In the late 1970s, Cadillac sales skyrocketed. gas line of 1973 Oil Crisis The declining, Chevrolet Nova-based Seville made a huge profit.after that The Iranian Revolution Has Brought New Fuel Shortages In 1979 Seville Weird-looking bustleback and base diesel engine In 1980, luxury imports continued to conquer young, wealthy car buyers. The Eldorado is considerably smaller for his 1979, with the wheelbase he reduced by a foot and the weight reduced by more than half a ton. While this helped Erdo’s sales, the engine compartment problem did long-term and painful damage to the Cadillac brand.Today’s junkyard gem This product contains a piece of automotive history that the Cadillac division wanted us to forget. It’s a V8-6-4 engine (not the car itself, because it can be a lesson in history). jewelry explained).
The Eldorado name lived on through its early years glittering convertible And then (mostly) a two-door hardtop, and then we moved on A radical front-wheel drive platform for its time in 1967 And it remained a front-drive personal luxury car with a more-or-less diabolical reputation until the last Eldorado was built in 2002.
The original unified powerplant package (what GM dubs a front-wheel-drive transaxle system) Eldorado and Oldsmobile Toronado And they relied on heavy-duty chains to transmit power to the wheels. This indestructible rig proved to be one of GM’s greatest engineering triumphs ( Small block Chevrolet V8 and Hydramatic transmission), which has proven robust enough to be used in giant camper.
Unfortunately, GM’s first attempt at mass-producing a variable-displacement engine didn’t go very well. V8-6-4 It was a 368 cubic inch (6.0 liter) engine, essentially a bore. 472, has an innovative system that uses computer-controlled solenoids to disengage the rocker arms and open the valves on two or four cylinders at low engine loads. You can identify the V8-6-4 by looking for these distinctive valve covers and electrical connectors.
1981 was First model year for V8-6-4And it was the base engine for all Cadillac models that year, except for the Seville, which had an unfortunate accident. oldsmobile 350 diesel standard equipment).
Variable displacement is a mundane technology today and works fine on many vehicles, but in 1981 it was revolutionary. Unfortunately for General Motors, computer technology in the early 1980s was not fully up to the task of controlling such systems. , V8-6-4 did not work properly. The Cadillac V8-6-4 gained notoriety for its erratic behavior at the very moment when the Chevrolet Citation endured a widely publicized recall. Cadillac extended warranty We repaired the affected vehicle and tried numerous fixes, but in the end the best fix was to completely disable the cylinder deactivation system.
Of course, the 1981 Eldorado buyer didn’t have to choose the V8-6-4, but Optional powerplant Not particularly appealing: nasty Olds 350 diesel and 125-horsepower 4.1-liter buick v6.
To make matters worse for Cadillac, a thinly camouflaged Chevrolet Citation with a Cadillac Cimarron badge debuted on the 1982 model year, with BMW and Mercedes-Benz beating potential Cadillac buyers by the tens of thousands. It cheapened the brand just in the moment. . It took a long, long time for the Cadillac division to recover from the damage caused by his V8-6-4 and Cimarron.
With a digital speedometer and an “information center”, the future seemed to have arrived. It turns out that the V8-6-4 arrived a little too early.
This Eldorado has managed to stay out of the junkyard for over 40 years, but the aftermarket padded vinyl roof has seen better days now.
Only Cadillac dealers own the V8-6-4.
“Grace, buy a new Cadillac!”
