Our mutual pal Jason Torchinsky certainly fits into that category of “hard to pin down.” I think it’s wrong to call him a contrarian, yet at the same time he does a pretty good job of fitting that description with his automotive opinions.
Water cooling? He doesn’t want to hear of it; air cooling is fine. Transverse engine spinning the wheels in front? He’d rather see a flat motor in the rear. And your conventional wisdom of needing at least a mid-sized sedan for a family of four? Nay, Jason can fit it all into his Yugo.
Last week I saw another example of this when the subject turned to the 1980-85 Cadillac Seville: the infamous “bustleback” sedan that people either love or hate, and it seems like the latter is the more popular opinion. Mercedes Streeter just wrote an excellent redemption piece on this car, and Jason brands himself as a fan of this much-maligned Cadillac as well.
Jason’s actually a fan of the 1980 Seville, and I told him that I had played with “unbustling” this car; taking the same car and putting a more conventional trunk onto it to see what that would look like. I even suggested doing the same things with the Seville’s similarly-angle-backed archrivals from Lincoln (the 1982-87 Continental) and Chrysler (the 1981-83 Imperial). Jason’s response was rather odd, yet somehow expected from him. “I think,” he typed quite confidently, “that if anything you should bustle more.”
This is going to get strange.
Did Something Fall On The Back Of Your Cadillac?
The origin of the bustleback Seville isn’t hard to trace. As we’ve mentioned earlier, GM uber-design-guru Bill Mitchell was ready to retire and wanted his swansong to be a statement piece. Sadly, a final magnum opus from a person who started his career nearly forty years before might be a bit out of touch with the current market. Or, in the case of the Seville, aimed at exactly the market Cadillac was trying to move away from.
But why a “bustle back”? Here’s how Jason described it some years ago:
The design inspiration for these designs comes from luxury cars of yore. Even in the ’80s, the source was a long-gone silhouette that once suggested opulence and luxury, a silhouette itself that derived from an earlier era before car trunks were actually integrated into a car’s body and were literally a trunk-mounted behind the passenger compartment.
The vertical shape of the strapped-on trunks became absorbed into the car’s body, and realized its optimal form in cars like the 1946 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith
Bill Mitchell loved the “elegance” of pre-war designs, and his application of these cues often resulted in great-looking cars such as the “boat tail” Rivera. Of course, those old Buicks were long, low cars with flowing lines that were quite dissimilar from the tighter-proportioned vehicles of the late seventies and eighties. By slapping on these thirties-era styles onto these crisp, angular cars you were no longer mixing peanut butter with chocolate; you were putting mustard onto an éclair.
Mitchell’s taste for the flamboyant naturally meshed well with the tastes of now-sixty-something buyers his own age. It did not work with the new generations. Ironically, after his retirement, Bill was apparently quite vocal in his dislike of the 1984 C4 Corvette as being too “bland.” Considering that the C4 was about the only GM car my forty-year-old dad (or pre-driving-age teenage me) would even consider buying then, that tells you all you need to know.
Yet a bigger, more troubling question remains: why did the other Big Three do this shit as well?
A Bustling Trend
Chrysler and Ford offered competitors for this controversial Seville in 1981 and 1982. With their release dates so close to the Cadillac, there is no way that the Lincoln and Chrysler entries could have been started after 1980. Despite secrecy and non-disclosure agreements, it’s obvious that spy shots were seen or some designers that jumped ship from GM told their new employers “you’re not going to believe what Caddy is doing.” It’s the response from the top brass of these competing companies that was most befuddling.
Let’s say you’re at Ford in the late seventies and you get this inside information on the bustleback Seville. What do you do? You or I would likely predict that this thing might be a white elephant that only the early-bird dinner crowd (if anyone) would like and respond by bringing over the European Ford Granada with its near-BMW-5-series-specs on paper as a new small Lincoln; it was really an underrated car. You’d grab the rising Boomer market, still get old buyers if you put a chrome grille on it, and eat GM’s well-catered lunch.
At Chrysler, Iacocca was at the helm and was famous for making a fortune for his former employer (Ford) by (badly) copying European designs with things like the American Granada/Monarch. Knowing of the new Seville, he could have chosen to put an ultra-Euro body onto an Aspen/Volare like coachbuilder Monteverdi did with their Sierra:
Or, he might have just put fake 450SLC Mercedes panels onto a Cordoba chassis to woo those under fifty years old:
Neither company took these possibly more prudent paths. Shortly after the Seville’s 1980 premiere, Chrysler released their 1981 Imperial with a prominent bustle on a shape even more angular than the Cadillac. The Frank Sinatra edition in a blue “similar to the color of his eyes” showed you the market they were trying to hit in a time when people your parent’s age were listening to Fleetwood Mac.
It wasn’t over. The new-for-1982 Fox-based Lincoln Continental sported a shape remarkably similar to the controversial Seville as well.
Neither of these rip-offs did rather well in the market, but in hindsight we were seemingly just lucky that the Big Three didn’t, as Jason would say, bustle more. But what if they had done just that?
Trickling Down The Bustle
It’s alternate reality 1982, and you walk up the stands at the auto show. You aren’t prepared for the shock that’s about to greet you at the luxury divisions of the top three American auto brands. With gas prices at nearly five bucks a gallon (adjusted for inflation) and interest rates on car loans hovering at close to 16 percent, the small car was having a heyday in the States back then. The Big Three was ready for the emerging class of “small luxury car” that was basically owned by the Europeans; they were going to add a truly American twist to this category.
Cadillac Castilian
The little Castilian might have a bustle like its bigger Seville brother, but on this car that bustle is part of a hatchback for extra versatility. The 1.6 liter four-cylinder standard engine would have offered less-than-spectacular performance, especially with the mandatory automatic when loaded up with options like power windows and locks, but with the optional 2.8 liter V6 the performance of 0 to 60 in under 9 seconds would have won a few drag races in this Malaise era. That 1.8-liter Isuzu diesel was also considered but nobody could get the car to move under its own power.
If the doors and proportions look similar to something, that’s because there’s a four-door Chevy Shove-It under that skin; even the roof stamping is the same as that bottom-feeder Chevy. Same wheelbase but new quarter panels, a longer hood, and front fenders give the look of timeless elegance; “timeless” if the world were to end tomorrow, that is. Or yesterday.
Imperial LaSerra
Iacocca actually put no Chrysler branding on the 1981 Imperial, so it was clear that he might have been eyeing making a whole new sub-brand. The LaSerra is as “sub” as you can get, being a tiny four-door sedan with front wheel drive. Actually, with the 2.2-liter four-cylinder under the hood, it would have offered a fair turn of speed. If they’d added a turbo it might have Gone Like Hell.
We know this because the car underneath the fru-fru is a Dodge Omni; the C-pillar profile is identical and even the doors are the same with different skins (but with an opera light on the B pillar). Headlamps are exposed; concealed headlights would be reserved for the upper-level Imperial coupe, but you still would have gotten that damn bustle.
Yes, whatever you say about Malaise cars, those gas mileage figures for the base Omni are staggering, aren’t they?
Lincoln Mark I
Ford was all about “World Cars” in 1981, but there’s nothing “World” about the Mark I. With chrome trim and the prominent bustle, the only “world” it alludes to is the era before Keith Richards even took his first drink (maybe).
Fuel injection gives the “high output” 1.6-liter engine nearly 90 horsepower, so even with options like automatic headlamps and power front seats you might be able to get up relatively steep hills. If you’ve ever driven a stock automatic early Ford Escort, you’ll know that it sort of gained momentum instead of accelerated.
Yes, look again. That’s a 1982 Escort below the fancy exterior. Unlike on the Castilian and Imperial LaSerra, Ford would have gone all-out with ditching the hatch and making modifications to the “C” pillar in a manner similar to what the Blue Oval did in creating the notchback Orion overseas.
Bust(le) A Move
We can scratch our heads at the bustling of American luxury cars, but if you remember a Members Only jacket on your dad and your sister in moon boots then you should know that questionable fashion tends to spread with pandemic-like speed no matter what you think of it in hindsight. I bet they’d sell more of these baby bustles than you think to well-heeled old people who had gone to the same luxury car dealership for twenty years and just need a smaller second car that’s easier to park around Boca Raton.
Jason appears to be happy with these odd bonus bustles, so at least this rather bizarre task was not wasted on everyone. While their existence seems far-fetched at first, a look at history says that it might not have been that distant from reality. The fact that the 1980 Seville was actually built in the first place, and that the competitors rather blindly copied it, says that maybe we just dodged a bullet.
I Made Our Daydreaming Designer Imagine An Oldsmobile For Actual Old People – The Autopian
There was a custom-built Imperial limo offered briefly in 1983. I remember seeing it in several Stephen J. Cannell TV shows. If this was an attempt by Chrysler or the coachbuilder to build publicity for the car, it was a disaster.
https://momentcar.com/chrysler/1983/chrysler-imperial/
God, that Chrysler Imperial looks like it’s giving breach birth to an Oldsmobile Toronado.
ROFL!
You missed the Coveted Covette carbunleback.
Love them! They all look so,…..British. If only the 86 Seville hadn’t had been downsized so dramatically, it actually had quite nice proportions. It was just to small for it’s price. When you see it alone, with nothing of scale in the background to emphasize it’s scale, it’s actually quite fetching.
You might be thinking about the Triumph Mayflower, which was a very small bustlebacked car from the UK
No, I was thinking of your original plan to knock the bustle back off of the Seville for this article. The downsized 86 version to me, anyway, is what the 80 Seville should have looked like. The 86 was like a 5/8 scale Seville. I love, love, love your work BTW. I’m not twisted like Jason, I would have let you photoshop a normal trunk on the 80 Seville and called the article finished. But nooooooo, Jason gonna make you get weird and bustle back a Chevette! I hope he’s doing better, you have an awesome, yet slightly twisted, boss. Keep up the awesome work Bishop.
Oh, and he let you bustle back and Imperialize an Omni and approved it for this article…….I’m gonna blame that one on his meds
All this talk about Bill Mitchell reminds me of what is probably my favorite automotive fun fact: the guy who designed the Tucker 48 also designed the Subaru Brat.
I will raise you Dick Teague who started his career as Dixie Duval, playing both boys and girls in silent films of the 1920’s, and designed Packards and the AMC Pacer.
bee – yoo – ess – tee – ell – ee – arr BUSTLER
(apologies to Ice-T)
I can’t believe AMC wouldn’t want in on this. After all, the Gremlin is halfway bustled already.
Bishop probably thought of the Gremlin, but hey, he’s not that lazy LOL
I thought that there was a fancy trim package for the Gremlin that got into this territory and did a search, and came up with this!
I don’t know whether they fed the Gremlin after midnight or gave it a bath or what but yikes!
https://barnfinds.com/eyes-1977-amc-gremlin/
Holy (blank)!
I do not have the several lifetimes at sea needed to garner the salty expletives required to properly react to this caricature. The hatch treatment and taillights in particular have brought on twitching and an incapacitating tic.
My favorite part is how the spare wheel is in the exact location the real front wheel should have been.
Fun fact, the Grenada came stateside to Lincoln showrooms for two years as the Merkur Scorpio, and nobody cared.
Yea, proper marketing would have helped, but it’s not like it didn’t happen (Unless you ask a Ford Exec from the 80’s).
I never realized the Scorpio we got as a Merkur was still called the Granada in the UK! Always thought it was called Scorpio Europe-wide, which I now see didn’t happen until later.
I for one loved the Merkurs back in the day, thought they were the height of cool. Esp. the XR4ti’s bi-wing spoiler.
Eh, not exactly. The name Granada was used in the UK only, while the rest of Europe called it Skorpio, but in no way it was the first or the second gen Granadas (as shown here).
It was considered with the first generation Granada
Another Lincoln What If: The 1973 Mark I Ghia Concept – Mac’s Motor City GarageMac’s Motor City Garage (macsmotorcitygarage.com)
Good Lord that would have been a sexy beast!!!! It looks like a contemporary RR Silver Shadow, but somehow better sorted out.
Oh, I didn’t know that. I stand corrected, many thanks!
It looks vastly better than the Falcon-based one, even with that… snot.
Remember, the Scorpio was a giant four door luxury hatchback that nodody in the US wanted in the eighties.
In an alternate universe, small but scrappy AMC creates this market segment with the Greville (h/t to Curbside Classic): https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/what-if/gremlin-what-if-2-the-greville/
The best takeaway from all this is that the Monteverdi Sierra is sweet.
I know these cars are a joke, and I was one of the supporters of hating the Seville for the ugly garbage it was and still is, but I sort of like some of these. Bustleback is bad, but it looks far less dumb on a hatchback than on a truncated sedan.
You’re a bad man, Bishop! A BAD MAN!!!
I will take a Castilian, please. Metallic brown.
That’s actually Antelope Firemist Chesnut Metallic, not brown
I’d love to see a mash of true (80s) modernity with this anachronism: give me the Mercury Sable bustle back.
All this, and no mention of the Renault Megane?
I can’t put my finger on why, but I genuinely like the Mark I you did here.
Oh God what might be wrong with me?
Don’t worry – It’s nothing that Mitsuoka Ryugi, taken twice daily, can’t cure.
Ask your Doctor today.
Side effects may include sealed beam vision, chrome grille syndrome or death.
I know, right? For some reason it works better than the original 1982 Continental. Still bad, but better.
I think retro design cues tend to work better on small cars. Novelty is fun when small. And usually sad when large.
Honestly, that La Serra looks like a much better sorted Dodge 500 to me. It even shares the “Hoffmeister Kink” (Which I now know is also on the Omni/Horizon somehow)
At first I thought you were going to do a Seville without the bustle and reinvent the Oldsmobile aero back. This was more interesting and weird. I think the only bustle that worked was Ford’s hatchbacks on the Escort and Sierra. If nothing else, the bustle on our old Escort made a convenient shelf
As Jackson Browne once sang, “Don’t confront me with my failures, I had not forgotten them …”
My family had two cars with barely a bustle on them…a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais and a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Yes, my dad was an Olds man even when GM kept on bustling well into the late 80’s!
I like a lot of malaise era cars, but even as a kid, when these were new, I used to get vicerally angry whenever I saw a bustle back Seville. They’re so ugly and wrong. These are even wrongerer. (Shut up, I know it’s not a real word)
We’re of a similar age, and Cadillacs of the time were just wrong generally. They were this weird combination of really old and a pretense of futurism, with fairly chintzy interiors for something that purported to be luxury. They always seemed out of step with the time.
True, but I was fine with the DeVilles and such of their time. They at least looked like what they were from front to back.
For me, it was only in the ’90s with the misbegotten Catera project when Cadillac actually tried to make a car for the current era. Everything it made in the ’80s seemed so dated, a ’70s car in t-squared sheet metal.
You’re not wrong, but like I said originally, I actually like a lot of malaise stuff. Those bustle back cars though, they were a bridge too far for me.
The 1975-79 Seville actually isn’t a bad looking car, especially if you see one with simpler wheels and no vinyl roof (not on the first years, since they had yet to make a unique roof stamping for the Seville and there was a visible seam with the Nova roof!).
I don’t love those either, but I don’ hate them like the bustle backs. I dig the 3rd generation Seville that came after the bustle backs, which nobody remembers.
As for the performance concerns, consider the Dasher diesel wagon and the Peugeot 504 automatic diesel wagon. A 1.7 Omni automatic with the a/c on blast will walk away from either.
Was the Dasher motor the same as the Rabbit? I know the Chevette diesel wouldnt even let you get air conditioning; imagine driving that across country with an AM radio in the summer.
The Rabbit was the 1.5, Dasher the 1.6. As for “you can’t get a/c in that”, during the time period in discussion, I was working in S. Florida. You could aftermarket a/c anything. Much of my work day at the time was prepping new Volvos and only the GL came with a/c. All DLs were dealer installed a/c, radio etc.
Everyday I’m Bustlin’
Not a mopar guy but that Imperial just screams to be restomoded
Do the bustle!!
(b/c the Simpsons one is played out, here’s a deeper cut. Which does mention a car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQzVJfj6xxs)
Glad someone went there.
Imperial had been a standalone brand from 1955-1975, which was supposed to help it better compete with Lincoln and Cadillac by being a proper luxury brand rather than a luxury priced model within an otherwise upper/medium priced brand. The new Imperial coupe for 1981-83 was a revival of that, a single-model brand, had it been more successful, they might have introduced more Imperial models to fill out the range, a sedan was at least studied, but the flop made it Chrysler Corp’s final attempt at a luxury brand. All future models priced in that segment works carry Chrysler badges, with Imperial returning to its pre-1955 status as a Chrysler model line for its final use between 1990-1993
If they hadn’t put fuel injection in it I think it would have done a lot better. Dealers did carb retrofits and most of the ones you see running now have that, which I think even required a new fuel tank?
It was the wrong product, at the wrong time. An expensive luxury coupe, launching during a recession and high interest rates, from a company on shaky financial footings, with negative public opinion due to accepting government loan guarantees, being sold under a brand that had been defunct for 6 years and was an also-ran that had never been truly accepted the last time it was used. Add polarizing styling and indifferent build quality, and the Imperial was destined to be a disaster. There were things that could have been done to make it less of a disaster, but it was always going to fail.
Despite being exactly the sort of car Lee Iaccoca himself absolutely loved and would normally be all about building, he actually investigated cancelling it during the development process, due to the recognition that it just wasn’t going to go over well, it had been approved by his predecessor, John Riccardo. Ultimately, Lee concluded that the Imperial was too far along in development and didn’t want to write off what had been spent on it so far, so he suggested a few last minute detail changes and called in a favor from Frank Sinatra to help market it, and just hoped for the best.
I like the Chevette-based Caddy pretty well! It’s less differentiated from it’s economy car roots than a 1G Seville, but much better than a Cimarron. I don’t think the 2.8 V-6 existed until the early 80s, but I’m pretty sure some folks swapped them into Chevettes, and it wasn’t all that difficult.
The 2.8 came out with the FWD X-car in 1979. They did a skunkworks (automatic) V6 Chevette internally and it was indeed fast, but never saw production. Yes, people did swaps on their own with them though.
Wish I had thought of that, back in the early ’80s when I had a Chevette with a bad motor.
So, this seems to be what passes for a punishment job on Autopian
‘For your transgressions, you must Bustle more Malaise era cars’
Bishop, whatever you did wrong to Torch, please don’t do it again.
The next infraction will result in malaise big three luxury branded custom vans. Because eventually the youth will be ready to buy a Cadillac, but will still want shag carpeting, fake wood panelling and bubble windows.
I want to see this!