At this year’s LeMay car show I photographed a 1949 and a 1962 Cadillac. They struck me as bookends for what I have dubbed the “sci-fi” era of this brand. Designers started off with tailfins but by 1962 had added other features such as taillights that looked like rocket afterburners and lower-body skeg fins.
For 1963 Cadillac began to shift to the brougham look. Tailfins would survive for a while longer, but Cadillacs would increasingly attempt to evoke the classic luxury cars of the 1920s rather than jets (go here for further discussion).
In a sense the 1962 Cadillac represented the last of an era. But while the brand’s styling themes displayed an unusual level of consistency in the early postwar period, the basic shape of its cars changed dramatically. This is under-discussed in auto histories, so let’s compare the 1949 and 1962 Cadillacs shown here.
Cadillac goes lower, longer, wider . . . and heavier
The 1949 Cadillac was the second year of the brand’s first postwar redesign. Tailfins on the rear fenders were the car’s most remembered feature, but arguably the more important change was the adoption of a new body that was lower and had front fenders which were no longer outboard.
The exterior dimensions of the new Cadillac were slightly smaller than 1947 models based on pre-war bodies. The wheelbase for the mid-level Series 62 was cut three inches to 126 inches, length was down six inches to 214, width was reduced two inches to 78.9 and height fell three inches to 63.5. This translated into a weight loss of around 20 pounds for a four-door sedan (4,180 lbs).
The 1948-49 Cadillac may have been somewhat lower than today’s sport-utility vehicles, but the upright driving position was similar. Seats were chair high and you didn’t have to duck your head to get into the car.
Let’s now fast-forward to 1962. The mid-level Cadillac, now called the de Ville, had grown in most dimensions: 129.5-inch wheelbase (+3.5 inches), 222 inches in length (+8 inches) and 79.9 inches wide (+1 inch). However, the car was also 7.2 inches lower at 56.3 inches.
This translated into a weight gain of almost 500 pounds to 4,675 for a four-door hardtop (add another 20 pounds for the two-door hardtop pictured here).
The 1962 Cadillac was not as roomy in key respects
The 1962 Cadillacs did not possess the roominess of 1949 models partly because the substantially reduced height ate into headroom. Another factor was a larger driveshaft hump, which encroached on middle-seat passengers.
Styling trends contributed to the fixation with lower cars. The heavily rounded quality of early postwar designs gave way to much flatter surfaces, both in the greenhouse as well as the hood and deck.
Note that early-60s Cadillacs were slightly wider than 1948-49 models, but that may not have resulted in greater interior widths. This was partly because the side sheetmetal bulged out farther. In addition, interior arm rests were much bigger.
The main advantage that newer Cadillacs had was that rear seats were no longer nestled above the rear-wheel wells, which could make egress more awkward due to a protruding armrest.
One of the most obvious differences between the basic shapes of the 1949 and 1962 Cadillac was that the rear overhang grew sharply. Trunk capacity figures were unavailable, but I would guess that the much lower deck of early-60s Cadillacs was more than compensated for by the greater overhang — at least with regular models.
As discussed further here, between 1961-63 Cadillac offered a short-decked body style whose overall length was the same as our pictured 1949 model. Trunk space would presumably have not been as generous.
What if Detroit hadn’t embraced lower, longer, wider?
The 1949 Cadillac is such a nice-sized luxury car that it makes me wonder: What if General Motors had kept the same basic size into the 1960s?
One scenario: The 1962 Cadillac had pretty much the same dimensions as the 1949 models. That might have resulted in somewhat different styling trends, such as less of a shift to a boxy greenhouse shape and a sharply horizontal fascia like on our featured Coupe de Ville. However, we still could have seen larger tailfins, chiseled side styling and more complex bumpers.
Another scenario: Engineering advancements such as the step-down chassis and V8 engine could have allowed reducing the height of family cars without compromising roominess. The switch to V8s in more expensive cars could have shrunk the length of the engine compartment compared to what was needed for a traditional straight eight and transferred it to the passenger compartment. That would have allowed the rear seat to be moved forward of the rear wheels.
Under this scenario perhaps the 1962 Cadillac would have been only three inches higher than it turned out, which would have made it 59 inches in height. That would have been a bit lower than a 1948 Hudson (60.4 inches) but taller than a 1962 Rambler Classic (57.5 inches) or a 2024 Toyota Camry (56.9 inches).
Yes, but . . . the counter-arguments
One argument against these scenarios is that if General Motors had not adopted lower, longer, wider styling, the competition would have eventually forced it to do so. That was certainly possible, but perhaps if GM had not placed so much emphasis on styling over engineering, Ford and Chrysler would not have either.
As a case in point, Virgil Exner might not have gained the power to develop the “Forward Look” cars of 1955 and 1957 if Chrysler’s early-50s styling hadn’t been viewed as so out of step from the rest of the Big Three.
American Motors head George Romney argued that GM’s agenda-setting power was so great that smaller automakers were pretty much forced to follow its lead.
As an example, Romney noted that the wraparound windshield GM pioneered had “no basic advantage over the straight windshield, and yet through advertising and promotion you can make an item of that type become absolutely the hallmark of a modern car, if you have got a large enough percentage of the total market to do it” (Cray, 1980; p. 377).
I would imagine that more than one Indie Auto reader might think that the above scenarios were unrealistic because automakers were just giving America the cars they wanted. But if that were true, then why did SUVs become so popular? Could it be that for a sizable number of people, a car has always been viewed as primarily a practical tool rather than a piece of rolling art? And that the 1949 Cadillac was a more useful size than its early-60s successors?
NOTES:
Specifications are from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006), Automobile Catalog (2024), Consumer Reports (1963), Flory (2004, 2009) and Gunnell (2002).
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International; Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Automobile Catalog; 2024. “Full detailed specifications listing and photo gallery.” Accessed Sept. 28.
- Consumer Reports; 1963. “Basic Body Dimensions.” April issue: pp. 164-165.
- Cray, Ed; 1980. Chrome Colossus: General Motors and its Times. McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, NY.
- Flory, J. “Kelly” Jr.; 2004. American Cars, 1960-1972. McFarland & Co., Inc.
- ——; 2009. American Cars, 1946-1959: Every Model, Year by Year. McFarland & Co.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Cadillac (1949, 1962)
Wow, where to start? To me, the 62 Caddy was not that much larger than the 49, at least by comparing the Cadillac to the 61 Lincoln. How did the 62 Lincolns go over compared to Cadillac? It’s hard to do a real sales comparison betwen the two postwar as once the Cosmopolitan was gone, and Lincoln became a fancy Mercury until monstrous 58-6os. Cadillac could point to the miserable sales of the short decks as a smaller car being a bad idea but those cars had to be seen in photos to be believed. There was something misshapen about them.
If no one had produced a monster car, who would have lamented its absence? And even if smaller automakers tried to lead a lower, longer, wider race, why are you so convinced that they would have sold better?
We have shown how the market share of premium-priced brands went down as the length of their cars went up (go here).
We have also shown that production of GM’s mighty triumvirate of premium-priced big cars saw a remarkably steep decline between 1956-58 and never fully revived after that point. The sales growth of Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick would prove to be in smaller cars (go here).
Suggesting that smaller didn’t sell because Cadillac did better than the downsized Lincoln strikes me as a weak argument. I have itemized here why this iconic car wasn’t an ideal referendum on smaller luxury cars.
By the same token, pointing to the poor sales of a short-decked Cadillac doesn’t say much. It essentially functioned as a “compliance” vehicle — a parenthetical attempt to outflank the Continental. Why would you expect stronger sales given the lack of body styles and marketing? In addition, during that entire era Cadillac ads exaggerated the length of its cars. They were equating bigness with prestige. What if they hadn’t done that?
By the end of the 1950s cars had gotten so big that some of them no longer fit in standard garages and parking spaces. That led to a very public backlash resulting in booming sales of domestic compacts and imports gaining a foothold in the American market for the first time. Might this backlash have been avoided if cars hadn’t grown so big?
Why are SUVs popular? I am definitely a CAR person… but I think that those humongous baby/toddler/child seats that kids stay in for many years have a lot to do with it. I am of the age where my friends are grandparents doing babysitting, and they’re driving SUVs and minivans. Several have Honda Pilots with captain chairs in the second row and a third row bench.
At risk of being bashed by Steve, because the “Reply” button does not always follow the port to which I am replying to, I am with Lori H. on this point. I prefer cars, rather than S.U.V.s / C.U.Vs. But I remember when when in the fall of 1990, the very popular female sales rep of the local newspaper became a banker and bought a Forest Green four-door Ford Explorer. My wife saw it and right away wanted an Explorer. Once again, G.M. was caught with its pants down with only two-door Blazers AND Jimmys.
The 1961-1962 Cadillacs were stuck with the dead-end rear fender “skegs”. Thank God that Cadillac styling studio abandoned them for 1963-1964. Model-year sales for the 1961 Cadillac was 138.379. For 1962, it was 160,840. For the “deskegged” 1963, model-year sales were 163,174. Obviously, the Bill Mitchell-led Cadillac styling team kept the Clark Avenue plant very busy. I also believe that the Kennedy economy was humming along nicely, which is another factor.
Also, there’s a definite line of demarcation between the ’49-’57 or perhaps ’58 Cadillacs and the lower, longer, wider Bill
Mitchell ’59-’62 Cadillacs. That first ’53 Eldorado convertible is pretty. I think pretty much all 1958 cars got hit with the ugly stick. Not a fan of the skeg Cadillacs either. 1960 Eldorado with the stainless steel trim and better taillights is pretty.
I agree there. I also have a theory about the four-fin treatment GM gave to the ’61/2 Cads. The ’59 redesign of the Series-70 (dubbed “Eldorado Brougham”) included that very styling theme. But the -70 was not a seller–not at $13g’s–so it was quietly ditched after 1960. But the designers at least wanted to keep its memory by lifting some styling cues from it, thus the ’61/2 mainstream Cadillacs.
I’m with you on the ‘line of demarcation’. If I remember right, GM’s new ’59s ended the A-B-C-body size progression which dated back the the thirties, and all became variations on the same basic size shell. Which made stylistic differences all the more more important.
Another issue coming into play and muddying the waters here was the increasing size of the low-priced cars. A Cadillac had to be bigger than a Chevy, surely? But a Chevy has to be as big as a Ford, or a Plymouth. How big were next year’s rivals going to be? You’d be aiming at an invisible and moving target!
I think it’s about this time when American cars began to size themselves out of contention in many export markets except as luxury vehicles. Certainly here in Australia: Ford kept selling the popular ’55-6 model through till ’59, then caught up with the ’59 (just in time for a recession) which get the sobriquet ‘Tank Fairlane’, kept that shell through to ’62, then dropped the big Fords altogether for a few years.
I read that Chrysler claimed to take the fin craze in a different route, namely looking at aerodynamics. They had done an experiment with a couple cars–one a totally-stock car and another that was identical but with fins added. According to the source I read, the engineers noticed an increase in stability with the finned car at speeds above 70 mph. I personally think it was just a styling gimmick outright, but one has to give Chrysler-Corp a nod for trying to find a practical justification for that gimmick.
Personally I don’t see Cadillac’s ’48–’56 cars as having “fins”; those “fins” are more like bunions.
My family had a 64 and a 68 sedan DeVille. I must say I preferred the 64. Beautiful car inside and out. Cadillac was just evolving with everyone else. Dad loved them having owner several. The 70,s and 80,s cars were dreadful. With one exception. The 1977 Seville. The interior on that car knocked it outta the park. Much later in life I got a used DeVille with the Northstar engine. Brilliant car.