By the early Seventies an alarming development was becoming increasingly obvious to American luxury car makers, the biggest of whom, Cadillac, easily outsold its Ford/Chrysler (Lincoln/Imperial) competitors several times over. Luxury car buyers in the wealthier parts of America seemed to be increasingly turning their attention to European imports such as Rolls-Royce, Jaguar, BMW or Mercedes – In particular the latter. This haemorrhaging of buyers to European cars, was not a new phenomenon, indeed in the late Fifties/early Sixties VW had single-handedly been responsible for the big three launching their own ‘compacts’ to combat the sales erosion caused by the Beetle.
But this time it was the luxury end of the American car market that was now starting to see this ‘European’ sales attrition occurring. In the past, the bigger and ritzier the cars got, the more they sold, yet for the first time this was no longer the case. And it wasn’t just a question of style or tastes; the 1973 oil crisis meant there was a new imperative to produce a more fuel-efficient Cadillac. The early Seventies models were now all using the 500cu in/8.1-litre engine as standard, an engine which, while torquey, smooth and powerful, struggled to achieve even double-digit fuel economy when driven with ‘gusto’.
