1965-66 Cadillacs Were Nearly Perfect Luxury Cars: The "Last" Standard of the World

1965

and '66 were pivotal years in Cak's history for several reasons, in part because the division continued to increase its sales year after year by producing record numbers of Cadillacs at its Clark Street facility. In fact, in 1962 Cadillac sold about 161,000 vehicles, all of which were produced at its Clark Avenue plant in Detroit, and by that time, in

1965

, CAC had undertaken the facility's largest expansion to date, adding about of 500,000 square feet to the plant and would allow it to produce 800

cars

per day with 10,000 employees working. at the facility as 1965 and '66 would come to an end, they would again be record sales years for Cadillac, where in 1965 Cadillac sold 181,000 vehicles and in 1966 CAC sold just under 200,000 units on 197,000

cars

, but the 1965 Cadillacs were instrumental in a number of reasons, the first being that these were really starting to become the

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world

standard

Cadillacs, obviously the division continued to produce vehicles for many years, but one could argue that the 65 and 6 Cadillacs really are the most high, maybe.

In all of Mar's history, at least in modern history, if we forget about the V6 V12 ETCs of the 1930s, more specifically, the 1965 and 6 Cadillacs really became the best. The mass-produced Cadillacs, let's say the V12 and V16 models, didn't really sell. There were almost no units, but the ones I mentioned were really great sellers and there are several reasons why that was true. Now you also have to put the 1965 Cadillac, the year that introduced this new style, in the context of what was happening at the time. Catac sales increased year after year after year during this time, there was one vehicle that took overall motor styling by storm once again, for the second time in a relatively short period of time, and that was the 1961 Lincoln Continental.

The Continental 61 was a big change. Of everything Detroit was producing at the time, remember that this was the era of tailfins, as well as extravagant styling in general, and the 61 Continental took that and really turned it on its head with styling that was extremely restrained, tasteful and, frankly, still looks elegant. These years later, although some of those

luxury

cars look quite dated, I only mentioned that this was the second time that motor stylists in general were caught off guard in a relatively short period of time because the 61 Continental came immediately after of the 1957 Chrysler line, which also launched the J Motor styling hot on its heels with strikingly beautiful cars with thin roof designs, large tail fins, well-sculpted shapes and overall features on those vehicles compared to what GM was producing in that time and, frankly, released for the 1957 and '58 model years overall.

Chubby, pasty vehicles that in some cases like the oos mobiles and the 1958 Buick were adorned with so much Chrome that well they just didn't look right at all. We'll spend another episode talking about some of those vehicles because they actually have a It's also a very interesting story, but let's go back to the '65 to '66 Cadillac and talk a little bit about the styling issues of this vehicle and we'll look at some of the early tape drawings, as well as full-size clay models that show where Cadillac was thinking of taking the styling direction for the 65-6 vehicles, and in fact, often these clay models show a styling direction that ended up being very different from the version. of final production for several reasons.

Let's take a look at some of these first. clay models and full size airbrush renderings before going into more detail about the vehicle itself and here you have a full size airbrush rendering of the 1965 Cadillac and you notice a number of things. The first is to look back and see a vertical tail lamp that, curiously, is divided in two by what appears to be a piece of shiny trim with the Cadillac logo, but remember that in 1964 and for several years before, Cadillac had separate rear fins, well this car clearly doesn't have separate rear fins. It was a more, let's call it understated, approach to Cadillac's vertical taillight, perhaps even possibly one of the more understated treatments dating back to when Cadillac introduced its vertical taillights in the 1948 model year.

I also love how the upper section The deck lid tapers and gradually lowers as the rear of the body rises upward to achieve this beautiful tapered appearance at the rear that helps minimize the overall weight of that surface. You'll also notice that the tires have very thin whitewalls, particularly of the period. Remember that this was a period when thick white walls were generally employed to make wheels appear larger. Here this is a very thin white wall, similar to what would be used in the 1966 tornado and the white wall is not close to the wheel. so it's more of an accent than something to make the wheel look bigger.

Next let's take a look at the doors and you'll notice something obvious this car has suicide doors and remember I was saying this car was really Cadillac's answer to the 1961 Continental and I guess that's one of the things they were thinking about here It's just that the Continental had these suicide doors. We should do the same. Now Cadillac had Heritage with suicide doors, including the ones on the AL Dorado jokes, so my feeling is that maybe they were just trying to recapture their suicide door heritage with this particular offering, then let's take a look at that line formal there with the vertical shape in the rear section and that was actually a tail that had been associated with

luxury

cars for several years while This roof line is not so rigid and rigidly vertical, it certainly has that vertical profile as part of the natural light opening area or window glass opening in the rear door and I think it goes back to the days when people traveled with chauffeur wrapped in luxury. vehicles and that helped provide an element of privacy for the back seat passengers because the people outside couldn't really see them.

Next, take a look at that area on the front of the vehicle, in front of the front wheel, where there is a grill of sorts. I assume the grille extends from the front of the car to the side, something that clearly didn't make it to the production version. There would be a cornering light there that was quite large but it was an interesting proposition and

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ly just take a look at the overall shape of this 1965 Cadillac, the rear contrasts greatly with the '64 model with its mini tail fins and An even greater contrast to earlier model Cadillacs that had much more sculpture on the side of the body, this is just a simple and clean Bazian design. very similar to what was used or the style that was used in the 1961 Continental and, frankly, also what Pontiac used in its 1963 Grand Prix, which was its response to that Continental.

Let's now move on to a first full size clay model, this would have been built after the full size airbrush render you saw earlier and you will notice the clean side sections of the body from the previous full size airbrush, but there are a number of differences and some strange shapes on this vehicle in general. Take a look at the front of it. Cadillac's typical egg-crate grille has this kind of raised roof, so to speak. Hood profile that would basically be used as a deck lid on the 67 L Dorado or at least a similar shape and even Ford would steal it on their 68.

LTD for their hood, but look at those fenders and headlights that are included and integrated into them, as well as a set of, I guess, bright lights that are inside of them on the grill, what a funky look and you know, what a weird look. I think overall the shapes of this vehicle might have worked for the Cadillac, but if you look at this 3/4 front view and imagine what the full side view of this car would have looked like, it doesn't necessarily say Cadillac and that's my guess. . as to why this design proposal was rejected and you note here that the taper of the deck cap is even more pronounced than the full size airbrush rendering and it doesn't have a lower skeg line but in this vehicle this PR was announced.

Characteristic line that runs the entire length of the car with a fairly pronounced radius, I would say, that seems to become even more pronounced as it moves towards the rear of the vehicle overall. I guess I'd call it an interesting design, but I'm kind of happy that the designers ended up nixing this one in favor of the production model, it just doesn't look quite right. Note that there are no door handles on this proposal, so perhaps Cadillac was simply deciding what to do with it. doors, whether suicide doors or normal doors, where did you come up with this headlight thing or where was CAC going with it?

I'm not too sure, but I can tell you that it was an issue that was being looked at by more than just the devil and soon it would be the Cal series that would replace the 62 series as the lower-end model in the Cadillac lineup. Take a look here at a rendering by then-Cadillac designer Wayne ktie for a two-piece Al Dorado and you'll notice. a very similar front end here, so CAC was looking at that type of front end for their line. I think it's actually a good thing that they ended up nixing it and again went with the production design for both the El Dorado and the El Dorado 67, which is one of the all-time high points of Cadillac design, as well as the 65 full-size Cadillacs. , then take a look at this proposal which has a similar but slightly different front end;

It still has those fender-integrated headlights and bright internal lights. but notice on the rear that feature that starts partly through the tailgate and continues through the rear of the vehicle that wouldn't make it to production on the 65 and 6 Cadillacs, but something similar would make it to production in 1967. So perhaps a simpler design was opted for for the introductory years of 1965 and 1966, before cic designers brought in that shape in 1967. This proposal also has four headlights and I suppose they appear to be the signs of twist on the dashboard The headlights certainly have a different shape than this.

I'll take a look at that biplane bumper up front, of course, the typical Cadillac egg-crate grille and then you'll notice that shape again starting in the middle of the tailgate and continuing into the back more like a tail fin that, as I mentioned before, I would return something similar to what I would return for 67, but here this is almost like a 1964 style run on this particular clay model again, obviously the production version looked very different than this one now. As the design continued to evolve, the front end was really something that I guess the cic designers were struggling with because it kept changing.

Check out this completely different offering from the last full size clay I showed here. You have exposed headlights. The fender shapes are similar to other vehicles with individual headlights included in the fender, but you can see on the passenger side of the car that this turn signal area would actually end up looking like what was released on the Cadillacs for the 1969 and 70 model years. The driver's side has a different overall shape, so the designers are trying to show two different proposals here for the turn signals, but again, this full-width grille with the headlights was not something the designers would be done with.

Continuing with the theme of stacked headlights for the car and in this later model of what appears to be a pillared wooden sedan, you can see that the designers have now gone for a hidden headlight design and the shape of the fenders has been It looks more like the final car. would particularly have the top of that Fender now, where in the

world

did that shape come from and what was the inspiration? Well, Wayne Katy, then a Cadillac designer, later Cadillac's chief designer told me that that Fender shape actually came from GM's vice president of styling, Bill Mitchell.

I just wasn't happy with the end of the vehicle and after having a number of tweaks, let's say, on this particular shape, I ended up telling the designers to take inspiration from the Miller race car grille and create that fender shape, so here take a look. in the inset, which is a radiator from a Miller race car and you can see that it looks very, very similar and the final production version would have a similar inspiration. This would be the only time that Bill Mitchell would talk to his designers supposedly about being inspired by that Miller. race car there is another vehicle that is not shaped like a Fender, but Grill was inspired by Miller's race car, which is the 1969 Grand Prix, as he passedOver time, clay models became increasingly closer to the production aspect.

Notice that the car here now has stacked headlights at least on the passenger side, driver's side, it looks like the designers are experimenting with some sort of hidden headlight, but notice that the top of that headlight is still shaped from the Miller race car radiator, although here's something he didn't do either. On the final car, this full-width grille that's split in two, although a similar theme would resurface in 1966 and you still have that, let's call it a mini fin on the rear that also didn't make it to production and would be toned down. rather, I guess I would call it a squeak instead of a fin on the final production version and lastly, let's take a look at the rear of a proposal here, take a look at those taillights, there are two different proposals, one on the driver's side is a little difficult to see in this image, unfortunately it is cropped, but on the passenger side there is a different proposal closer to the final version, but you have vertical taillights or at least parking lights and then you have supplementary lights that are wall mounted. a-everything on the back panel there too and it's a bit messy, looks a bit clunky.

I think the final production version is much more elegant. Also look at how low the fender skirt is on the rear wheel or if there is even a skirt and it is some sort of rear fender shape, maybe there is a mini skirt there but the rear wheel certainly has a skirt on this, it's a proposition interesting from the rear too. I guess the good news is from me. For perspective, the designers ended up cleaning up the overall final shapes and the resulting Cadillac 65 was. I think the best version of all the ones you saw. Sometimes pre-production clay models look better than the final version.

In this case, I think the designers chose. It's fine and the final version is absolutely stunning, you can see how clean the side section of the body is. There's actually no supplemental tail fin or skagg line on the rear, just a clean, simple, beautiful surface on the side and front of these. vehicles with the first version of the dual headlights that Cadillac ever offered. I think it turned out to be very tasteful, the texture of the egg crate grille looks good for the car and again you see the race car with Miller radiator forming the top of the headlight area, so it came to the production overall just an impressive car from the front let's take a look at the rear because the rear end ended up being very tasteful and quieter than the clay models and if you look back you see that. you have mini fins, but not on the top and bottom of the taillight.

I think this ended up being a tasteful gift overall. M there is no wall for... all the taillights to complement the big vertical lights, there is just sort of a decorative piece on the rear panel on either side of the license plate, these taillights I think look pretty good too . Interestingly, note that there are exposed screws on the top and bottom of the lens so the bulb can be removed during this period. The bodywork was a little reluctant to allow owners to change the bulbs from the rear of the lens, i.e. in the trunk, because they thought it could contribute to possible water intrusion, so often the bulbs in the Tail lights on these cars were changed from the outside of the car.

It really has an interesting anecdote associated with it when we go to 1966 and here are the 66 taillights very similar to the 65 that are in the box but actually different, as is that decorative piece on the rear panel. Now look at the 66 taillights there are. there are no screws exposed from the outside and one might think this is no big deal, remember what I told you about there being no access to the tail lights from inside the trunk on these vehicles so there is no way to access to them from the trunk. There is no access to the screws that would normally be on the outside side of the lens.

How do you change the light bulb properly? Either you have to have a very small hand and be able to reach between the bumper area or you will fall. the rear bumper of these vehicles to change the taillight yes that's true you can see here a sketch by Wayne Katy who was designer of cadalac at that time this sketch is from January 1964 and here is his proposal for the light rear 66 that would actually reach production. Note that the sketch purposely doesn't have exterior screws because Wayne didn't want them to be visible. He thought he influenced the design.

Well, Wayne was a very young designer at the time and maybe. He wasn't thinking about serviceability and when I asked him earlier about design examples he regrets, this is one that comes to mind just for the reasons I explain: it's a beautiful taillight, it's just very difficult to repair now. However, the styling was probably what really helped these Cadillacs set new sales records for 1965 and '66, as I mentioned above. In 1965, the division sold around 180,000 cars, plus 1966, they sold around 200,000 and they did so in 11 different models, the only big change year over year. -year compared to the 64 was that the 62 series sunset nameplate was now called Cal, which you see here and by the way, the CES are usually my favorite because they don't have the vinyl roof, I think this particular one is just an extremely attractive two-door Cal Coupe, partly for that reason the Cal was about $400 cheaper than the devil;

You can multiply it by 10 to get roughly those numbers today, so you saved $44,000 by buying the Cala and got most of the CA's creature comforts, but a cheaper interior and, well, some different finishes, so Of course, the volume leader was the DeVille series and that had a base price of about $55600, that is about $55, today the Cala, as I mentioned, was $400 cheaper than the Deville and then you had the More special models like El Dorado, this would be the rear-wheel drive El Dorado, which was a convertible, the Ford special Fleetwood 60 sedan and the Fleetwood 75 limousine for Cadillac production of 1965.

All of these models were on a completely new chassis that had a new perimeter box section. frame and that consequently allowed the engine to be moved forward in the car, reducing the size of the transmission tunnel, helping interior space and overall comfort, also giving the car a better center of gravity and overall It was simply a better frame than what was actually used on the previous generation of these demons and the CA and Al Dorado also weighed a bit less than its predecessor, partly due to the frame. The only car to retain a frame from the previous generation was the Fleetwood 75, which still had its X-frame on a two-piece driveshaft.

For the 1965 model year, under the hood of these 1965 Cadillacs was a familiar engine, the 429 cubic inch Cadillac V8 that generated 340 horsepower and 480 square feet of torque, this engine would be produced by Cadalac until the year of 1967 miles, when it would be replaced in 1968. With the new Cadillac 472 cubic inch V8, the 429 was overall a pretty good engine, it was basically a boarded and stroked 390 engine that Cadillac had produced until that 1964 M year when it was introduced The 429, like I said, the 429 was pretty good. driven and have a 429 on my 67 Al Dorado engine very smooth uh quite py, they had some problems with the oil pump in the timing cover in some cases where the oil pump could wear out in the timing cover and therefore , cause you to lose oil.

I haven't had that pressure on my particular vehicle of course it has low mileage and I changed the oil frequently but if you didn't and you had higher mileage that was a problem for some people and of course Cadillacs of this era they were equipped with GM. excellent 400 turbo hydromatic transmission which in these years had a variable pitch stator had two variable pitch stators which meant the stall speed varied depending on the throttle application so if you had a normal throttle application I would say that up to about 2/3 throttle the car had a lower stall speed or the transmission stator blades were aligned in such a way that it had a lower stall speed and then if you floored it or pushed harder beyond that well 2/3 throttle, then the transmission stall speed would increase in the The stator blades changed their pitch and consequently you had a little more thrust.

It was a great idea. These pitch shift transmissions were used in the turbo hydromatic 400, the DLow, and a few other applications for GM really were Sunset due to cost in the late 1960s, but. It was quite durable and worked very, very well. I should also mention that the stator would be at the highest stall speed at idle and that was supposedly to help minimize slipping at stoplights when you took your foot off the brake, kind of silly, but I guess. It worked, it was a very very good system overall and I would say this setup worked pretty well for cadx overall.

Various road tests of the time suggested that these vehicles could go from 0 to 60 in about N9 seconds, a little over 9 seconds and for 4,800 lb plus car which is actually quite good and they did it quietly and some of that silence was due to a new coaxial resonator exhaust that was supposedly sonically balanced. I have driven one of these 65 Cadillacs with the stock exhaust and my El Dorado has a stock exhaust and I will say that it is actually very, very quiet so you can barely hear the engine running and you can't hear any exhaust noise either.

These were, of course, big cars and I mentioned the additional 4800 lb weight they carried. a top wheelbase of 1292 if you bought a cal from DeVille or an Al Dorado if you bought a Fleetwood 60 special then it has a top wheelbase of 133 and the Fleetwood 75 has a top wheelbase of almost 150, pretty big vehicles , although in length it would be surpassed by the big Cadillac bumper cars of the mid-1970s. Now let's move on to the interior of these 1965-6 CXs. I think they are some of the most beautiful interiors ever put together. First let me say that everything was really optional in these years, even power windows, power locks, air conditioning for Cadillac, so this is a manual window car, both the vent window and the regular window and that was not So typical for CX during this period, but some of them had it.

You could get tons of Creature Comforts in these cruise control, automatic climate control which was introduced in 1964 on Cadillacs and continued in the '65 and '66 models, three-position windshield wipers, power windows, power seats, power locks, telescoping tilt wheel , a large number of advantages, automatic headlight dimmer. automatic headlights or Twilight Sentinel, so there was a lot of content to be had in these Cadillacs. Now take a look at the theme of this instrument panel, how it wraps around the door. This is one of the cars where this happened relatively early. In this case, that would be something that would be back in Vogue in the '90s and '00s, but it was pretty atypical during this time period to have the IP theme wrapped up in the door because it was difficult to execute with all these different pieces trying to line up. . above, but here cic did it and I think they made it absolutely beautiful and here's a 66 interior again very similar to what I was mentioning on the 65 five.

I love the horizontal speedometer, this flank by the two round dials, one is the headlight control and the other. It's the clock, so of course you have the temperature gauge, the fuel gauge, the shift dial, uh, in the central area below the speedometer, so the functional layout looks great and it's absolutely beautiful. The interiors would really start to go downhill. I would say 1968 1969 and I will never really reach this level again, frankly I think the 65 and 6 have some of the most elegant, understated and beautiful interiors ever placed in a Cadillac. They are simply wonderful works of art to look at.

Now, what were the changes for the 1966 model? Last year we already talked about the taillight treatment and that was different and some of the trim pieces on the deck lid and rear area, but at the front the car has a new grille with a texture pattern of different egg crate grill and grill now. It had this center bar theme as seen here with the parking lights built into the ends of the center bar instead of being in the bumper. The bumper was also redesigned to better incorporate the badge from the 1965 version and I think it was overall good.

In fact, I like the 65 a little better, but the66 is also an attractive vehicle, the front end was also chromed quite significantly for the 66, there was no longer any Fender Peak trim, the 65s had the cornering light redesigned, it was now surrounded by sheet metal and did not extend to the front bumper, the 65's had a bright job separating the front fender from the cornering light at the front and that was gone. I think it was something I really missed on the front end of the 66 as opposed to the 65, the other element that was changed for the 66 is that the Fleetwood bro was no longer just a trim option, it was actually a new model, so Cadillac's model count for 196 6 6 had reached 12 instead of 11 and the Fleetwood 75s finally had the new Cadillac styling and caught up to their Cal DeVille Al Dorado siblings.

Overall these 65 and six Cadillacs are just beautiful machines and really Cadillac's answer to the 61 continental and a successful answer, it's unfortunate that after this cck would start to go downhill in some areas, particularly the interiors of their vehicles, just They were never as rich as they were in the 65 and six, although some of the exterior styling remained quite captivating, regardless of the 65 and six being excellent vehicles to own. thanks again for watching