang suit, GM leaders knew that Ford had done the right thing -- a very gutsy thing at that. GM didn't like it, but Ford had come up with a better idea not once but twice, first with the original mid-Sixties Mustang and now with this new downsized model.
Origins of the 1976 Cadillac Seville
The origins of the 1976 Cadillac Seville are in "downsizing." GM decided to take the downsizing plunge with the Seville, given the 1974 Ford Mustang II's success. What better way to validate downsizing? If Cadillac could introduce a smaller model and make it a success, then, logically, the public would equate "downsized" with "better."
The idea has an ironic twist. Back in 1938, when Cadillac introduced the first 60-Special, that smallest sedan in the line was also the year's most expensive. So for 1976, GM would again introduce a downsized full-sized sedan, it would again stand at the top of the line, and it would again be the most expensive vehicle in Cadillac's showroom.
These decisions were not made lightly and certainly not easily because, at the time, General Motors was going through some important personnel changes. GM president Edward N. Cole retired in 1974, and his place was taken by another engineer, Elliot M. "Pete" Estes.
GM's chairman, Richard C. Gerstenberg, also retired in 1974, to be replaced by Thomas A. Murphy. Cole had been lukewarm on downsizing, Gerstenberg had vigorously championed it, and Estes and Murphy also favored smaller cars.
At Cadillac, unofficial downsizing studies had started around 1970 under division general manager George R. Elges. But Elges left on the last day of 1972, before anything came of them. Cadillac's next general manager was Robert D. Lund, and it was during Lund's tenure that most of the work on the Seville was done. Lund, though, left to head up Chevrolet in November 1974, and was replaced by Edward C. Kennard. Kennard unveiled the Seville in 1975 and made it a success in the marketplace.
Another critical personnel change involved Robert J. Templin. In 1973, Templin took over as Cadillac's chief engineer from his predecessor, the ailing Carl Rasmussen. Templin would play a major role in Cadillac's downsizing program.
The 1976 Cadillac Seville Through Bob Templin's Eyes
Now let's consider the 1976 Cadillac Seville through Bob Templin's eyes. Templin, Cadillac's chief engineer on the Seville project, retired from GM in 1987 and moved to Austin, Texas, where he founded an engineering consulting firm. In a telephone interview, Templin pointed out that all five GM car divisions, including Cadillac, were already working on downsizing programs when he took over as chief engineer. Cadillac, though, was the only division that hadn't already produced a smaller car.
Chevrolet, for example, had three: the small Vega, compact Nova, and mid-sized Chevelle. Pontiac ultimately offered its own versions of all three cars. Oldsmobile and Buick also shared the Nova's X-body and the Chevelle's A-body.
"The prevailing wisdom at the upper levels of GM at that time," explained Templin, "was that Cadillac sell 'em by the ton and sell 'em by the yard. Bigger was better. The corporation believed that Cadillac should never get involved in a small car.
"But when George Elges was general manager of Cadillac in the early 1970s, he and his then-chief engineer, Carl Rasmussen, had done their own market studies, and these indicated a strong interest in a smaller Cadillac, particularly among women. Women found big cars awkward to park and hard to get into and out of at shopping malls. Women really didn't want all that size, but they did want the luxury and comfort and prestige of a Cadillac.
"These studies were stored in the files when I came into Cadillac," Templin says. "Carl Rasmussen had gone on sick leave, and I took his place as chief engineer. Our immediate objective was to try and find a way to do this smaller car. Of course, the divisions had some freedom inside GM in those days, but they also had to go to the corporation for funding. The corporation essentially bankrolled the divisions.
"Now, at that time, a fellow by the name of John Meyer was on GM's board of directors. Meyer was also the chairman of Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh. John Meyer's wife had noticed at her Pittsburgh country club that more and more members were showing up in Mercedes, and Mercedes were smaller than Cadillacs, but had just as much luxury and status. So John kept asking Ed Cole and Dick Gerstenberg why Cadillac didn't look at a smaller car.
"This gave us the chance to make a case to get the money to tool this smaller car. Well, there just wasn't anything around that we could adapt -- no body shell ... at least we didn't think so at the time. So we went over to Germany and looked at the highest-priced Opel sedan, the Diplomat, and thought, well, maybe we can restyle that and turn it into a smaller Cadillac.
"We found out, though, that Opel worked to much tighter tolerances and smaller flanges than we did here in the States, so our manufacturing people at Fisher Body said, 'No dice; we can't work with Opel pressings. They just wouldn't fit our production system.'
"So we gave up on Opel and were pretty discouraged. Then all of a sudden, Ed Cole, who hadn't been enthusiastic about a downsized Cadillac at all ... basically he'd let us go on assuming that the idea would die of its own weight ... got the idea that maybe we could use one of GM's smaller body shells, one already in production. And he specifically proposed the X-car, the Chevy Nova."
The 1976 Cadillac Seville and the Chevrolet Nova
Now let's look into the unlikely genetic link between the 1976 Cadillac Seville and the Chevrolet Nova. Bob Templin and his team had settled on the Chevy Nova's X-body as a base for the new 1976 Cadillac Seville, but that was just the beginning of the design process.
"Of course, the Nova was not a particularly good car. It was, you know, a very basic, low-priced, functional automobile; hardly the stuff Cadillacs were made of.
"But we said, 'Okay, if that's the best we can do, we'll take a look at it,' and we put together some running prototypes ... put the Eldorado's front-drive transaxle in them and borrowed the Olds 350 V-8 engine, and added all the things we thought a Cadillac ought to have, including GM's first electronic fuel-injection system.
"Then we went to GM's engineering policy group, which basically had to approve such things. About that time, Ed Cole called me and said, 'We'll stretch the Nova shell 3.3 inches to give you more room in the back seat.' The knee room is terrible in that particular body shell.
"So we said okay, and we went to the engineering policy group to get the money. Now keep in mind that we'd proposed the new car as a front-wheel-drive, fuel-injected V-8 sedan. Well, it came back approved as a rear-drive, fuel-injected V-8 sedan. Why rear drive? Because GM didn't have the plant capacity to build enough front-drive transaxles for the Seville's projected sales. Those were limited to the Toronado and Eldorado.
"The rear-drive requirement sort of disappointed us," Templin continues, "but nevertheless we were able to design around that. And then the real job began, because the Nova body was nothing special. We had a challenge. We had to make a Cadillac out of a Chevrolet, make this new car slick, and smooth, and sophisticated -- something that would really generate some appreciation. It had to be a true Cadillac.
"So I appointed a fellow who became a major force in my organization, a fellow by the name of Robert Burton. Bob Burton had contacts throughout the corporation and could get things done. We also had complete cooperation within Cadillac, because everybody was sold on the idea that this new car was going to be a winner.
"Well, Bob Burton did an absolutely miraculous job. We got into some new engineering techniques called Fast Fourier Analysis to get the vibrations out. The Nova had a front subframe ... not a good thing from a noise, vibration, and harshness standpoint. Burton did some marvelous development work using Fast Fourier Analysis and got the chassis quieted down. We had a 14-month deadline, but in less than a year we ended up with a really slick automobile."
Fine-Tuning the 1976 Cadillac Seville
Next came the work fine-tuning the 1976 Cadillac Seville. The 1976 Seville's design process relied on Fast Fourier Analysis. Fast Fourier Analysis is now used routinely in developing new cars, but in the early Seventies, Cadillac was virtually alone in pursuing it.
The technology is based on the work of French mathematician and physicist Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830). Fourier worked out a way to analyze harmonics and complex wave forms. He made it possible to measure the fundamental and harmonic content of vibrations. Fast Fourier Analysis uses sensors and computers to chase down automotive chassis vibrations so that engineers can damp them out before they get to the driver and passengers.
By placing up to 100 little accelerometers all over the X-car subframe, suspension and undercarriage, measuring the oscillations and then running these figures through a computer, Templin's engineers could pinpoint exactly where vibrations were coming from. Once they'd located the sources, they could quickly apply fixes.
Cadillac's Nova Upgrades
Here are just eight ways Cadillac "tamed" the Nova platform:
* The Isoflex subframe mounts and the rubber donuts through which the front "wheelbarrow handles" attached to the main body section were given different stiffnesses in all three dimensions.
* Cadillac used tiny tubular hydraulic shock absorbers to help tie the front-end sheetmetal to the subframe.
* A lateral strut was placed between the body and the rear of the transmission; another link passed underneath the driveshaft and tied the bottom sides of the tunnel together.
* The upper front coil springs were isolated from their towers by rubber insulators.
* A hydraulic damper was fitted to minimize steering shock.
* Hydraulic dampers also carried both bumpers; each Seville used a total of 11 tubular shock absorbers in all.
* The rear leaf springs were given Teflon interliners to help keep spring rates constant.
* Instead of a conventional U-joint, the driveshaft used a double-trunion Cardan joint ahead of the axle pinion. The purpose of this was to eliminate driveline shudder.
The 1976 Cadillac Seville Design Process
The Cadillac Seville design process -- at 14 months in all -- was cruelly and unusually short. In those days, most new-car gestations took 24 to 36 months. But incoming GM president Pete Estes insisted on having the downsized Cadillac ready to sell in no more than 14 months.
Why? According to Cadillac's chief body designer, Stanley R. Wilen, "I heard Pete Estes in the lunchroom one day; Pete said, 'I've been given 14 months by the Cadillac dealers to deliver a car that'll be smaller and that'll have decent fuel economy. Otherwise, we're going to have problems keeping our Cadillac dealers from taking on franchises for BMW and Mercedes. And if the dealers do that, we'd be giving the importers a free distribution system inside our most prestigious division. We just can't let that happen.' So that's where the 14-month deadline came from." Actually, the Seville program received official corporate approval on December 21, 1973, and assembled cars left the plant on April 22, 1975, so the entire development period took precisely 16 months and 18 days. Even so, the car was done in near-record time.
Wilen vividly recalls the Seville's birth pains. "We were looking for a [styling] theme, and we couldn't find one. [GM design vice president] Bill Mitchell was pretty testy. He was getting ready to leave for Europe, and we still didn't have a theme for this new, smaller Cadillac.
"'Goddamit, don't you guys know what to do?' asks Mitchell. So I said to him, 'Bill, I don't know how to instruct my guys. I don't know what you're looking for. I need a clue.' There was no aesthetic history for this car; nothing to base it on.
"And he said, 'If I can't smell the garlic out there in the hall when I get back, I'll know you don't have it.' So I said, 'Bill, you just told me something!'
"I went up and made a tape drawing that same morning," Wilen recalls. "It had sort of an Italian flavor, and I called the car La Scala. And when Bill came back, he liked my tape. Bill called Ed Cole over, and Cole also thought it was good.
"So that became the theme car. They started modeling the La Scala downstairs in one of the Advanced rooms, and they put it into Advanced because we were so loaded with other production projects up in our studio.
"That's when it went on the X-car body. But going to the X-body put the rear wheels in the wrong place, and the windshield didn't have enough rake. Understand that the La Scala was only a theme. The poor guys downstairs had to try to capture the essence of that tape drawing without having a body that was really appropriate for it."
