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
Not only are you a great generator of car design ideas, you are a comically gifted generator of car designs.
Look, I happen to love the Caddy, as I have since receiving the Hot Wheels version as a kid. It was a beautiful two-tone metallic silver and burgundy, and, for some reason, it stood out from the rest of my collection. I was fascinated by the car with the anachronistic proportions, as I’m sure a bunch of grown-ups were, as well. Something a little extreme needed to be done to stand out in the decade of flat, squareish, plain shapes. Cadillac pulled it off. I think the others pulled their punches a bit and didn’t produce anything special.
Thanks for the time that goes into producing content like this. I almost crapped my pants when I saw the Chevettillac.
This article is definitely one of the best “what if” proposition.
I love those first and second generations of European Granada, including the Granada Perana V8 model from South Africa. My Swiss aunt had a 1978 model with 2-litre Cologne V6, and hers was nicest Ford I have ever ridden in.
Ford could have brought the second generation to the United States as a captive import, but the currency exchange rate was in European favour during the late 1970s.
(sigh) That Granada is an understated beauty. Why can’t we have cars like that anymore.
Let’s bustleback a Cimarron, shall we?
BTW no Omnirizon was actually getting 50mpg back then. At the least, the EPA ratings were calculated using a different methodology than the one used today. If calculated as they are now the numbers would be substantially lower, if still good.
I love looking back at the old EPA test schedules. They used to accelerate and drive SLOW in the 70’s and 80’s. It’s was an interesting time. I wonder how a modern economy car would fare on the old EPA test with no A/C and the slow acceleration and low top and average speeds.
My Great Aunt and later my Father had a diesel Mercury Capri. It had no power anything and would get into the mid 70 MPG running at 55 MPH. My Dad used it to commute over 120 miles a day and he joked that it was cheaper to drive than his Honda CB360.
I kind of suspect a gas Honda Accord from a year or two ago – of the type that is rated at nearly 40 now, and actually gets it, would probably get a rating of nearly 50. The ratings on economy cars of the early 80s look good today, but nowadays you can get the same mileage in a car that has the luxury and nearly the size of a Lincoln Town Car of that era.
Also…diesel Capri? What Capri are we talking about? I can’t recall Ford offering any car with a diesel.
That makes sense. The old EPA test schedule might be considered hypermiling if you did it in the real world.
It was a fox body Capri bought as a glider from Ford. An ex-NASCAR racer named Ralph Moody and a guy named Mike Shetley swapped in an Italian diesel a 4 speed and a tall rear gear. I don’t know all the details but they assembled a few dozen in Oak Hill, FL down the road from my aunt. The one my great aunt and my Dad owned had #14 marked on the radiator support with a paint pen. It was a car that sacrificed pretty much all comfort for fuel economy.
I’m so glad this article didn’t exist in the 80’s. I’ll never be able to unsee the blatant econobox underpinnings of those pseudo luxury cars. Fortunately, almost are almost none left on the road…
Well this is fabulously awful, thank you for making everything worse/better, haha!
It’s the malaisiest of malaises alright.
Now I want to open up Photoshop and bustle all the cars.
When I was a wee lad in 1982 our parents hitched a 14 foot caravan upto an Audi 80 1.6 auto and decided to take 2months off around europe. We were meant to goto Geneva but Genoa looked similar on the road signs so we took a detour for the night. Finally we got to Geneva through the Mt Blanc tunnel and it was there I saw my first American Car and it wasn’t till now that I realised it was a bustle back Seville. I felt disgusted but odly intreagued by this weird mixture of car design that seemed so dated but was apperently brand new.
Jason is hard to pin down. Dude’s got bionic arteries, he is more machine than man by now. Watch out or he’ll mess you up.
Aeroback?
Aren’t the GM Aerobacks the central characters here?
And who the hell was still listening to Fleetwood Mac? I think it was mostly The Waitresses The Lounge Lizards The Contortions, Black Flag, X, X Ray Spex, Glen Branca, Suicide, Tom Waits, Pylon, and whatever the hell Eno was doing.
Well that thing with the UCLA marching band was fun, but Fleetwood Mac? Really?
I have a pretty funny Black Flag story but it will have to wait for another time.