From the Archive: The 1992 Seville Marks a U-Turn for Cadillac

From the May 1991 issue of Car and Driver.

For at least twenty years, our better­-heeled readers have said to us, “If you could just show me an American car that compares to a BMW or a Mercedes, I’d buy it.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, draw your bill­folds; Cadillac’s new Seville is here.

This newest Cadillac, the fourth incar­nation of the Seville, which dates to the 1976 model year, does not look, feel, ride, or handle like any Cadillac we’ve ever driven. Based on our preview ride, this newest luxury car from the country’s luxury-car sales leader ranks as the most satisfying car we’ve seen from an Ameri­can manufacturer since the Lincoln Mark VII LSC.

We will attempt to contain our enthusiasm sufficiently to tell you about this car, first seen on these pages in spy­-photo form in February of 1990 and seen live for the first time at the Detroit auto show this past January. We knew then that a star had risen in the east (Cadillac’s Hamtramck assembly plant lies east of the GM building), but we did not know until our preview ride in February how brightly this star shone.

The overwhelming first impression of this car is its obvious American heritage. And for once this heritage has been given an overlay of dignity and restraint, free of whitewalls, free of bogus wire wheels. Not only does it look like a Cadillac, it looks like a Cadillac designed for and by persons of taste. Quietly but firmly, the Seville says “refinement.” Any moneyed person who isn’t in Manuel Noriega’s phone book or the music business would look at home in this car. And imagine this: the car that you see on these pages is the glitz model, the only prototype we judged camera-ready. The car we drove was also a prototype, a white Seville Touring Sedan (STS) with black tape and scratches all over it but equipped with a fully sorted powertrain. The STS version is the one built for serious drivers (young rich persons). The other, called simply the Seville, is intended for the tra­ditional buyer (old rich persons).

Both Sevilles are as easy on the eyes as the lunch crowd at Spago and differ ex­ternally only in a mild application of lower body cladding on the sides, more aero­dynamic front and rear bumper fascias, breakaway rear-view mirrors, a body-colored grille, and the absence of a stand-up hood ornament on the STS (the Cadillac wreath and shield moves to the grille where God intended it to be). This is real progress. How many times have we seen the attraction of a decent automobile di­minished by a stablemate that looked as if it came from the Tammy Faye Bakker School of Design? Not here. Not by a long eyelash.

Richard Ruzzin, head of Cadillac’s ex­terior design studio and design chief for the Seville, says, “The design was an emotional process. Everyone in the stu­dio wanted to make a statement and posi­tion Cadillac where it belongs.” Where Cadillac belongs, in the mind of Ruzzin and every other Cadillac executive, is of course at the top of the luxury-car heap. We’ll agree that the Seville exterior fits right in at that altitude. Best of all, even though this car is sure to appeal to im­port owners who are closet chauvinists, it does not qualify for the next BMW clon­ing contest.

But what about the interior? How many times in recent decades have we liked what we saw, opened its door, and gagged at the sight of oddly shaped in­struments, velour upholstery that re­minded us of brothel wallpaper, and swollen seats that looked like escapees from the International House of Sofas? We cannot tell you how pleased we are to report that the STS interior ranks with the best the world has to offer (which, just to keep you alert and confused, is the one that you see here; inside our proto­type Seville was an STS trying to get out). The STS interior feels as good as it looks. You sit in big leather bucket seats that enfold you without inducing claus­trophobia and that adjust in endless ways by means of buttons and levers placed within easy reach. Best of all, under seri­ous driving pressure, you remain secure­ly in place, your driving position unmoved by lateral forces.

The stacked-box instruments have gone away, replaced by a gently curved dash and analog instruments spiced up with real Zebrano wood inserts. And what, you ask, might Zebrano wood be? Beats us, but it looks good and adds just the right note of luxury to the tasteful passenger compartment.

The front-drive Seville powertrain consists of two units, both familiar. The engine is Cadillac’s stout port-fuel­-injected 4.9-liter V-8, mounted trans­versely, which develops 200 horsepower at 4100 rpm and 275 pound-feet of torque at 3000 rpm. It has an aluminum block and cast-iron heads, and it uses premium unleaded fuel. Preliminary EPA estimated fuel economy is 16 mpg city, 26 mpg highway. This V-8 is the ulti­mate refinement of Cadillac’s best pushrod engine, and it will be replaced by the long-awaited overhead-cam four­-valve-per-cylinder Northstar V-8, proba­bly for the 1994 model year.

The transaxle is the Hydra-matic AT60-E, an automatic four-speed with a viscous torque-converter clutch that shifts at the behest of carefully tweaked electronic wizardry. Under way, you must try very hard indeed to catch this unit at work. The shifting and power application are seamless, silent, and highly satisfying. This is a major-league powertrain in all respects.

The Seville weighs approximately 3700 pounds and feels every ounce of it. This feeling of heft, however, is not out of place in a full-size luxury car and does not seem to interfere in any way with the handling. The car is heavier than its predecessor, which had the same powertrain, and is therefore a tick slower. Cadillac estimates a 0-to-60-mph time of 9.0 seconds in the new car, as opposed to 8.5 in the old one. The Seville will be electronically governed to a top speed of 112 mph, but the STS can attain 130, ac­cording to the preliminary specifications sheet. However, we learned of one trial at the hands of a Cadillac engineer in which it achieved 118 mph. Our full road test in a few months will solve this minor mystery.

The new Seville is also longer than last year’s model—by almost fourteen inches—and is wider by just over three inches. Its overall length of 204.3 inches makes it about the same size as the origi­nal 1976 Seville. The wheelbase has been lengthened a full three inches, from 108 to 111 inches, and these inches have been used to remove the closed-in feel­ing that characterized the previous Seville’s rear seat. The platform is that of the previous Seville, which is to say the GM E-body, but its suspension has been retuned to compensate for the added length and mass and the big 225/60R-16 Goodyear GA radials.

“Customers told us that it is essential that a world-class sedan have a comfort­able back seat,” a Cadillac executive told us, renewing our flagging faith in con­sumer research. The Seville rear seat, shaped like two buckets, will hold two large persons in perfect comfort and three persons in adequate comfort.

The driving experience, in a word, is excellent. Not only does the STS deliver the interior silence of a Lexus LS400, it also gifts the driver with the solid, no-flex feeling of security that Daimler-Benz taught us about. There’s no sense of the vague floppiness that has for so long characterized American-built large cars. The STS’s quiet, helped in no small part by the Goodyear Eagle GAs (Michelins are standard on the Seville), should not be interpreted as numbness. There’s iso­lation from the noise and harshness, but the driver retains a warm relationship with the road surface.

We drove the STS in the high country of Arizona, where the altitude sapped some of the engine’s power. The car’s handling was something else again. In a vigorous workout on some tight, twis­ty mountain roads, the STS not only be­haved like a thoroughbred, but it did so with an absolute minimum of tire squeal. You are conscious of the car’s weight, naturally, but the neutrality of the sus­pension activity keeps this a conscious­ness and not a concern.

Did we find anything that displeased us? Yes. To build a car this fine and in­stall carpeting that has enough nylon in it to cause a sparkle would not have been our way. And we think that the wiper/turn indicator/cruise control stalk is clunkier than it need be. Those, how­ever, are nitpicks of the tiniest, meanest order. The rest of the car is so good that we feel bad about bringing them up.

We must applaud Cadillac for what it has done: nothing short of building a car that would look at home in front of any grand hotel or embassy in the world and which should reward the driver and pas­senger with a world-class driving experi­ence on any highway on the planet.

Bully!