[Bro-Ham]

I can't imagine who the developers of the "Duntov GT" thought the buyers of this car would be; maybe some sinile Mafioso chieftan; I mean even little old ladies from Pasadena had moved on to "hot" foreign cars by the mid-eighties. Bro-ham is absolutely right, no young up and comer from the executive class would have been seen dead in a Cadillac of any kind in the mid-eighties. Some of my friends still had their late seventies Fleetwoods with the big engines and would never have considered trading them for an eighties model. I still had my '76 Seville in 1985 cause their wasn't anything more interesting ( I had an 82 XJ6 as well) to behad in the marketplace. The Eldos were nice looking but even slower than my Seville. The 1980's were just a waste land for those who enjoyed powerful good looking cars.

Your last sentence is on the mark, as far as Cadillac was concerned. There was a power renaissance at every foreign luxury car company in the 1980's but Cadillac had invested heavily in small economical cars with zero sex appeal. Had Jimmy Carter won a second term those tiny generic and underpowered 1980's Cadillacs would have been correct in the marketplace. With Reagan came national strength and economic greatness and buyers chose cars with those optimisms in mind. As a kid I couldn't believe how my favorite car brand fell from greatness to near nothingness so fast.

This Brougham was the only Cadillac platform the Duntov concept could have been based upon at the time. The tragic mistake of Cadillac in the 1980's era was failing to recognize they needed to keep a big Cadillac built V8 in the rear drivers, the 368 with a 4-speed auto would have been great, and the 90-92 updates on the Brougham should have come out in 1983 or 1984 with a whole new updated rear drive following in 1985 or 1986 including a traditional big Cadillac engine and some knock your pants off up to date and class leading Cadillac styling.

I wish Cadillac would drop the current pug nosers they seem so intent on building and instead do some glamorous long, low, and lovely cars that will truly get people excited about dreaming of and aspiring to own Cadillacs.

 

[The-Dullahan]

The Earth is round. ROUND.

I reject your reality and substitute my own.

 

[greencadillacmatt]

^I stand corrected.

 

[bicentennialcadillac]

Had Jimmy Carter won a second term those tiny generic and underpowered 1980's Cadillacs would have been correct in the marketplace. With Reagan came national strength and economic greatness and buyers chose cars with those optimisms in mind.

The oil industry collapsed. Simple as that.

 

[Bro-Ham]

The oil industry collapsed. Simple as that.

????

 

[I~LUV~Caddys8792]

Didn't the US hit another gas crisis in 1981 or so? Then by 1985 the gas prices were starting to fair out again, which brought the demand back for the full size RWD's, but ironically, that was the same year all the anorexic FWD Cadillacs hit the market.

 

[bicentennialcadillac]

GM had planned for $3.00 gas, but then oil started selling for less than $10 bbl in the mid-1980s.

Yes, fuel got crazy cheap just as the ugly hit the Cadillac dealers.

 

[I~LUV~Caddys8792]

Just out of curiosity, I looked up the fuel economy ratings (from fueleconomy.gov) on the 1985 RWD Brougham and FWD deVille:

Brougham:
16/22 with the old ratings, this is what it'd say on the window sticker

deVille:
17/25 with the old ratings.

So even though it's much smaller and uglier, you don't get that much better mileage out of it. These were both with the 4.1L V8, not the optional 5.7 and 4.3L diesels.

 

[Bro-Ham]

Gas crises were 1974 and 1979. Prices moderated all through the 1980's. In 1979 we had a hostage crisis in Iran that Pres Carter didn't have the testicular fortitude to resolve and OPEC jumped at the chance to clamp us for higher oil prices because we Americans were perceived as weak. Reagan came on the scene in 1981 and promised American greatness and military might and once OPEC was reigned in and our worldwide strength was fortified it was only natural that prices would come down and stabilize since we had, what we always hear about, peace through strength. If anyone is forgetting, it wasn't more than a year or so ago that we had gas for near a $buck. It can happen and should be the norm. Watch, when Obama and the dems are out of power there will be cheap gas again.

 

[longo]

The guy should have at the very least put that motor in a brougham with the deElegance package. For that kind of money you should at least have gotten the better seats

 

[MudAnt]

The guy should have at the very least put that motor in a brougham with the deElegance package. For that kind of money you should at least have gotten the better seats

That was just a prototype, I'm sure the d'Elegance package would have been available (or standard) had it gone into production.

 

[sven914]

How could you get one? They were never advertised in any of the sales literature. And I'm sure more than 1% of the Broughams built in those two years had the trailer tow package. Does it make a big difference in performance?

I don't know how you got the VIN 9 engine... The whole concept seems to be SNS.

I would imagine that only one out of every ten Cadillac Brougham order forms had the LG8 listed as an option. Probably one out of every four people who check marked that box, were taken into a back room by three guy dressed in black suits, where they were they were "questioned" until they were deemed a non security or environmental threat. Their names can probably be found in a forgotten file cabinet, somewhere in Quantico.

 

[Fabrickator]

I'm not sure what you'all know about the Duntov GT, but I was there as one of the builders. The Duntov GT was a one-of-a-kind car built to be marketed to diplomats, secret service or whomever needed the extra HP in a Cadillac to handle the extra weight of bullet proof glass. My boss was an eccentric millionare who loved and drove Cadillacs, and also held a Bonneville land speed record. He made his money inventing, marketing and frachising unique concrete cutting machinery than ran on 400Hz. We could get 20HP out of a custom made, aluminum, water cooled electric moter the size of a standard 1/2 HP 120v electirc motor.

One day he told me to go to the local Chevy dealer and buy 2 Covette engines, new in the crate. IHe had me take one of the engines to nearby Traco Engineering to have it built up to 450HP. Then sent me over to the Cadillac dealer to pick up a new Brougham. When I got back we (me and another guy) pulled the engine out of the caddy and started to fit in the vette engine. We had to fabricate the motor mounts, have a driveshaft and radiator and custom dual exhaust made. He hired a guy who worked for Buick in Michigan that was an electrical engineer to make a hybrid wiring harness to match up the vette engine to the caddy chassis and we had to make a chip to fool the vette computer/anti theft before we could start it.

It was the ultimate sleeper. When you left the light it spun the itres and left everyone looking. After we put the 450HP Traco engine in it, we modified the supension with sway bars, shocks, posi-traction and wider tires/mag wheels. Then I could light up the tires at will and hold a burn out until I lifted off the throttle.

No one every ordered one and so he drove it as his daily driver. Bad idea, but a VERY expensive and bitchin car.

 

[csbuckn]

Thats pretty cool. You have any pics of the project?

 

[Fabrickator]

I do. I have the original brochere with Zora Duntov standing next to it. Duntov had nothing to do with the car except my boss bought his name for marketing it. We had plaques made for the sides and truck to identify it as his creation. What a joke. He needed some street cred to try and sell it. Kind of surprised that Mr. Duntov would stoop to that level...

I'll bring in the pics and try to post them tomorrow (if I can figure it out).

 

[Bro-Ham]

Great story! Can't wait to see the pictures!

 

[dennis93coupe]

I'll bring in the pics and try to post them tomorrow (if I can figure it out).

Not hard, get an account setup with photobucket-free. Get the pictures uploaded, open the picture, right click on the image and click properties, right click and highlight the http and hit crtl C (on a windows) go to your post and click ctrl V. Type

Took me a little bit but I figured it out, finally.

 

[I~LUV~Caddys8792]

If this thread gets political, it will get shut down. Simple as that.

Stop trolling off 18 month old comments.

 

[Fabrickator]

Well, I got a little bit distracted on this topic that I entered into about a year ago. I have the brochere on a file now if I can get it posted.

If it doesn't load by file name I'll try going URL through Photobucket.

 

[Fabrickator]

OK, it worked! If your interested in more details about this and m,y experience in being one a the original building team, go back to my Feb. 2012 post. If you have any questions, I'll check back and see if I can answer them.

Rick