1973 Cadillac Car Dealer Christmas Party

Those are the ugliest Cadillacs ever......and I like how everyone is cutting rug using the steps they learned in one lesson at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio.

I prefer Luba Potamkin’s disco party

Potamkin!

There's nothing "weird" about simple arithmetic, OP.

Look at the black people so middle class and happy, before they were told they were victims 24/7

R1- For some reason they're only Cadillac Eldorados in the showroom. Cadillacs were still lovely cars in December 1973 they were fuckin ugly when once they introduced the Cadillac Cimmaron in 1982 and the downsized front wheel drive Devilles in April 1985.

Cadillacs were great until 1981, the diesels and the post-1979 Seville are exceptions . I always thought the 1979-85 Eldorado was a beautiful car.

Gas guzzlers.

I love watching people dance in older times....

Here's Luba again wearing a lovely disco frock- R2- I grew up in the NYC area in the 1970's and 1980's I remember her commercials well. I love those huge mid 1970's dreadnoughts.

The bronze convertible with the white leather interior makes me long for simpler times. I was 3 months old at the time of this party. Those people would have been cooing over me and now I'm a 51 YO gas bag.

Cadillacs were at their greatest up to and including the 1966 model year.

The only car in the world that could top a 1965-66 Fleetwood was the Mercedes 600. The "Standard of The World" slogan still truly meant something.

The '67s, though still good, brought in cost cutting. The interior wood trim was replaced with plastic. Chrome plated plastic adorned the dash. The dash was not much different looking than a Chevy. Plastic ruled. A lot of this had to do with safety regulations. The new Eldorado was great, but the interior was cheap looking compared to Cadillacs of just the year before.

As so it went. Still great selling cars but by 1973 the aspirational car was the Mercedes S class. And then there was the downsizing, the velour interiors, the gaudy trim and the Cimmaron, a thinly disguised Chevy Citation.

The original Seville was almost there, but they even managed to ruin that too.

R12- The Mercedes S class was an aspirational car perhaps in Southern California a bit by 1973 but not the rest of the USA. By the late 1970's a Mercedes was a definite aspirational car in the Northeast as well. The last Cadillac that was truly aspirational/status symbol was the first generation Cadillac Seville.

R13 People with taste and money...the upper echelon... did not want a Cadillac in 1973. They did not want velour interiors and padded vinyl roofs and all that other gaudy crap.

The wealthy were moving to Mercedes. Cadillacs were more and more being associated with old people. With retirees.

Cadillacs were still selling like hot cakes, but so were Chevy's. The point is, the Cadillac had lost any air of exclusivity.

The original Seville was a direct reaction to the success of the Mercedes. With smaller size and sober styling.

It was a good effort but no Cadillacs were status symbols by 1976. The damage had been done. The Mercedes, Jaguar, BMW 7 Series were the status symbols.

This is the 1973 S Class. It still looks modern. A 1973 Caddy is pimpmobile kitsch.

R14- Are you referring to Rich people? Rich people would often use Cadillacs as their transportation- if they were chauffer driven limousines.

A Mercedes S class in the late 1970's was about $23,000- absurdly expensive. Even a Cadillac Seville was about $14,000. Very few could a afford a car that expensive in 1977. The people who generally bought Cadillacs or luxury Buicks and Oldsmobiles in the 1970's were not rich they were upper middle class. A Mercedes S class in those day was priced for the 1% not the upper middle class.

[quote]Are you referring to Rich people? Rich people would often use Cadillacs as their transportation- if they were chauffer driven limousines.

The limousine was the exception. And only because there was nothing comparable. But they were service cars. Not meant for personal transportation. They were overwhelmingly owned by limousine services.

[quote]Very few could a afford a car that expensive in 1977. The people who generally bought Cadillacs or luxury Buicks and Oldsmobiles in the 1970's were not rich they were upper middle class.

With banks and financing companies offering ever-longer car loans, you did not need to be upper-middle class to be able to buy a Cadillac.

The price of the Seville was interesting. It was the size of a Nova but cost more than the Cadillac 75 Limousine . Cadillac purposly set the price high to create some esclusivity.

R17- The significance of the Cadillac Seville was not that it was the size of a Chevrolet Nova it was that it was built off the Nova platform. The 1975 to 1979 Cadillac Seville was a heavily reskinned Chevrolet Nova- GM did an excellent of job at it unlike Ford Motor company's Lincoln Versailles which was a poorly disguised gussied up Ford Granada.

The Seville’s styling was so well received that GM then applied it to every sedan they made that wasn’t a subcompact in the early and mid 80s, another nail in the GM coffin.

[quote]The significance of the Cadillac Seville was not that it was the size of a Chevrolet Nova it was that it was built off the Nova platform.

No, the significance of the Seville was that it was small in size (the size of a Nova) in-line with the high-end European cars.

The small size, which Cadillac called "International size", was one of the mean selling points in the car's advertising.

The fact that the car was built off the Chevy Nova platform was not something Cadillac wanted the public to be aware of.

[quote]The Seville’s styling was so well received that GM then applied it to every sedan they made that wasn’t a subcompact in the early and mid 80s, another nail in the GM coffin.

True. Another big mistake.

My grandmother owned a 1969 Cadillac Sedan de Ville. I have been informed that this is the last "true" Cadillac before cost-cutting killed the brand.

The ones from the 20s and 30s were magnificent cars and could hold their own against any global marquee.

R19- Nonsense. By the 1980 model year the Cadillac Seville had been completely redesigned and built off a new front wheel drive platform shared with the Cadillac Eldorado, Buick Riviera and Oldsmobile Toronado. The notchback design of the 1975 to 1979 Seville was replaced by a fastback designed greatly influenced by the Rolls Royce of yesteryear. It was a total dud. Sales plummeted and never recovered to the levels of the first generation Seville. The build quality of GM's full size cars plummeted after the 1979 model year and gasoline prices soared to about a $1.30 a gallon by 1981 so sales of their large and midsized cars plummeted on that basis too.

The styling of the 75 Seville at R19 certainly influenced the overall look of my parents 1981 Chrysler LeBaron

The 1st generation Seville styling was dubbed the “sheer look,” op/r22, and the roofline and boxy shape was used by GM on most of their US sedans, especially the mid -size sedans (Cutlass Supreme/Century/etc) of the early to mid 80s.