Seen at the grocery store: cars and coffee

[TC Chris]

Just back from an emergency run to the grocery store--left my milk in Bay City and had to make do with canned milk this a.m. for breakfast.

In the parking lot was a mid-80s Cadillac 2-door, white leather, one of the very handsome downsized (I'd say right-sized) versions of that era in pristine condition. I'll bet the proud owner rolled it out of the garage for the first time today, as our temps hit the 70s. I had forgotten how nicely those were designed. Cadillac fans will probably tell me what engines were used in that era. But for a luxury ride, this one looked the part. It was prosperous looking without being ostentatious.

And then inside the store, I was looking for coffee capsules for the Kuerig machine at the cottage, and I found Eight O'Clock coffee, the subject of discussion here a while ago. I bought some to see how it tastes.

And on the subject of Cadillacs, I watched Fellini's 1960 film, La Dolce Vita the weekend before last. It's not available online for rental, only on subscription services, and my sister has one. I had never seen it but remember the big hullabaloo in 1960 when it came out. Fellini is a god and a genius in my book. A week earlier I had watched 8-1/2 (1963), one of my top 5 movies, again and at the end found myself choked up for no apparent reason other than the wonder of it all, the visual and narrative splendor of a great artist at work. So I had to see LDV. But back to the Cadillac... LDV had scenes with a rich heiress, and she was driving a '57 or '58 Eldorado Biarritz, top down, of course. There were also some Fords, including a '58 Thunderbird convertible. In 8-1/2, a scene with a movie star has him driving an especially cool '56 DeSoto convertible. In Italy then, driving an American car was status!!

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

If it was front wheel drive, and from the middle 1980's to the middle 1990's, it had some variation of the (in)famous 4.1 V-8. Either a 4.5 (better, but not much) or a 4.9 (much better with port injection, but still not great). If it was rear drive, it wouldn't have been a two door model. Some of the rear drive Fleetwoods had the 5.0 "Y" Oldsmobile engine or, later, the 350 Chevy V-8. Many of these cars are used in banger racing in England or in demolition derbies here in the US of A. That's about all they are good for, IMHO. The Northstar models aren't even good for that. The Northstar engined Cadillacs are one of the few cars in existence with zero value. Odd, when Northstar engines won the Indy 500 for several years in the 1990's. They were called Auroras, but they were a version of the Northstar.

[TC Chris]

Wish I had looked more carefully. I've just spent 20 minutes trying to find a photo that matches what I saw. It was an unusually good looking car for a Cadillac. Not all inflated. I'll keep a lookout for it again.

Chris Campbell

[walyfd]

The fwd devilles from 85 on were horrendous. Looked like they were made out of Legos and about as dependable. They even made a diesel fwd!!!

80 to 84 rwd coupes were nice. Well proportioned but they got the horrible 4100 squirrel cage wheel "engine" starting in 82. They offered a Fleetwood Brougham coupe through 1985 that had smaller quarter windows than the deville.

I'd love to find an 80 or 81 cdv d'elegance.

[Firedome]

It was the '80s that trashed what was left of Cadillac's reputation, starting with the flawed V8-6-4 then the horrible HT4100 aluminum engine, both on the revised '80-on rwd C-body platform. Olds and Buick's rwd C-body versions were gutted power-wise but were at least fairly reliable, and you couldn't kill an Olds 307, but it was gutless compared to the great Rockets of old. In 1980 GM whacked 300-400 lbs out of full size cars (depending on model) and you could tell, everything felt cheaper after '79. My Dad closed the trunk on a suitcase sticking up on his new '85 Buick Collector's Edition LeSabre and it bent the trunk lid!! They all felt cheap and flimsy compared to the GM barges of yore. A friend bought a new '87 Cad Brougham as they'd been upgraded to a reliable 307 Olds V8 and it seemed cheesy, certainly when compared to the '78 Electra 225 my wife drove, and the '77 Electra LTD Dad bought new. The '78 we had was one of the best cars we ever had, sold at 10 yrs old and 200k miles when we moved to VT in '98.

The then new fwd platform in '85 looked shrunken and wimpy compared to a real Cadillac, especially the absurdly truncated Eldorado, on top of their awful drivetrains. They were GM Deadly Sins that never should have been foisted on the public. They atoned a bit with styling revisions that lengthened them later in the '80s, and somewhat improved engines, but by then many serious luxury buyers had move on to Lincoln Town Cars, at least a reasonable facsimile of a traditional US luxury car. For me the last decent GM cars were the '77-79 downsized B and C-body cars, their lightened/cheapened successors were rancid affairs that flew in the face of their great ancestors. And nothing new from GM or Cadillac interests me either.

[electra225]

There is a guy here locally who is into rat rods. He has one with an International pickup cab and a Farmall tractor grille. It is powered by a 4100 Cadillac engine and 700R4 transmission. It still has an engine-driven fan and the R4 compressor on top of the engine. Apparently, his dad owned the car the drivetrain came out of, claiming it was one of the best cars they ever owned! That worthless 4100 engine has chrome valve covers and looks good in a vehicle made out of junk parts with no paint. He claims he's building one with a Northstar, but I haven't seen it yet. When this man was younger, he had a Ford Escort that he had converted to electric power. He's kind of an interesting guy.

[Firedome]

GM's innovative pushrod 215 aluminium V8 from Buick/Olds in 1962 was sold off due to some initial production issues (some bad block castings) that made it too expensive at the time, but was developed further by Rover and used for decades in their premium vehicles, an excellent engine. One wonders why GM felt they had to re-invent the wheel and ended up with the junky 4100 engine after all that tine and money spent on it's development when they had more-or-less figured it out 20 yers before.
Lost-foam AL block casting had been figured out by OMC by the late '60s, and had GM just duplicated their earlier V8 effort it would have made a fine, dependable Cadillac engine.

I've heard from Olds people that the smaller Aurora version of the Northstar didn't have the problems of the larger Cadillac version, wonder if that's true. Also the V6 version the "Shortstar" was supposedly OK too. Personally I'd take any pre-80 GM iron V8, and after that the excellent 3800 V6 engine. GM should never have ditched that one, it'd have been great in 1/2 ton pickups. Now some full-sized pickups are going to tiny 4 cylinder turbo engines!...what??!

[Firedome]

Oh and talking about the downfall of "The Standard of the World", which Cadillac actually was until around 1965-68, in 1986 the Eldorado previously mentioned was shrunken to a mere 188" long, not all that much bigger than a Honda Accord!... this from 224" in 1978, to a downsized (but still decent looking) new E body 204" long with Riviera and Toronado, then, to only 188" in 1986?
Much too small for a luxury car... wtf were they thinking?? and they wondered why sales fell off a cliff?