1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille - Eye of the Hurricane

  

Things were looking up for America in the first couple of years of the Carter administration. Gas prices had stabilized, the economy was finally beginning to recover and adhering to the adage of what's good for General Motors is good for the nation, the first wave of GM's great downsizing was generally regarded as a success; critically and commercially. That first wave of downsizing included our black on red, 1979 Cadillac Coupe deVille. However, like the eye of a hurricane, the break in the bad weather for the country, the auto industry and Cadillac in particular would be short lived.

At first downsized for model year 1977, the new Cadillac's were more than a foot shooter and nearly a thousand pounds lighter than the elephantine 1971 vintage models they replaced. Despite being smaller, the "'77's" were marvels of packaging efficiency as they had more interior room than the "'71's" did. 

The new "small" Cadillacs also had a new "small" engine. Based on the Cadillac engine the previous models had, which was based on the legendary Cadillac V-8 that debuted in 1967, the new Cadillac engine still displaced a substantial 425 cubic inches. While certainly no economy car, the down sized Cadillac's got approximately 20 percent better mileage than the cars they replaced.

A more manageable package that got better fuel economy that still oozed "Cadillac"? No surprise that these cars sold as well as they did. Happy Days were here again. Albeit, for a brief time.

The 1979 Iranian revolution exposed the United States' reliance on foreign oil just like the 1973 Yom Kippur War did. Not only doubled the cost of a barrel of crude oil, which was already historically high post first  oil crisis, it pushed the cost of a gallon of gas past the mythological breaking point of more than $1 a gallon. The subsequent second dip recession the second oil crisis caused put the Carter administration in a tailspin which it never recovered from.

 

Suddenly it was 1974 all over again but for Cadillac, times were even worse. Sales of 1980 Cadillacs, which received a (opinion) handsome restyling, were down almost thirty percent - far more than the decline in sales during the first energy crisis of 1973-74. What's more, another reduction in bore and stroke to the famed Cadillac V-8, done so to improve tail pipe emissions and adhere to CAFE requirements, did nothing for performance. That new for 1980, 368 cubic inch V-8 was not in and of itself a "bad" engine but it was the basis for the infamously problematic model year 1981 only, "V-8-6-4". The V-8-6-4 the first in a series of almost comically bad roll outs at Cadillac in the 1980's that ruined the brand's once seemingly invulnerable image.