An age-old battle of Mercedes vs Cadillac, but with a difference: both the sturdy W123 and luxury Seville are diesel-powered
WORDS MARTIN BUCKLEY PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN BRADSHAW
Cadillac was in a pretty dark place by the early 1980s, scrabbling to reinvent itself in an era of legislation that seemed to stand against everything the name once represented. The powerful, glamorous behemoths of the 1950s, ʼ60s and early ʼ70s were gradually being replaced by a downsized, rather apologetic breed: vehicles that had neither the credibility of the increasingly popular imported European luxury cars, nor the gravitas and presence of the giant land yachts that had once been such potent symbols of American cultural power.
The 1976 announcement that Cadillac would not be building any more convertibles (after the demise of the huge 8.2-litre Eldorado) had already come as a shock. In the end, reports of the death of the great American ragtop had been greatly exaggerated (they went on to make a comeback in the ʼ80s), but it was still a graphic illustration that even Americaʼs most illustrious marque was not immune to the changing mood around size, safety and smog.
Yet the process of bringing its cars down to size had started promisingly. The 1975 Seville was an ʻinternationalʼ Cadillac that garnered complimentary reviews worldwide for its manoeuvrability, refinement and crisp, tasteful styling. Fully comparable with the Mercedes-Benz S-Class in most respects, this spectacularly successful luxury sedan was not an ʻentry-levelʼ car, but marketed as an exclusive, premium product.
This was a genius move. Rather than pricing according to size and wheelbase (the more car you get, the more you pay), Cadillac pulled off the trick of selling its most compact-ever offering for a significantly higher sticker price than its traditional ʻfull sizeʼ models.
Basking in this achievement, the bosses at General Motorsʼ prestige division noted with satisfaction that eager new Seville customers were trading in their Mercedes, BMWs and Jaguars against the compact Cadillac. But there was no time for complacency: behind the scenes there was consternation as to how the success of the ʼ76-ʼ79 Seville might be followed up, particularly in light of new, tougher Federal legislation on fuel consumption.
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rulings, coming into effect in 1978, set the average US mpg for each manufacturer – both domestic and imported – at 18, a figure due to rise incrementally to 27.5 by 1984. T
