1973 Cadillac Coupe deVille - Elvis Would Love This

There's nothing more I can say about Cadillac Coupe deVille's of this vintage other than to reiterate that I simply love the look of them. It may not be very "Cadillac" to say that since it doesn't matter to me whether this was a Chevrolet, Dodge, Ford or the antithesis of it, a Honda or a Subaru but it does speak volumes for my appreciation of the design of the car. To really know me is to know that I'm aberrant to status symbols and labels. Love what you do for what it is - don't do it because you love what it portends to say about you.

This 1973 Coupe deVille is part of GM's 1971 class of full sized designs. The '71's evolving from the "longer, lower, wider" GM design ethos made famous by their 1950's designs. Thanks to a government mandate, with a five mile per hour "safety bumpers" lashed to the front end, the 1973's were the longest passenger cars GM had ever made to that point. Similar bumpers were added to the rear for 1974 making them designs longer still.

Due to those front end bumpers which led to what could be construed as a hasty restyle of the lovely 1971 and 1972 front ends, these '73's are my least favorite 1971-1973 Cadillac. I much prefer the front end of the 1972. Not sure if that's sentimentally driven or not given that my father had a '72 but I've always been fond of it. I wouldn't kick any 1968, 1969, '70 or '71 CDV out of my Jay Leno Fantasy Garage either.

Again, at least the '73's had the same rear bumper design as the 1971 and 1972 models. That of course going in the design dumpster come 1974. 

Another saving grace is the '73's were still hardtops with rear windows that rolled all the way down. They were frameless and piggybacked on the back of the front windows to make a seal. Pretty neat - when they worked correctly. The slightest misalignment in the regulators and the windows rolled up on top of each other. And if the weather stripping had the smallest of tears in them it wasn't so much wind noise as wind whistling. The pillared '74's may not have suffered from such maladies but they lacked the elan of the wonton styling frivolity only a hardtop affords buyers. 

The massive canvas for 1971 allowed GM designers to pen a Cadillac design that was simultaneously faithful to "traditional" Cadillac design cues while also being contemporary. It's one of those things that you either love, like I do, or you want to distance yourself from as much as possible. Note how far forward of the front of the door the hinge is. That's insane. Safe to say they don't make 'em like this anymore.

If there's on thing about these cars I can't look past it's their interiors. Cadillac starting chintzing out  them in 1965 substituting plastics for real metal and wood and using less expensive leather. The '68's were even worse but nothing was as bad as these 1971-1973 insides. '74 saw an all new dash design that I'm as ambivalent towards as I am all 1974-1976 Cadillac's. The only thing that saves this particular car plastic bowels is the red color scheme that works so wonderfully with the white exterior. Elvis would love this. Funny how the inverse of this color scheme, that Cadillac did offer, is laughably hideous. 

For the better part of twenty-five years leading up to 1973 GM had stopped plowing engineering resources into Cadillac trickling down much of what had made a Cadillac a Cadillac to lower price brands. Cadillac's cache was still alive and kicking quite strongly in the early 1970's helping the division to record sales; even if you could get essentially the same car, if not a better driving car at that, "down" at Chevrolet. That said, it still wasn't nearly as good looking as this. Even if this is a 1973. 

BTW, Elvis did have several 1973 Cadillac's including an Eldorado and Fleetwood.