This black beauty sits in the parking lot behind the building my office is in here in Cleveland. For the life of me I can't understand why these didn't sell better than they did years ago. I always thought them to be great looking and driving vehicles.
Based on GM's mid size rear wheel drive "Sigma" platform, which also underpins the CTS, the original SRX was introduced in 2004 and won spots on Car and Driver's Five Best Trucks list in 2004, 2005 and 2006 and was nominated for the North American Truck of the Year Award award for 2004. No small feat for any "truck" maker let alone Cadillac.
Despite the accolades, Cadillac never sold more than 23,000 of these a year in any of its five year production run. I'll be the first to admit that I have a challenge with luxury trucks and SUV's like the QX56 but cross overs - which this most certainly is - I have no problem with since they are passenger vehicles first and foremost. A car, more or less, beefed up with some trucky accoutrements? That I like; trucks gussied up to be luxury cars I most certainly do not.
This particular example even has a vaunted Northstar V-8 making 320 horsepower. I spent some time in one of these V-8 smoothies in Dallas and, granted, it was the lighter RWD only model, it could really move. Quite fun. The base V-6 with 255 horsepower had moxie as well. Add the all wheel drive equipment which is all but a requirement up here snowy, frigid, Northeast Ohio and performance gets bogged down somewhat.
Much like trying to pick hit records, you can not factor in your own personal taste when it comes to what is or isn't going to work with anything in life let alone automobiles. While I found the original SRX very appealing and I find it's 2010 vintage replacement to be nothing more than a fancified Chevrolet Equinox, which it is, I, once again, am fairly alone in that regard. Sales of the new SRX have all but been consistently double of these SRX. Go figure.
The mere notion of full size, luxury sport utility vehicles wasn't a decade old when Nissan rolled out their F-Alpha pickup truck based Nissan Armada and Infiniti QX56 SUV's in 2004. Just like that, all other luxury SUV's else seemed if not outright tame at least restrained compared to the QX56.
The original QX' most distinctive styling touch, which it shared with the similar looking Armada, is its swoopy/hump roof that flows fairly seamlessly into a straight as a billiard table rear roof line. The recessed rear door handles helping add to the illusion that this is a pickup truck with pop up camper in the bed. Huh? Yeah. Can't make this stuff up. I'm not of the pickup truck persuasion but I find it hard to imagine that anyone who owns a pickup truck with a camper in the bed is proud of the way their mini motor home actually looks. If you can afford filet mignon, would you go for gourmet meatloaf instead?
It's probably no surprise then that when Nissan updated the Armada and QX for 2010, the pickup truck and pop up camper lines on the QX went into the river. It stayed on the Armada, tough. That making as much sense on the Armada as it did on the QX but then again what do I know being from Long Island and all. Long Island, especially where I grew up a stone's throw from Kennedy airport, not exactly a bastion of pickup trucks not to mention pop up campers.
It might just be the Long Islander in me but even though I have had a Chevrolet Tahoe for years now and love the damn thing, luxury trucks and luxury SUV's still escape me. In my myopic New York City esque point of view, trucks should be for work or at least utility first and foremost. Ineed, the utility of my Tahoe is what I appreciate most about it. Tarting up an SUV into a luxury vehicle makes as much sense to me as a construction working wearing dress shoes to work.
I am fairly alone in my dismay of these things, apparently. Fancy tanks like this sell quite well and turn a healthy profit. Sales have been strong for the QX with the new QX56 outselling Infiniti's other SUVs, the crossovers EX and FX, as well as the Lexus GX and LX luxury SUV's.
The QX56 was renamed the "Q80" during Infiniti's bizarre model name change for 2015. The new name makes as much sense as a luxury SUV.
Forty years ago, what made a Cadillac a Cadillac? If nothing else, the size of one.
That said, it's hard to imagine this massive 1976 Cadillac would have gotten any larger had it not have been downsized along with all the other GM B and C bodies in 1977. The Cadillac this 1976 Coupe was based on, which was new in 1971, was already a formidable 225 inches long before the government mandated "safety bumpers" were tastefully bolted on. Actually, GM did a nice job of being government compliant. At least with these full size cars. Those massive bumpers, which were added to the front in 1973 and the back in 1974, added a total of five additional inches to the car pushing overall length to a parking lot maneuver challenging 230 inches. To put that sheer length into perspective, if Cadillac's new sedan flagship due in 2016, the CT6 (gorgeous car, hideous name) is 204 inches long and looks massive at that, imagine a car that's just under two and half feet longer. In case you're wondering, the enormous new Escalade, which some would argue is Cadillac's flagship, is a tad shorter than the CT6, if you can believe that. This 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville was big. Really big but back then, the size of a Cadillac was literally a big part of what made a Cadillac a Cadillac.
It's only been recently that Cadillac's have not been "big" or relatively big compared at least to what else was on the road. While the new CT6 comes on board next year, Cadillac's "flagship" sedan at the moment, at just 196 inches long, is the relatively diminutive CTS. Before the CTS was crowned GM's top drawer sedan, the de Ville or "DTS" was the "big" Caddy and that car never got longer than 207 inches long. By the way, drive one and you'll come away with the feeling that it's the biggest thing ever made. Not even close. Pundits of large Cadillacs say that the last "real" Cadillac was the B body based Fleetwood Brougham that was discontinued after 1996. At 225 inches long, it was, at least in sheer size, more in tune with Cadillacs or yore than anything available today.
What's ironic is that despite the bulk, Cadillacs these big old Cadillacs never had any more leg, hip and shoulder room than even mid size cars of its vintage let alone other big cars. In fact, when the downsized Cadillacs came out in 1977, GM bragged that the new Cadillacs had more interior room than the cars they replaced.
Another part of the (old) Cadillac mystique was their big V-8 engines. The new CT6 won't even have a V-8 engine when launched next year. In 1949, Cadillac introduced an over head valve V-8 engine that was revolutionary and, save for Oldsmobile who also introduced an OHV engine that year, unique to Cadillac. Technological advancements in addition to luxury amenities were part of the allure of Cadillac after the war. However, by 1976 most if not everything available on a Cadillac was available on just about everything else GM offered. All that Cadillac could crow about was this 500 cubic inch engine being the largest V-8 engine in the world. Seeing that it was just a couple of years after the crippling gas crisis of 1973-74, again, bigger was not better. Also, there was no discernable increase in the car's ability to accelerate quickly given this large engine.
My late parents who were both born in the early 1920's and were of the "Greatest Generation", were of the notion that there was truly something special about a Cadillac. Shame that by the time this car was brand new, what made Cadillac Cadillac was a thing of the past. By 1976 Cadillacs sold on what they represented as opposed to being anything that was any better than a Chevrolet Impala.
Then again, I'm of the generation that has challenges with accepting that Cadillacs of today are the equal if not better of anything from Europe. If I had the money to spend on an expensive car I'd certainly look at a Cadillac but given that Cadillacs are just as expensive as a comparable Mercedes, I'd go Mercedes. Or BMW or Audi. Luckily for Cadillac, many millennials, aka tomorrow's buyers, have no such notions and think Cadillac in the same light as anything from Europe or Asia. Size of the car be damned.
GM's 1981 reboot of their 1978 A body coupes transformed the formerly bizarre (Monte Carlo and Grand Prix) to drab (Cutlass and Regal) mid size two door sedans into handsome (if not all very similar) looking automobiles. Even if the homogenization was deliberate, there were many parts interchangeable between the cars, GM hit the aesthetic jackpot. Even if it was very hard to tell a Cutlass from a Monte Carlo. The four door versions of these cars soldiered on in their interminably boring 1978 interactions until the last one passed in oblivion after 1987. You think telling a Grand Prix from a Regal was hard, try telling a Cutlass sedan from Regal sedan.
For 1981, Cutlass got this new "jaw" out front and a svelte new tail as well. Subtle as the changes were, especially compared to the goofy Monte Carlo and to a lesser extent the Grand Prix, the Cutlass was transformed into a handsome automobile. Even in base "stripper" mode like our subject here.
Alas, while coupes sold very well in the 70's, by 1981 the plug was out of the tub. "Tastemakers" on the coasts had all but stopped buying American cars in general and coupes in particular and had moved onto more expensive makes and models from Europe and to some degree Asia. The Yuppie movement was taking over. Growing up in Nassau County, New York, I'd see some of these (rarely brand new) on the working class South Shore where I grew up but I'd be hard pressed to believe anyone on the tonier North Shore would be seen in one. This car was the working class hero's ride.
This car, unfortunately, has the double whammy of a 260 V-8 (at least it's not the Olds 350 diesel) and the infamous THM 200 or "Metric" transmission. Metric transmissions burned up with freakish regularity leading to recalls and lawsuits and wouldn't you know it? This car's Metric is busted - thus the modest asking price of just $2800. Nothing a Chevy crate engine and a 700R4 couldn't cure, though. Anyone got an engine crane and tranny jack they can loan me?
Oldsmobile put these cars to pasture in 1989 and replaced them with the front wheel drive (no hump) GM-10 Cutlass. The GM-10 Cutlass actually debuted in 1988 but Olds put the word "Classic" on the last of these. Classic indeed. The rest, as they say, is history.
While the advancement in automobiles over the twenty or thirty years makes cars of this vintage seem quite crude, by the time that I became of driving age in 1981, new cars had become so bad that I believed that "older" cars like this were considered to be superior to them. The whimsical design of this 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix only adding to the mystery of older cars for me.
I've never been the biggest fan of these bulky, big Grand Prix' but I have to admit there is a certain elan to them that makes them oddly appealing. It could certainly have a place in my fantasy garage although I can't say that it would get that much use. There's a fine line between ugly and cool and this old beast really (fender) skirts it.
The nothing if sporty looking sporty interior hides a GM B body frame and everything good and bad that went along with that. Loosey goosey, over boosted steering, under boosted brakes and unsupportive seats. Note that lack of seat belts. Optional still in 1967. That's not two radios, incidentally, the one in the center of the dash controls HVAC.
The new for 1967 400 cubic inch V-8 with a nary an emissions control device at the ready. Stab it, hold on and steer best you could; this thing can move.
Unlike chocolate and peanut butter, some things do not go well together. Like sweet, alcoholic drinks, sexy cheerleaders at football games and a luxury car with sporting pretensions. Mag wheels with white walls and fender skirts? Seriously? Not to mention the wretchedness of vinyl tops. The color of this car screams "old man" as well.
The asking price for this well preserved "big GP" is near $15,000 and I find that money to be extraordinarily high for a car with very limited appeal. That's almost GTO money, not mint condition GTO but still GTO money, for a car that many would scratch their head and go, "what is that?" If you're into collector cars that's one question you hear at car shows that really means, "nice car...hope you didn't spend too much on it."
Like father like son I had bought into the "bigger is better" idiom that The Big Three corn fed Americans for thirty or forty years but it was more than just the sheer size of the cars that enamored me. It was their styling. Especially the fabulous GM makes and models from about 1960 up until the great downsizing epoch began in 1977. I was concerned about downsizing because my gut instincts told me that the grand designs I loved might lose their luster on smaller canvases. How right I was. While there wasn't a single 1977 GM full size car that I thought was a better design than what it replaced, things got even worse with the upsized compacts they called their midsize line a year later. Even my beloved Pontiac Grand Prix wasn't spared the ignominy of designers who'd lost their way.
I wasn't alone in my sentiment either. Dealers coined the phrase "buyer resistance" to explain why the new smaller cars that, on top of everything else were more expensive than what they replaced, weren't selling. Contemporary reviews of the new cars were glowing if not chock full of hyperbole about how the cars performed, how much easier they were to maneuver, how much roomier the rear passenger area was (front passenger seating was actually slightly less) and how much farther they could go on a gallon of gas. Any mention of the styling was atypically cursory.
To be fair, GM had to downsize with ever stricter government mandated fuel economy and emissions standards stair stepping up. With today's engine control systems at the time in their infancy, they had no choice but to reduce curb weight and use smaller, less powerful engines. The net result was smaller, lighter automobiles that were better on gas but where also, and seemingly by happenstance, much better performing transportation conveyances.
Introduced in 1962, the first Grand Prix was a "full-size" Pontiac two-door sedan that was somewhat downsized in 1969 with glorious results. Relaunched as a mid-size "personal luxury car" its long hood and short deck design proved to be quite popular with many giving it credit for defining the market segment that came to dominate sales during most of the 1970's. Downsizing can be good; could GM and Pontiac catch lightning in a bottle again come 1978?
Nope. The great downsizing epoch came along and the smaller automobiles all lacked the styling moxie that made previous GM designs so wonderful; including the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix. The '69 Grand Prix' may have been short on delivering the kind of performance it emulated save for anything in a straight line but certainly these stubby little foretold little of what they could possibly do. Why couldn't GM combine the best of both worlds? In the car business it's not so much what a car can do as much as what it appear it might be able to do or what positive reinforcement it can parlay for whomever is driving it. What does this thing say about it's driver? That they appreciate a less than 7/8 scale of what the car used to be and that it gets better gas mileage? Oh, let me tell you about how good the handling is. Please.
The lack of elan carried over to the interior as well. Amazing that there's just five model years between the fighter jet cockpit of, for instance, a 1973 Grand Prix and this 1978 model. All the new for '78 GM intermediates had the same basic interior layout; interchangeable interior bits and baubles a first for GM.
Sales peaked for all the GM intermediates in 1979 but the brutal 1980 recession took the bite out of whimsical, personal luxury cars. Just as well seeing they weren't anything like what they had been. Revisions to sheet metal fore and aft come 1981 while a welcome change did little to usage the ambivalence buyers now had toward the cars that just five years prior was a staple of sales. Would better looking, downsized personal luxury cars made a difference? Honestly, we'll never know. The confluence of circumstances conspiring to relegate personal luxury cars first to an even narrower targeted niche market then ultimately to the scrap heap. One thing for certain the 1978 GM intermediates, led by our Grand Prix here, certainly didn't help.
With all due apologies and respect to Sir Mix-a-Lot and his classic if not seminal 1992 smash-hit, "Baby Got Back", "I like big Buick's and I can not lie".
Although not my favorite big Buick, I find this 1976 Buck Electra 225 coupe far more compelling than the similar "posted" offerings from Oldsmobile and Cadillac. "Posted" referring to the center post or "B-pillar" that GM stuck on their big coupes starting in 1974 thus doing away with my beloved "hardtop coupes". Allegedly the post was to re-enforce the top of the car in case of a rollover; as if that sort of accident happened regularly, but the concern was the National Highway Safety and Traffic Administration (NHSTA) was going to insist on it as they had with the five-mile per-hour safety bumpers. How to explain that hardtop four-door models were still around at GM during that time you ask? Umm, good question. Maybe they designed the coupes first and when they got around to the sedans they found out that legislation wasn't going to happen? Roll-over safety concerns supposedly doomed the convertible too but we all know that's bunk; bad sales killed the drop-top not Uncle Sam.
Whether it's that the side window and landau roof doesn't align with the door like it does on the Cadillac Coupe deVille and Oldsmobile 98 coupe, through my foggy goggles the rear of this car looks less like stacked boxes as it does on the Cadillac and Oldsmobile. Don't get me started on the Buick LeSabre, Olds 88, Pontiac Grand Ville and Impala\Caprice B-body coupes (slightly shorter wheelbase) of the mid-'70's. In particular the '74-'76 Buick LeSabre that somehow still had a roll-down rear window in front of the B-pillar making for a more cluttered design than any Ford designer could have come up with. Perhaps Bill Mitchell had senior-itis knowing that he was out the door at age 65 in 1977?
Historically speaking, though, to those of us who find this sort of minutia interesting, our '76 here is special because it is the last of the big "C-body" Buick coupes. The party was over come 1977 when GM's great Downsizing Epoch started that was akin to someone calling the cops a good hour or so after the hookers showed up. Yeah, the party lasted too long but up until that time it was a blowout of a good time. If you like big cars that is. Really, really big cars.
Speaking of size, you can't have any discussion about these cars and not go into at least some detail about how ginormous these things were. Photographs don't do them justice - at 80 inches wide they were wider than most humans are tall and at 233 inches long they were roughly the same height as a two-story house. There's more than ten feet between the driver's head and the right rear tail light - no wonder this car still has vestigial tail fins as they're the only way the driver has any idea where the back of the car is. Trying backing this boat up in a tight parking lot.
What's more incredible is that when Buick first introduced the Electra "225" in 1959, the "225" denoted the overall length of the car; if you're keeping score, that means our '76 here is a full eight inches longer. I take it that Buick Electra "233" didn't have the same ring to it as "225" did?
So, why and how did Buick's get so big in the first place? Well, big on the outside that is. It's not like these cars were particularly spacious inside. Designed from the outside-in, leg, shoulder and hip room was more like an afterthought.
The bigger is better axiom started in the late 1950's when, whether GM over reacted to Chrysler's remarkably fresh and exciting 1957 lineup or not, starting in 1958, they came out with the most outlandish cars ever made. Not only that, but they were the longest and widest cars ever made as well.
1957 1958
1959
The Buick Roadmaster leapt in length from a still large but manageable 216 inches for 1957 to 219 for '58. Then 1959 happened and all hell broke loose. Buick stretching their flagship to 225 inches and apparently being so proud of it they changed not only the name of the car to "Electra" but called out attention to its length by festooning "225" as a post-fix. Who knows why Buick ditched "Roadmaster" for Electra; probably because some suit thought it a more progressive moniker. Or someone wised up and determined, wisely, that the new '50's cheesey sci-fi movie inspired model wasn't worthy of the Roadmaster name.
1970 1971
Through the 1960's and up through 1970, the '70 being my favorite, Buick kept the Electra 225's length more-or-less in check ebbing it back and forth between approximately 223 and 226 inches stem to stern. Still absurdly long but somewhat diminutive compared to what was to come. Even the fairly vilified '71's were under 226 inches long. Won-ton styling differences pushed out the '72's to just under 228. The front safety bumper for '73 made them 229 inches but it was a wholesale styling update for '74 along with a massive "safety" for the rear that stretched things out to 231 inches. A redesigned front end for '75 got the big Buick out to 233 inches where it remained for 1976. And then, poof.
For 1977, Electra was eleven inches "less-long" although it was still a very substantial automobile at approximately 221 inches bumper-to-bumper; roughly the size of a 1958 Roadmaster. More importantly, since they were allegedly designed from the "inside-out", there was more genuinely usable interior and trunk space. Oh, but to 13, 14-year old me at the time and 57 year old me to this day, the styling came up way short of Buick's of yore. Yes, even the cartoonish 1959 Electra 225. Perhaps I'd feel differently about The Great Downsizing Epoch had it been generally successful but we all know how that story ultimately played out; kind of like you're favorite sports team starting out the season real well only to finish in last place.
But I like Big Buick's and I can not lie. For me they're wonderful rolling sculptures even if they handle like crap and get eight miles per gallon. If you're lucky. They're also great values if you're looking to get into the classic car world; measure your storage space to make sure it'll fit. Our lovely cake-topper here has an asking price of $10,990 and that's priced about right. Figure you'd need to spend around that to get anything in decent condition right back to the early '60's models. The most expensive of the post-war Buick's, save for the "Rain Man" Buick's (that was a '49 Roadmaster convertible), somewhat, ironically, the '59 models.
