Edmunds dealer partner, Bayway Leasing, is now offering transparent lease deals via these forums. Click here to see May lease deals!
Options
Popular New Cars
Popular Used Sedans
Popular Used SUVs
Popular Used Pickup Trucks
Popular Used Hatchbacks
Popular Used Minivans
Popular Used Coupes
Popular Used Wagons
Comments
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
I'm reminded to post because on the 'original cars' site on Facebook (which I love), a guy posted the interior of his '68 Caprice. I agree with ab348 that while it isn't the very nice panel of the '67, it's better than the '69 or '70.
Regarding the metal glovebox doors--I remember at the time not thinking about crash safety as I do now when I look back, but I also remember thinking these seemed substantial compared to other cars....most likely, the ridiculously flimsy '73-77 Chevelle and Monte Carlo probably 3/8" thick plastic glovebox doors that opened with no detents at all--a good screwdriver could break into one. In fact, it's not unusual when you see one now that a corner of the door has bowed out some from a perfect close.
But...wagons and El Caminos didn't get this. I remember thinking even back then as a kid that this was odd.
That '70 El Camino is delicious IMHO and I can't say I'm generally a fan. 20K miles, still has its dual-stripe whitewalls, to my eyes the best '70 color, Black Cherry. From the Facebook "All Original Cars" page this morning.
But, while the quarter stampings would be different for a 4-door and a 2-door, they were still probably more similar, and cheaper to implement? I don't mind the bulges on the 70, at all. Maybe because it's already a fairly trim size, they look like more of a tasteful accent to me, whereas on the '69, they just look swollen?
**Edit: With the El Camino being classified as a "truck", my auto encyclopedia doesn't include it. But, I googled it and found about 42,000 were built in '71. 47,701 in 1970. So, that might blow a hole in my "low volume" theory.
By '77, the 1-bbl version of the 225 slant six was down to 100 hp, but a 2-bbl "super six" version was introduced, with 110 hp, from '77-79. However, it looks like the 2-bbl didn't pass California emissions standards. Interestingly, going to a 4-bbl carb allowed some V8s to pass emissions in California, but I guess going from a 1-bbl to 2-bbl didn't do the same trick for the slant six.
For 1980, the 2-bbl was dropped, and the 1-bbl was choked to 85 hp. That same year, the Ford 250 had 90 hp. Oddly, my old car book lists the Ford 200 at 91, for 1980.
1975 looks like it was the worst year for the Ford 6-cyl engines. The 200 was down to 75, while the 250 only had 72! The Mopar 225 was down to 95. The Chevy 250 was at a relatively unscathed 105. The Buick 231, in its debut year, was a rocket, relatively speaking, with 110 hp.
2018 VW Passat SE w/tech, 2016 Audi Q5 Premium Plus w/tech, 2006 Acura TL w/nav
Now on my Mom's side of the family, they went from a '72 Impala with a 350 to an '82 Malibu wagon with the 229, and I distinctly remember both Grandmom and Granddad learning to hate, really quickly, that car's lack of performance! Granddad also had a '72 LUV in the late 70's, and replaced that with an '81 Ram D50 with the Mitsubishi 2.6. I'm sure those were both slow as well, but were probably geared quicker, so they'd at least make a lot of noise and jerk you around some, so you'd feel like you were doing something! The LUV was a stick shift, too, which probably worked in its favor.
Edmunds Price Checker
Edmunds Lease Calculator
Did you get a good deal? Be sure to come back and share!
Edmunds Moderator
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
Those were about 1978. I have no idea of year for this survivor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF2lRNqd-LI
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Then of course there was also the optional woodgrain trim that was offered on the bodysides.
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
At 35 and 28 we were probably the youngest Caprice buyers that dealer had had. It was a good car. My last vehicle with a full-size spare.
In 1999 I sold it to the one of the companies who was constantly sending me postcards "Call us! We want your Caprice!". I sold it for cash in my driveway for more than either of two Chevy dealers would give me for it. It got sent to the Middle East.
I did always like the lacy aluminum wheels on the '91-96 Caprice upscale models.
The leather interior on those cars was pretty darn nice for a Chevy. Mine didn't have it.
Although my friend used to goof on its instrument panel (the "Silly Putty dash"), I hated the '94-96 panels that replaced it.
GM just handed that business off to Ford, but I've read once or twice that police and taxi owners liked the Caprices better, with the caveat that they were 350's.
After ownership, there were a few niggling details that we didn't like about it. The right floor was raised to clear the catalytic converter, and that seat was low, so your legs were stretched pretty out straight. The plastic door panels, hollowed out for storage areas, flexed when you pulled on them and if you leaned on the armrests, they made little plastic creaking sounds. They advertised the car as the "roomiest Caprice ever", but the tops of the rear doors curved in towards your face as you climbed in. All stuff probably no worse than other cars, just observations.
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
The EPA website has some spreadsheets that you can download, that lists the raw laboratory numbers. I remember awhile back, looking up the specs for 2000 cars. My 2000 Intrepid, which had a window sticker of 20/29, was rated something like 24/38 under the raw numbers. I think it was 18/27 under the 2007 set of numbers.
Side note...the numbers that the EPA, CAFE, or whatever use, to calculate whether the auto makers are going to pay a fine, are based on the raw laboratory numbers, and not the window sticker numbers. And I think they still break out trucks and cars separately, and give trucks a lower average to have to meet.
When I was younger, I used to think it was kind of odd, that the owner of a '75 Monte Carlo would complain about the LeSabre's seat being so low. But, then when I got my '76 LeMans, which would be the same basic thing, one of the first things I noticed about it was how high up the seating position was.
My Studes have high seating. When I'd take my mother for a ride in my old '63 Lark Daytona, she could slide right in and out, no prob. In my Cavalier coupe she'd need help getting up and out, and in my van I'd have to pick her up to put her in a seat!
I can't say I remember the high front passenger floor in the '77 Impala, but now that I think about it, I do remember that in the midsize GM RWD's.
No one would mistake the two, but I see some Avanti-like styling characteristics in those cars.
As for the '91-96 Caprice being "the roomiest ever", it might have been, going on EPA interior volumes. IIRC, shoulder room was something like 64-65", at least up front, which would put it about on par with the '71-76 mastodons. And, I'm sure legroom and headroom, at least the way they measure it, was better in the downsized cars as well. All the EPA does is take those headroom/shoulder room/legroom measurements, multiply them, convert from inches to feet, and then round to the nearest cubic foot.
Just doing a quick spot check, here's a few stats I found:
1996 Caprice: 115 cubic feet of passenger volume, 20 cubic feet of trunk space.
1985 Caprice: 110/21
1979 Caprice: 111/20.
I couldn't find any interior volumes for the '71-76 models, as the EPA only shows them going back to '77. And worse, for '77, if a coupe and sedan were offered, they averaged them, and a coupe was almost always smaller inside than a sedan. Anyway, just to throw out the stats for a few pre-downsized big cars...
1978 Newport/New Yorker sedan: 107/22, coupe: 106/22
1978 Ford LTD sedan: 106/23, coupe: 100/23
1978 Mercury Marquis sedan: 108/23, coupe: 100/23
1978 Lincoln Continental sedan: 114/22, coupe: 111/22
My guess is that a '71-76 Caprice would fall in around 106-108 cubic feet of passenger volume for the sedan. I seem to recall the trunks were a bit small though, maybe only around 18-19 cubic feet? The '71-76 interior was definitely bigger than the '65-70, although the trunk on the '65-70 was probably larger.
I thought it was interesting that the '79 had a larger trunk than the '85. I was always under the impression that the '80 re-skin created a slightly larger trunk, because the decklid didn't slope off quite as much? But, it could also have been a very subtle thing, where, say, 20.4 cubic feet got rounded down to 20 and 20.5 got rounded up to 21?
Back in 2009, after my Intrepid got wrecked, I looked around at a few used cars. One local lot had an early 90's Caprice, and a late 90's Olds 88. I remember sitting in the Caprice and thinking that it didn't seem so great with legroom, and in the back seat my head hit the ceiling because of the way it sloped down. The Olds 88 actually felt better, in terms of legroom and headroom.
Early reviews liked the cars, but after a bit out, one or two reviewers mentioned the whale-like qualities, and then pretty much everybody jumped on that bandwagon.
With all these years hindsight, I'd still prefer a nice boxy '90.
On the really big '70's big Chevys, I seem to remember "18.9" as the cubic feet of the trunk. The Custom Coupe had a large decklid which gave the impression of a roomier trunk than the Sport Coupe and sedans, but it was illusion I think.
Something else I remember about our '93--there was no resting your left arm on the top of the door panel...my arm didn't reach that far!
I never liked the Roadmaster (should've been called 'Electra' IMHO) nor the Fleetwood...both really looked gargantuan to my eyes. Funny how Olds offered a wagon on that body but never a sedan. I will say the Fleetwood reminded me of older, big Caddies.
I think one reason the '93 might look awkward, even with the wider wheel opening, the rear door looks like it's still a carryover from 1991-92. It was shaped for the smaller, reverse-slant wheel opening, and doesn't quite match up with the larger '93 wheel opening. It's one of those things that you might not notice at first, but once you see it, you can't un-see it!
Style-wise, I think Ford did a better job when it applied the aero look to their Panthers but, being a GM fan, I will confess a fondness for the Caprice/Roadmaster/Fleetwood. And the later models with the LT-1 350 engine definitely sway my interest!
I think the Ninety-Eight is probably a pretty nice car truth be told, but I'd have a hard time getting past that.
I understand, but I don't like the faux front vent windows either.
A 58 Impala without a continental kit, wow.
I remember Kramer's '73 Impala with the Olds instrument panel--apparently one of the test cars trying out air bags...seriously.
The Seville also belonged to George's parents, perhaps replacing the Monarch as it appeared later. The Monarch was his dad's car I think, and met an unfortunate end in a memorable episode:
It's weird, considering the Ninety-Eight and the Park Ave were the same design, but somehow the Park Ave came off looking more substantial, and upscale, but the Ninety-Eight managed to look diminutive. And the skirted look didn't help. But, perhaps because it was more slab-sided and didn't seem as "fuselaged", I think it came off a bit better than the Caprice. I wouldn't say no to one, if I happened to come across a nicely maintained one and needed a car, but I think the '91-96 Park Ave was a work of art, compared to it.
With compacts, the slightly-skirted look of the Achieva, I'm not a fan of, but it's less extreme than the Ninety-Eight, or Caprice. I think the coupe is pretty sharp, though. My biggest beef with it is that the headlights and taillights seem a bit too big, like they were really sized for a larger car, but ended up on a compact. The Achieva and Ninety-Eight have a bit too much of a family resemblance in my opinion...I wonder if that might be one reason the '91-96 Ninety-Eight didn't sell as well as the Park Ave did? The similar appearance might have made it look too downscale? The Skylark was just too weird for me. The too-big headlights, the taillights that wrap around too far, the beak, the slightly-skirted look to the rear wheel openings, and on the coupes the rear windows and C-pillar looked more like they should have been on an Oldsmobile or Saturn.
They did get rid of the Skylark's beak in later years, but then it looked like the grille and the headlights didn't line up with each other.
Now when it comes to the '92-99 LeSabre, versus the 88, I prefer the 88. The LeSabre seemed to take its cues from the Park Ave, but managed to come off a bit more dowdy and old fashioned looking, but then they still had enough target audience for that at the time. But the 88 had a nice, clean look to it. Not as overdone as the Bonneville, which was fast adopting the "ribs and wings" design philosophy of "sporty", but I thought it struck a good balance between "conservative" and "sporty".
There's a car show in Rockville MD I go to from time to time, and one of the regular cars there was a '73 Impala, with the Olds air bag dashboard. I also recall a 70's car chase movie called "Moving Violation" (not to be confused with the 80's movie that started off with the old lady picking up Clara Peller from the airport, and then driving out onto the runway, pulling up behind a jet, honking her horn and shouting "damn buses!") that had a '74 Delta 88 with the air bag dash. They crashed it and, unlike the air-bag-equipped Delta in "Smokey in the Bandit", this one actually deployed!
Remember the old lady car in Moving Violations (one of those silly underrated 80s movies I can watch and never tire of - tons of good car spotting in it, too) is a nice looking 68 Impala Sport Sedan:
2018 VW Passat SE w/tech, 2016 Audi Q5 Premium Plus w/tech, 2006 Acura TL w/nav
Edmunds Price Checker
Edmunds Lease Calculator
Did you get a good deal? Be sure to come back and share!
Edmunds Moderator
The Olds LSS was a nice car actually. The design was clean and it had upgraded suspension and power, along with a very nice interior. My Olds-loving buddy bought one used to use as a DD.
2017 Cadillac ATS Performance Premium 3.6
Before my Dad traded his '84 Monte Carlo 305 4-barrel in on his '90 Corsica V6 with column-shift (LOL), at another Chevy dealer about 25 miles away, he drove a new Lumina Coupe, non-Euro, bench seat with center armrest and column shift, whitewalls, which was before I'd even seen one. He liked it and the woodgrain on the dash (LOL), but bought the Corsica at our hometown dealer anyway.
Probably my favorite of all '90's GM designs is cheating a little, as the design came out in the late '80's--I always liked the LeSabre coupes of that generation.
Which reminds me...an older couple near us in our hometown, whom I remember having Oldsmobiles back to the sixties, had a four-door Delta 88 of that generation in an interesting (IMHO) light turquoise metallic. He kept it really clean too. Such a color was not seen on other cars in that era I don't think.
Another guilty pleasure, perhaps. I want to say my brother's Euro had the same wheels.
I remember those disc hubcaps, they do look cheap. There was a sporty pretension LeSabre T-Type coupe of that era, right? I wonder what a 92+ coupe might have looked like.
And the Eighty-Eight had big round rear wheel openings from the start, which lightens the look.
Thinking back, I think the first Aurora was a nice-looking car...I'd have chosen that pale turquoise.
And I'll admit to liking the '95 Riviera, everywhere except the back. I always thought they should have made wraparound taillights that would have had some distance between them when looking straight on from the back. That super-tapered rear end...ugh IMHO.
I guess I think the '92 Seville was a handsome redesign, although the interiors started to disappoint me in that the old-skool domestic luxury look was gone.
One thing I think was sort-of neat about GM in the nineties, was that they did coupes, larger coupes, when those were, for the most part, over at the other places (except Thunderbird and Cougar). And in the Lumina, Cutlass Supreme, Regal, and even Riviera, you could get them with column shift and six-place seating for emergencies. I'd have probably chosen that set-up mostly because I like the open area near my right leg and that a center armrest is usually more comfortable than a console compartment lid.
My parents' '90 Corsica was weird in that it had the standard bucket seats, but column shift and no console. Of course my Dad bought the cheap aftermarket little thing to store stuff in the middle, there.