1972 Cadillac Coupe deVilles aren't my favorite Cadillacs but they were, in my opinion, the last Cadillacs to uphold or attempt to uphold all of what a Cadillac was supposed to be before, much like Richard Nixon after 1972, things really went down hill.
And what, exactly, was this Cadillac attempting to uphold? Frankly, nothing more than the mantle of what was once referred to as the "Standard of the World". Sounds like a big responsibility but that mantle had little more going for it than a Chevrolet Caprice that could be had at some 25- to 30-percent less. With nothing more going for it than image, this car might as well be the Wizard of Oz. And Toto was about to pull the sheet off the old man.
Sure, you could get some niceties on a Cadillac you couldn't get on a Chevy like these rock hard leather trimmed seats, a scooch more rear passenger room due to a longer wheelbase, an insanely thirsty proprietary engine and a funky trunk closer, but not much else. Buyers did get to say they had a Cadillac and that notion still meant something in 1972 to a lot of people; my mother included. Times were about to change, though. Big time.
1972 was the last year before the safety-bumpers came in 1973 and 1974 that along with the center post on the coupes, ruined the flow of the design. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 made fuel-swilling Cadillac's even more pariah like and those who really "had it", were opting not for Cadillacs but rather Mercedes-Benz'. The hits just kept on coming for decades as Cadillac attempted meekly to stand down the luxury imports.
So, what exactly made a "Cadillac" a "Cadillac" in the first place? Well, it wasn't vestigial tail-fins, sheer bulk, or a premium sticker price - it was engineering innovation. That combined with lavish styling and masterful marketing. All that and in reality, no real competition.
Named after Antoine de le Mothe Cadillac, the founder of Detroit, an independent auto maker until bought by General Motors in 1909, Cadillac was the first manufacturer to offer interchangeable parts, electric engine starters, fully enclosed passenger cabins, "Synchromesh" transmissions, mass-produced V-8 engines, shatterproof safety glass, power steering and more.
General Motors drive to keep profit margins at the incredible levels they were in the decade or so after World War II led to compromises in design and engineering. With Cadillac comfortably perched at the top of General Motors vaunted pricing ladder, starting around 1950, GM put Cadillac development on cruise control as many of the luxury trinkets Cadillac pioneered trickled down to lesser makes and models.
That's fine but Cadillac all but stopped innovating. Beg to differ, but perhaps aside from sentimental lighting introduced in 1964, and that was hardly as seminal as the electric starter, name a single engineering innovation Cadillac came out with between 1950 and 1972 that changed the automotive industry for good.
Didn't matter much to Cadillac buyers in 1972 as it was a record sales year and a Cadillac was still construed as something special although it was all smoke and mirrors. The average worker's buying power was at an all time high in the early '70's as well making a Cadillac quite affordable to the work-a-day bourgeois.
Somewhat inexplicably, in the summer of 1977, out-of-the-blue, my mother insisted my father trade in his 1968 Ford Ranch Wagon and replace it with a Cadillac. Granted, I was delighted that she finally saw the light that we should shed ourselves of that rental-grade appliance, but I was not enthralled with her insistence my father get a Cadillac.
I knew how silly it would look in our blue collar, working class neighborhood to go from a humble station wagon to, of all things, a Cadillac. "Look at us, we're rich now!" No, we weren't. We owned a trapping of the wealthy; we was still the same poor bunch of slobs we always was.
I recall my mother ultimately being less than enthralled with the 1972 Sedan deVille they ended up with although I was never quite sure what she was expecting in the first place. To be showered with adulation like British royalty parading outside Buckingham Palace? To explode in orgasmic bliss each and every time she rode in it (she never learned to drive). The thrill of telling people she had a Cadillac got old real quick too. But, she got her Cadillac.
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