Reasonable people can debate what was the most excessive car of the brougham era, but I would propose the 1978 Cadillac Eldorado for top honors. To be more specific, I would point to the top-of-line Custom Biarritz model.
By 1978 the Eldorado had become the biggest Cadillac because the brand’s regular models had been downsized a year earlier. That resulted in the Eldorado being longer and wider than a much roomier DeVille four-door sedan — and even heavier than a seven-passenger Fleetwood limousine.
The Eldorado stretched 224 inches in length and almost 80 inches in width. The base coupe’s weight was 4,905 pounds. That was 338 pounds greater than a Continental Mark V even though the Lincoln was six inches longer. Ford had put the Mark on a diet when it was reskinned in 1977 whereas the Eldorado had kept the same body since 1971.
I suppose that those numbers don’t sound nearly so excessive today, with big sport-utility vehicles such as the Cadillac Escalade easily having as large of a footprint. However, at least an Escalade could be justified by its carrying capacity. The Eldorado was merely a “personal coupe.”
Big on the outside but not so big on the inside
Although in theory you could fit six people in an Eldorado, in practice that wasn’t ideal even though this particular Cadillac sported front-wheel drive. This resulted in a flat floor rather than a drive-train hump, so the middle position of the bench seats was more comfortable than in a rear-wheel drive car. The problem was that the Eldorado’s coupe proportions and rather old-school space efficiency translated into meager rear-seat legroom.
Of course, one could argue that the whole point of the Eldorado wasn’t practicality but the prestige of a driving a car that looked like the Pantheon on wheels. Even compared to the decidedly baroque Mark V, the Eldorado was dripping with stylistic extravagance.
Also see ‘1971-78 Cadillac Eldorado: Collectible Automobile tells only part of the story’
Consider the greenhouse of the car, with its “elk grain” padded landau roof and opera window. The Custom Biarritz also included fake woodgrain trim below the beltline and some elaborate pin striping. To my eyes it comes off as cheesy.
Open one of the Eldorado’s massive doors and you will find lots more fake woodgrain and a molded plastic dashboard whose color doesn’t match that of the “soft, supple Sierra Grain leather” seats.
If nothing else, the bright-and-cheery color scheme is a welcome relief from the drab interiors common in today’s cars, but it has an overstuffed quality. Why would you want your car to look like your home’s living room?
Bumpers were about as fancy as you could get
Whatever else one could say about the Eldorado’s designers, they were consistent in their approach throughout the car. For example, walk around to the rear and one will find one of the most elaborate bumpers of that era. Plastic cladding allowed the bumper to meet 5-mph standards. That looked cleaner than the battering-ram bumpers on the Mark V, but the vertical fender tips with inset taillights strike me as rather overdone.
You can better see the internal bumper mechanisms in a previous-year Eldorado that is missing some plastic cladding.
One area where the 1971-78 Eldorado’s styling was toned down over its life cycle was in the car’s rear-fender treatment. In 1973 a tacky vertical chrome band was removed and in 1975 the rear wheels were exposed.
The Eldorado also gained some useful engineering add-ons as the 1970s progressed, such as four-wheel disc brakes. However, the star of the show was still the car’s grandiose styling.
For 1978 almost 47,000 Eldorados were produced. That was well behind the Mark V’s almost 73,000 units. It took a major downsizing in 1979 for this Cadillac to see sales more competitive with its arch-rival. Somewhat less baroque styling may have also helped, but the car’s new size — which was a bit larger than the compacts of yore — was much better suited to a personal coupe.
It’s too bad that General Motors didn’t downsize the Eldorado and its corporate siblings back in 1971. That would have spared this Cadillac the indignity of being pointed to as the most excessive car of the brougham era.
NOTES:
Specifications and production figures are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Automobile Catalog (2023), Gunnell (2002), Flammang an Kowalke (1999), and Langworth and Norbye (1986).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International; Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Automobile Catalog; 2023. “Full detailed specifications listing and photo gallery.” Accessed July 10.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Flammang, James M. and Ron Kowalke; 1999. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1976-1999. Third Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- Langworth, Richard M. and Jan P. Norbye; 1986. The Complete History of General Motors 1908-1986. Publications International, Skokie, IL.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES
- oldcarbrochures.org: Cadillac Eldorado (1971)
- oldcaradvertising.com: Cadillac Eldorado (1978)
In the late 1980s I had one of the last Eldo convertibles, a metallic light blue example from 1975. Bought it cheap at an estate sale because few people wanted a car that got horrendous gas mileage! One afternoon I decided to drive the Eldo with a girlfriend riding in it for the first time. As we got ready to pull out onto the highway, she asked me if I had called the harbormaster for permission to hoist anchor!
The 1971 restyle did this car no favors, but there is another problem with this generation.
Namely, a very real decline in both materials and build quality. That plastic cladding around the bumpers, for example, would inevitably warp, crack and then discolor within 4-5 years when these cars were new. It’s not uncommon at car shows to see Cadillacs of this vintage in good condition – but minus two or more pieces of that cladding.
The various trim pieces did not fit together well, and there unsightly body panel gaps all over the body. Lincoln may have handled the bumpers less elegantly than Cadillac did, but the build quality, and materials used, was definitely superior to that of its arch rival. And then there was Mercedes, which was rapidly gaining ground during this era.
So we have a car that looks oversized and clumsy, and a close inspection reveals that the build quality isn’t much better than that of a garden-variety Chevrolet Caprice. It’s no wonder many wealthy buyers switched to Mercedes in the 1970s.
Geeber,
Cadillac build quality slid so far down the scale, that the local Mercedes-Benz dealer [Herb Gordon M-B in Silver Spring, MD] placed an almost new Cadillac Allante on the showroom floor next to a new M-B 560SL roadster, so buyers could see the difference first hand. Both cars were bright red. [They took the Cadillac as a trade-in on a new 560SL roadster, because the owner hated the Allante.] I knew Mr. Gordon, who said the Cadillac dealer tried to buy back the Cadillac, but he refused, saying it sold Mercedes-Benz cars better than most salesmen!
The original Oldsmobile Toronado / Cadillac Eldorado concept design used as the inspiration for the 1971-1978 Toronado / Eldorado was the infamous G.M. Advance Design “Four-Fendered Farkel”, of which the 1973 Eldorado was the closest to the concept and certainly the most baroque of the series run.
https://www.deansgarage.com/tag/four-fendered-farkle/
The 1973 vertical trim ahead of the rear-fender certainly was a throw-back to the similar trim on the 1950-1956 standard Cadillacs. Was Bill Mitchell responsible (under Harley Earl, of course) for the Cadillac 50’s vertical side trim ?
I believe the chief Cadillac stylist during those years was Ed Glowacki, who died at a relatively young age of leukemia.
General Motors was essentially inept during the 1970’s. This was an era that produced the Vega, downsized mid and full sized cars across the product line and work on the soon to follow Citation. Outside of the Seville, the GMC motorhome ad the full sized pickups, there really wasn’t good design or good engineering to emerge out of GM during much of the decade. They were the best salespersons the foreign companies could have hoped for.
Instead of comparing the Eldo to the Mark V I think the more correct comparison would be the Mark IV. They were both developed around the same time. The Eldo just had a longer production run.
I do agree that this Eldo was the most obese of its time. For most excessive look to the Stutz.
The overstuffed interior was common in that time in the luxury and near luxury cars. Not a good look today but quite acceptable then.
Jeff, the idea that it is “more correct” to compare a 1978 Eldorado with a 1976 Mark IV strikes me as silly. Ford quite rightly redesigned the Mark in 1977 while GM tried to milk out a few more years from an already aging design.
As the 1978 Eldo was an old design with the all new 1979 model coming GM was just trying to make one more model year out of its old platform.
Ford decided to replace the Mark IV on an earlier time schedule. But that was the true contemporary to the Eldo. Conceived and developed in the same period to address the same market.
So, in the 1978 marketplace you are correct that the Mark V and Eldo were the competitors but they were generational different cars/platforms. In that year one was new and the other was a last gasp.
GM cars just grew to gigantic size by the mid ’70’s. The Cadillac suffered the worst for this, especially the “sporty” El Dorado. The knife edged ’67-70 models were also pretty large, but they looked savagely sleek and deadly, not clumsy. The ’71 restyle was part of Mitchell’s Neo Classic experiment. It channeled the 1954 models. The ’70 Riviera was Mitchell’s first salvo. After ’73 the El Do had clearly lost it’s way. By 1979 the ElDo was reborn and in my opinion, ’79-85 were the best versions ever. Well, except for the HT4100.
The 1967-70 Eldorados were big, but didn’t come off as large or clumsy. They were also very well-built.
The 1979-85 GM E-bodies were a breath of fresh air, and enabled GM to regain ground in the large personal luxury coupe segment. But after 1980, the gasoline-engine versions of the Riviera and Toronado were clearly the better buys as compared to the Eldorado, due to their superior drivetrains.
As we all know, the original Eldorado was just a fancier Cadillac. Might not the division have had success with a Coupe De Ville based version from 1977-79, in the same vein as Buick’s Riviera from those years, which was based on the 2-door LeSabre?
I’ve seen pictures of a 1977 Toronado proposal using the B body, same as the Riviera, so obviously GM was considering the idea.
Also, the Mark V was just a restyling of the Mark IV. It used the same long wheelbase version of the 1972 Torino platform
We could view this as a fond look back to the big coachbuilt Sixteens of the Thirties. A Sixteen coup, heck, any Sixteen would certainly be excessive beyond any rational assessment. But we aren’t always rational, especially when we have the means to indulge our whims. Part of being human.
Viewed in those terms it doesn’t seem so excessive. But whether such a car was a suitable product to be selling with the growing environmental awareness of the 1970s is another matter. And the comments about quality above make crystal clear the Eldorado was no Sixteen.
Do you have any articles on fleetwood brougham 7.0l? I bought 1977 fleetwood brougham because that was the year my son was born. I still have it. Original owner.
Not so far, Paul. I’ll keep that story idea in mind.
I drive a 1977 Cadillac Eldorado. It’s the excessive, over-the-top styling that makes this car so fabulous! One of the best designs ever, by Cadillac.