1996 Cadillac Fleetwood - Sorry, Methuselah

We don't know for sure what killed the dinosaurs but we do know for sure what killed the body-on-frame, rear wheel drive, V-8 "Yank Tank" like our splendid 1996 Cadillac Fleetwood here. And, newsflash, it wasn't because liquefied fossils become too expensive or there was some shortage of them. No, sir. "Grand Dad's Car", "Land Yacht" or whatever you want to call them, rolled over and died one day because of, plain and simple, a seismic shift in consumer tastes. That was too bad, really, because aside from a limousine, no car on the road today offers the kind of rear legroom one of these does.

GM hasn't built anything like this since 1996 when they closed the plant that built them and retooled it so they could make more trucks. Just as well. The market for these things was drying up anyway and what with splitting hairs with Ford for market share, GM felt they could make more money selling pickups, SUV's and what not. GM made more than enough to let Ford have this market all to themselves. And, sorry, no Lincoln has ever been or will ever be a Cadillac.

The shift in consumer taste away from cars like this began as far backs as the '60's when well-heeled tastemakers starting eschewing Cadillacs for imports like the seminal Mercedes Benz 190 and 220. In the 1980's when "Baby Boomers" came of the age when they could afford luxury automobiles, they ran as fast as they could from Cadillac showrooms and into not only Mercedes dealerships but BMW, Audi and later Lexus and Inifiniti stores. Couldn't blame them, honestly since by then Cadillac hadn't been "Cadillac" for more than thirty years and, ahem, Cimmaron, HT4100, Olds Diesels, 1980 Seville; the list of Cadillac disasters in tje 1980's goes on and on. That left the market with only two potential buyers for cars like this; older, traditional buyers, like "Grand Dad", and the service industry - limos, hearses and what not. Sorry, Methuselah, not the ambulance business. Cadillac had stopped selling a commercial class chassis to ambulance builders back in 1979. Note to staff - blog about Cadillac ambulances. Soon. 

There was a time, say, between 1949 and 1957, that Cadillacs were still de rigueur with even the Hollywood set. After that, Cadillac did little more than bank on the cache they had established with their fabulous pre-war cars and even some but not all of their models immediately after the war. So, in many ways, our 1996 Fleetwood here, not to be confused with a "Fleetwood Brougham" or even a "Brougham" was the best 1949 Cadillac there ever was. The best was, actually, the worst was, no one cared.

Since the mid '80's this car's demise was imminent yet somehow, like Grand Dad, it stuck around.  That's because GM realized there was still some milk to be had from these cows. That and some dollars to be made from the service sect. Since '96, Cadillac has since sold rear wheel drive sedans but they weren't the body on frame battering ram-blimps like this. And when we say blimp, we mean it. Despite downsizing in the '70's and Cadillac keeping their dimensions relatively tidy throughout the 1980's into the 1990's, Cadillac hit the carbs hard for 1993 when they introduced our Fleetwood stretching their exclusive D platform out so it could accommodate a 225-inch long body.

Keenly eyed historians of GM bulk and excess will recognize that 225-inch length as the same length of legendary Buicks, Olds and Cadillacs of yore. Not that designers of this car had that in mind when they penned this thing but it is worthwhile noting since this car was just about as big as Cadillac's had ever gotten. Almost as heavy too with at an aluminum rim warping 4400 pounds. These cars were so big their gigantic trunks could accommodate a full-size spare.

Our '96 here has a ride as supple as any Cadillac from the good old days but it also handles and brakes with an aplomb here-to-fore never seen on a "Grand Dad" Cadillac. Note, we didn't say it was sporty - isolation from the road was still high on the list of priorities when engineers dialed in suspension settings. By the mid-1990's, though, General Motors had finally figured out how to bolt, glue and weld the whole package together so it didn't feel like a shuddering, disconnected mess. You know, like Grand Dad's older Cadillac's did.

With a less powerful version of the GM LT-1, 350 cubic inch or 5.7 liter V-8 of Corvette, Camaro and Firebird fame, Grand Dad's Cadillac here had way more scoot than any deVille, Fleetwood or Brougham before it ever had. Incidentally, make sure that if you're in the market for one of these end-of-the-run "D-platform" Fleetwood's you get a 1994-1996 model with the LT-1 and not one of the throttle body fuel injected 350's that the 1993 models came with. You'll be giving up 75 horsepower and 30 pound-feet of torque if you don't otherwise.

We'd be thrilled if hipsters started buying up these big old Cadillacs and started using them as daily drivers but we doubt they ever will. You'd think they would seeing that they like old stuff that they that they believe was at one time "cool". Afterall, most antiques weren't that desirable when they were shiny and new either. However, as timeless as "cool" is, these cars were never cool when new in the way a '49 Cadillac was or that Sinatra, Elvis, John Wayne, fedoras, bourbon and the Brooklyn Bridge once were. Shame too since, again, these were actually pretty good cars that stayed bolted together long after Grand Dad (finally) passed on.